SNSS
Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Common Stock
stock NASDAQ

I didn't say they can, or would, spend as much - though it's worth noting that despite those gratuitous expenditures the actual progress in the medical field seems fairly evenly split among those nations - I said that universal healthcare wouldn't likely impact research expenditures because price gouging patients is not a particularly worthwhile way of generating research funding. Even if you want to imagine it is, reducing research spending in order to provide better overall healthcare is still *way* more desirable by any metric.
And no, it's not just from KFF. I also mentioned SNSS and they aren't even remotely the only ones in the field. Their findings were similar to previous studies on the subject which consistently show roughly that percentage of people being unable to or unwilling receive healthcare because they do not believe they can afford it.
As far as your father anecdote goes, ignoring the fact that that wouldn't represent even the majority of people, the number of people who believe they can't afford it *are those in medical debt.* You know, those people who are still paying off other medical bills only for another medical problem to arise that they can't afford to fix because they are *already in debt*. That is, by definition, an expense they cannot afford because they are already unable to afford the previous expense without getting a loan or otherwise putting themselves in debt.
Also you literally asked me to measure a thing you didn't have information on, I gave you citations of organisations that *did the exact thing you asked for* and your first response was "oh well they can afford it but they just don't think they can" - which doesn't matter because *that's still a terrible attitude created by the style of healthcare you are using.* If they could visit a doctor without getting charged you better believe they'd go more frequently.
Medical debt is a huge issue in the US and it's pretty widespread. Like a quarter of Americans are in medical debt at least. IIRC even people who could afford it and who were insured had a something like 40% response rate of "it would be a serious problem for us to incur a medical debt."

Couple all this with historically depressed wages and you end up with people who are underpaid, being asked to pay quite literally twice as much as other nations for even basic healthcare services, trying to get insurance companies to pay out despite the insurance having a vested interest in never paying out, and you end up with a system that regardless of how nice it is for the wealthy people is abject misery for anyone not making tons of money.

I didn't say they can, or would, spend as much - though it's worth noting that despite those gratuitous expenditures the actual progress in the medical field seems fairly evenly split among those nations - I said that universal healthcare wouldn't likely impact research expenditures because price gouging patients is not a particularly worthwhile way of generating research funding. Even if you want to imagine it is, reducing research spending in order to provide better overall healthcare is still *way* more desirable by any metric.
And no, it's not just from KFF. I also mentioned SNSS and they aren't even remotely the only ones in the field. Their findings were similar to previous studies on the subject which consistently show roughly that percentage of people being unable to or unwilling receive healthcare because they do not believe they can afford it.
As far as your father anecdote goes, ignoring the fact that that wouldn't represent even the majority of people, the number of people who believe they can't afford it *are those in medical debt.* You know, those people who are still paying off other medical bills only for another medical problem to arise that they can't afford to fix because they are *already in debt*. That is, by definition, an expense they cannot afford because they are already unable to afford the previous expense without getting a loan or otherwise putting themselves in debt.
Also you literally asked me to measure a thing you didn't have information on, I gave you citations of organisations that *did the exact thing you asked for* and your first response was "oh well they can afford it but they just don't think they can" - which doesn't matter because *that's still a terrible attitude created by the style of healthcare you are using.* If they could visit a doctor without getting charged you better believe they'd go more frequently.
Medical debt is a huge issue in the US and it's pretty widespread. Like a quarter of Americans are in medical debt at least. IIRC even people who could afford it and who were insured had a something like 40% response rate of "it would be a serious problem for us to incur a medical debt."

Couple all this with historically depressed wages and you end up with people who are underpaid, being asked to pay quite literally twice as much as other nations for even basic healthcare services, trying to get insurance companies to pay out despite the insurance having a vested interest in never paying out, and you end up with a system that regardless of how nice it is for the wealthy people is abject misery for anyone not making tons of money.