No one asks questions when illness strikes. Everyone’s preoccupation is with treatment and cure. But shock commonly follows in the form of onerous medical debt — sometimes to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hospitals and insurance companies have a profit motive on steroids.

Studies show that in the United States, more than 100 million Americans are saddled with medical debt. Total medical debt in the United States has climbed to a staggering estimated $220 billion.

Roughly 40% of working-age adults forgo medical treatment to avoid the high risk of financial ruin. All their income is consumed by bare necessities.

The U.S. health care system is shaped by greed.

Consider the wildly discrepant costs for the same medication. Annual HIV medications in Africa cost $75, but the corresponding cost in the United States is $39,000, equivalent to the 2022 per capita income in America, which was $41,261.

In Canada, the cost of the cancer drug Gleevec was approximately $1,441 in 2015. In the United Kingdom it was $2,697. In 2015, the drug was priced at $6,214 in the United States. Today, a supply of 90 tablets costs approximately $8,800. Price is divorced from the costs of production. It is whatever the market will bear.

A contributing factor to the high cost of health care in America has been a proscription on government-negotiated prices of Medicare prescription drugs. The Inflation Reduction Act changed the rules for 10 critical drugs. But ultra-wealthy pharmaceutical companies have initiated legal proceedings against the federal government claiming that government-negotiated prices constitute an unconstitutional taking of their property (drugs) for public use without just compensation. It speaks volumes that the Department of Veterans Affairs negotiates the prices of prescription drugs for veterans without provoking constitutional protests from the drug suppliers.

A federal district court last year tossed the case against the government on a motion to dismiss, but we can be sure the drug companies won’t give up the fight. Too much money is at stake. If they were around at the time of Jesus, they would have been chased like the money changers from the temple.

The staggering price of surgery, however, remains undisturbed. The average hospital stay costs $2,883 per day. With the median hospital duration of 4.5 days, approximately $13,000 is the price for a single surgery and occupying an austere room. A 14-night stay at the renowned Plaza Hotel in New York City costs the same.

The parents of a 1-year-old girl were charged $629 for the placement of a Band-Aid on her finger. And why was that? The Band-Aid, according to hospital officials, was worth $7; the remaining $622 was spent on the doctor and emergency department services. Hospital facility charges range from $15 to $17,797, a stupendous variation that bespeaks monopolistic market power.

The demand for health care involving the sick and dying is inelastic. Price is no deterrence in matters of life and death. Who debates costs in an ICU? Health care providers hike the costs of their services accordingly.

Does this mean that socialized health care is a superior system? Should our system undergo a radical transformation? People frequently cite Canada as an example of the superiority of socialized health care. But they omit the exorbitantly high individual tax rates necessary to pay for the services and protracted wait times for treatment. In Canada, the median wait time to see a general practitioner was 12.6 weeks in 2022. That number is 3.7 weeks in the United States. Moreover, Canadians cannot select their preferred physicians.

The probability is high that hospitals and health care companies are responsible for the deaths of an indeterminate number of Americans annually because of exorbitant prices. They have brought financial ruination to many more households.

If the United States can fly to the moon, it can surely learn how to assemble a health care system that works for both the 1% and the 99%.

We dare not fail to try as Good Samaritans.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.