Yes, it is ridiculous. We pay $7500 per year just to have insurance (and we picked the most basic policy offered by the employer). You of course then have copays and deductibles so you still have to pay something whenever you see a doctor, get meds, or have testing done. So if we are healthy and hardly ever see a doctor, we are still paying about $700 per month for healthcare for our family. I think our family max is $13,000 so if we had some major issues like surgery or hospitalization we could spend over $20,000 in one year.
Fortunately, our current insurance covers most basic things with a small copay and the deductible doesn't apply until it's something more major. With our previous insurance there were no copays, but the insurance paid nothing until you met your deductible. We are a healthy family so we NEVER met the deductible. So every time a kid got sick I had to weigh out in my mind whether it was worth spending $150 to take them to the doctor or if we should just wait it out and see.
Healthcare costs are a major financial burden for a lot of middle class American families and absolutely contribute to why people don't save enough for retirement.
I'm sure it varies quite a bit from country to country, but the few Europeans I do know do pay about 50% in income taxes but only on the second income. They are taxed at a lower rate on the primary wage earner, but a working spouse is taxed at around 50%. They do not seem to think there's anything odd about this. I guess the idea is to even things out for single income families.
As for the bolded part of your comment, that is definitely a fear that I often hear and I agree with you that it's already happening anyway with our healthcare. If your insurance company can tell you that you can't have a certain medication or a certain treatment that your doctor felt was necessary to prescribe, how are we in "control" of our options? My husband and I work in healthcare. For our current insurance, we are not allowed to see ANY physicians outside of the particular hospital system he works for. There are plenty of doctors right in my town, but I'm not allowed to see any of them. I have to drive 30+minutes. And, I just hope that if my children or I ever need to be transported by ambulance that we aren't brought to the rival hospital because it will cost us thousands of dollars.