I’d like to file the one trillionth complaint against the US medical system for being non-transparent, expensive and idiotic. I’m healthy and young but with a recent unlucky proclivity of finding myself in urgent care facilities. Once with four breaks in the palm of my left hand and once with the characteristic rash and muscle aches of lyme disease. Once in America, and once in the United Kingdom. I’m taking it as an opportunity for a comparative analysis of US vs. UK healthcare systems.

Being treated for lyme disease and being treated for a broken hand starts the same: you wait an hour for 15 minutes with a healthcare provider who then gives the same advice as you’d get from Ask Jeeves, the only difference is Jeeves can’t write prescriptions. In America you pay $254.50 for this (after insurance), which on the itemized bill is a fraction of the total cost for an “Encounter with Mr. X, PA” ($580, insurance pays $325.50). If you add the X-rays (applicable for a broken hand, but not lyme) you will pay an additional $135, of which insurance covers none, despite the fact that the insurance plan costs $3,054/yr. In the UK, as an American tourist, you pay $0, with or without X-rays, with or without drug treatment and with seeing a real doctor rather than a nurse or PA.

In America, the price of getting an X-ray varies wildly. The cost in New York is different than in Pennsylvania, which is different than in California. If you look at Nerdwallet’s listing of out-of-pocket costs for X-rays across the states, you can get an X-ray for $15 at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY while the same X-ray costs $898 if you were to get it at Radiology Outpatient Imaging Services in Mountain View, CA. In the UK, X-rays cost the same if you were to get them in Edinburgh, London or Brighton, $0. Even if you decided to pay for private care not sponsored by their government healthcare system, the variance in prices would be much lower than in the US: the median price is 101 pounds, with the lowest price 75 pounds and the highest 120.

With 2/3 of all US bankruptcies a result of exorbitant medical costs, here’s an alternative to paying US healthcare bills: the next time you break a hand, get sick or need a surgery, buy a plane ticket to London and pay the affordable private rates available in a system free from insurance companies. If you leave on Friday, your plane ticket costs less than the State College medical bills for a broken hand ($538 vs. $580).