People get elective dental procedures all the time (braces) that are highly affordable and conveniently delivered, without getting pushed into bankruptcy.
1) How much money goes into pet medicine research vs human?
2) What happens when a pet is sick and the cost of care exceeds money of owner?
You want a health care system where you use 15-20 year old medicine with no research, and most bills > $1000 lead to euthanasia? Sure that would be a cheap healthcare system...
What? Animal health is a huge industry. Zoetis was spun off of Pfizer and is making money hand over fist. Lots of new animal drugs are approved each year.
> You want a health care system where you use 15-20 year old medicine with no research, and most bills > $1000 lead to euthanasia? Sure that would be a cheap healthcare system...
15-20 year technology (and I hope you agree modern medicine is, broadly speaking, a form of technology) is not old; it is robust and time tested. Today, building business critical operations in Fortune 500 companies on top of Linux is a no brainer, but not so much in 1996; and whoever told you otherwise back then was both unprofessional and self-deluded with evangelist zeal.
Your claim that veterinarian medicine has "no research" does not hold water either. Sure, there might be less money being expended in researching animal health care than human health care, but this does not mean that the science behind veterinarian medicine is any less valid. If anything, it's probably more valid because there are so many less emotional hot-button issues and underhanded political agendas lurking around it.
About the $1k bills, there are two ways to see it. You claim that it is a bad thing that most >$1K procedures end up with pacient death. I, on the other hand, would like to point out that this is a proof that it is possible for a whole calss of modern health care professionals to charge <$1k for procedures that solve most non life-threatening conditions and remain gainfully in business. Note this argument is valid regradless of your position on human euthanasia.
Finally, your use of "cheap" healthcare system is used as a double-entendre. You are conflating "affordable" with "stingy" in that single word. As exposed above, you can clearly see that the first not necessarily implies the second.
You're right - on the literal level. BUT parent said: "It is just one other indicator of the flaws of the free market approach to everything in the US" - and if their statement is interpreted as implying - "the flaws in what's called the free market approach" then the rest of their statement stands.
The health care system is a good example of the profit-driven, marketized-through-regulation, financial-speculation driven system.
And the thing is that no amount of praise of the literal free market is going to change these market-regulated-industry-fusions into free market. I mean, it's a standard approach for functionaries to praise the free market then jump to whatever gawd-awful financialization serves those functionaries' backers.
I mean, "just let them die" is usually an option for seriously ill pets. Generally society frowns on this fashion of treating humans. So "everyone" agrees some compromise is necessary in human health care - but naturally one then wakes to find the latest compromise is a cleverly constructed worst-of-all-possible-world except for X many large interests (education, healthcare, prisons etc).