College is still very expensive, and student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy (although the rules on this have been changed for the better). Insurance is pretty expensive and/or comes with caps, plus if you ever have to make a claim on it a bunch of your valuable time goes into an administrative black hole. One thing I really miss about most European countries is that if you are sick enough that you have to go to hospital, not only are you not likely to suffer a severe financial hit, you don't have to deal with any paperwork besides your clinical care instructions. Medical staff tend to be paid fixed salaries rather than on a per-procedure basis and rates for care are standardized. The complexity of the US healthcare market leads to all sorts of weird economic distortions, like this: http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/florida-trauma-centers-c...
I won't argue that the US healthcare system isn't horribly inefficient.
My point simply is that the US not some horrible crap hole where everyone goes bankrupt when they get sick and kids can't go to college because it's too expensive.
