Why does having a child cost $40k?

Some will argue that consumption drives production but according to the common definition children don’t contribute to GDP.

Assuming governments are going to address population growth/decline then it’s a choice between incentivising births or issuing visas.

Even in countries that have free healthcare births are in decline so it’s not the cost of children alone that is causing this situation. I would argue it’s the economic crutch called immigration.

If I worked in the US, I would have health insurance and would be paying lower out of pocket costs than I would in Australia. Combined with the higher salary and cheaper housing that's a pretty good deal.

Edit:

We allegedly have universal healthcare but that doesn't cover any actually competent specialist (need private healthcare for this) so paying $400 for 25 minutes of a psychiatrist every 2 months and $95 for 7 minutes of a GP is common.

  Health spending in 2023–24

  In 2023–24, Australia spent an estimated $270.5 billion on health goods and services– an average of approximately $10,037 per person. In real terms (adjusted for inflation), health spending increased by 1.1%, or $2.8 billion more than spending from 2022–23. 

  In 2023–24, health spending accounted for 10.1% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in Australia, approximately 0.2 percentage points higher than in 2022–23.

From the bottom:

  In Australia, 15% of all expenditure on health care comes directly from individuals in the form of out‐of‐pocket fees — this is almost double the amount contributed by private health insurers.

  There is concern that vulnerable groups — socio‐economically disadvantaged people and older Australians in particular, who also have higher health care needs — are spending larger proportions of their incomes on out‐of‐pocket fees for health care. 

  A 2019 study identified that one in three low income households are spending more than 10% of their income on health care. 

There's little to no public advertising of prescription drugs, cheap generics are widely available from federal scale bulk negotiation deals.

Health outcomes are greater life expectancy than the US, national scale cancer survuival rates are better by a few percentage points (IIRC - they are close but higher).

Australia has long had an innate "we're all in this together" society built on individualism. It's not great, it's not perfect, but the first instinct is generally to look after our own - across the board.

Edit: I'm too dumb to know whether to include superannuation as a tax or not so I'm not sure if I'm right or not.

Do you have any evidence of that?

Maybe the top 0.5% is getting better care, but I really wouldn't shed a lot of crocodile tears for them.

Yeah, I'm gonna need a citation for that. Because it sounds like a health insurance propoganda rather than the actual truth.

Simply not true.

Infant mortality and under-five mortality rate (U5MR) are one of best simple indicators of the quality of healthcare. USA's mortality is x3 (!!!) of the countries on top. This puts USA around place 50 in the world, worse than Russia...

Source, backup your claims.

Health outcomes are WORSE than most other developed countries and that's the only statistic that matters here

Ive been to doctors in different countries including the USA. Theres nothing special with general practitioners with the USA.

Or if you end up in China, you can get blood panels for like 10RMB, MRI for 30RMB, and damn near automated to boot.

Go to Mexico for dental work. What costs you here $30k costs you $2k, and they take your insurance.

The US citizens are being gouged, because our government has been bought out by corporate interests who bribe, err, campaign donate to both parties. And thats across every economic activity. Medical is just an egregious one, alongside academics.

Health outcomes do not support that statement.

I had to read again 3 times. Are you serious?

If there is any complication, you're risking 2 lives.

Is that true for a median-wage earning person?

Waiting times for appointments and procedures can very widely in the US. Approvals to get needed treatments can also be denied for seemingly flimsy reasons in the US as well.

A lot of countries are likely clear overall losers though.

This is only done for very specialized treatments where the province (they run the health care delivery) doesn’t have the treatment and/or the American resource is closer than a Canadian treatment location.

For example Nova Scotia will send some complex paediatric cases to Boston. They could send them to Toronto, but Boston is closer. Same with Manitoba but they use Minneapolis.

Canada is only 40m people and almost half that is in one province. The smaller provinces simply don’t have the population to justify having every possibly medical bell and whistle.

Point is when province sends Canadians for US treatment is isn’t actually about better quality as not all provinces have the same in house capacity and often the next largest city with such capacity is an American city.

1. The quality is high.

2. The OP pays the full price.

1 is incorrect. The OP is paying a lot, but is getting the same subpar quality healthcare as everyone else. He differs with people without money in only one thing: the latter don't get the full access to the subpar health system. The system itself is the same and its general quality is well indicated by the core metric of the infant mortality.

The health system is subpar and there is absolutely no reason why such a system should cost that much.