To be shocked that a US friend is paying $1970 a month health insurance

[crunchymint]

That is her monthly premium for health insurance and is an insane amount of money.

The non profit thing is more dependent on the provider. I had my kids at catholic run hospitals namely because they offer free healthcare to those in need but they also have good NICU units. My CS was $9,500 which included a 5 days stay. I think that is a very reasonable cost which many could afford to pay out of pocket without insurance.

The insurance companies are motivated by profit and will seek to pay out as little as possible while collecting as much as they can get away with.

There's more to it than whether insurance companies/hospitals are profit or non-profit.

More hospitals in the US are non-profit than are profit-based, and employers are increasingly moving towards self-insurance and simply using insurance companies to process their claims.

The costs are still astronomical.

Obamacare is a good thing for many but hasn’t worked out well for everyone my sister now pays more (she isn’t a high earner) but my dad pays very little but considering he had to remortgage his house as his insurance wouldn’t pay for all his treatment when he has prostate cancer

But he still wasn’t admitted to hospital until he was seriously ill most people here would have taken themselves to A&E much sooner

There is a very different attitude towards healthcare. When a family member was rushed to hospital and the family were told his insurance won’t cover all his treatment I was shocked where my family there questioned why he didn’t have better insurance