Health insurance is also a constant, gradual cost, and it really isn't that expensive for basic plans. Less than your yearly food budget certainly, and less than your rent / mortgage prices by a long shot. There are plans for $20 a month in my state.

And yes, there is free healthcare offered all over the United States. ERs are mandated to treat everyone regardless of their ability to pay, and there are free clinics set up all over to treat poorer people for no cost. These facilities even provide to illegals at great cost to themselves for free.

How the world got this idea that everyone is entitled to the work of healthcare workers and medical researchers below market value is beyond me. Their job pays market wage and yet I am expected to do charity work because I actually provide a need rather than a want. (No, the government could never afford to pay market wages, and part of Bernie's plan was to price gouge drug companies and medical workers. (its also $17 Trillion short)

There is a reason the US provides the best healthcare in the world, why we produce 70% of all the new drugs on the market, why we have led the medical field for the past 100 years, and why our economy grows by more than 1% per year (pathetic). Its because we allow people to make good money when they succeed. When Gilead CURES Hep C we don't tell them now they have to give it out for free, we tell them go ahead and make as much money as you can.

The result is that for the poor, there's a delay in when they can receive new medicines (if the drug companies don't set up a plan to help them). Patents expire and then generics move in. Note that for the world's poor, many don't even have access to sanitation practices discovered 100 years ago. Its not that absurd to not give everyone on the planet access to $10 million cancer care.