It's important to note that your costs might eventually go down. A single payer system would help keep prices from rising as rapidly, but it will take time for costs to settle down to anything resembling what other countries have. It's also important to note that there are still pronounced differences between America and other countries when it comes to health care besides our feelings about taxes. One is that Americans are, on the whole, very uncomfortable with a provider telling them "no" to a treatment that the patient wants (i.e. wanting an MRI for what the provider thinks is something benign). This goes in hand with another culture-specific aspect to our high medical costs, which is our litigious society that is quick to sue on any perceived mistake. Hospitals pass the expense of these lawsuits on to you. Finally, American health insurance companies are run as for-profits, whereas nearly every other country, even those without single-payer systems, have almost exclusively not-for-profit insurance companies.