Right, exactly. Paying $5000 more in taxes to get $5000 more in benefits is net of zero.
It's really even worse than that, because when you say you make $60,000 in the US vs. $40,000 in Europe, the $60,000 doesn't include employee benefits like employer-provided health insurance, whereas the $40,000 doesn't include the taxes you have to pay for the equivalent government services.
> I think its reasonable though if you want a hyper-expensive cancer treatment or surgery, you have to pay for that as part of private health insurance.
But that's the only part you would actually need social assistance for. In any kind of non-corrupt healthcare system, the actual cost of going to the doctor and coming home with a bottle of allergy medicine shouldn't be beyond the ability of anyone at the 10th percentile income to afford.
That's really the advantage Europe has. It's not the government services, it's that US institutions are corrupt and so prices are higher. Regulatory capture and overhead makes the market for routine medicine uncompetitive and therefore unaffordable.
And it's the same across the board -- look at housing costs in Germany vs. California. Europe's cost advantage isn't that their government is especially good, it's that governments in the US are especially bad.