I live in the U.S. and I have “health insurance” from my employer (over 200k employees worldwide and billions in profit). My contribution to my health insurance premiums is around $4500 per year (I think). The last four years I have hit my deductible for at least one family member and out of pocket maximum. I am fortunate that I have been able to afford the roughly $20k per year that I have been spending on health care, but it has wrecked my ability to save or do anything else.
So I guess my point is that I believe that 27M uninsured dramatically understates the scale of the US healthcare crisis. I feel like the political elite are so far out of touch that they hear a story like mine and think “$20k? That’s like a nice bottle of wine, what’s the problem?” It’s been devastating to my finances and by virtually any definition, I am in the working rich. Most people absolutely could not afford $20k per year. I am hoping next year will be better, but devastating medical bills are inevitable for most of us, and our socialized medicine is administered through the bankruptcy courts.
For profit insurance is pure exploitation.
Republicans for the most part don’t care what anyone else thinks of them. They are full of the certain knowledge that they are the center of the universe and nothing outside that rotting circle matters.
And how many millions more Americans effectively have no access due to poverty and high copays?
about 15+million and many more or underinsured. dental care is another problem too(only recently like in the last 7ish years they started covering for basic dental surgeries and partialy for major work(like root canals) and only for select dentists that actually accept medical, most dont.
Even if you have health and dental insurance, actually getting coverage can be a nightmare in some scenarios.
Tooth infection spreading into the jaw? Health insurance says it’s a dental issue, denied. Dental insurance says it’s a medical issue, denied. Both of them refuse to talk directly to each other – they will only communicate with you, asking you to pass messages to the other one, which the other one will ignore. Every time you try to contact either one, you need to be prepared to spend at least two hours on the phone, most of it waiting on hold.
Go into debt?! How so?
We only spend $700+/mo ($8,400 annual) for our family of 4, with $4500 deductibles per person and a family max out of pocket of $15,000… Is that not affordable for everyone?
/s in case it wasn’t abundantly clear…
as a single person no, but if you earn enough to pay that its feasible. also different insurance have different types of coverage. employee seems superior to individually bought plans(often dont cover much for major stuff like emergencies, or surgeries)
I’m not from the US. Do you know how much of your income tax goes to the health care system?
I live in the Netherlands and we actually have a pretty weird system of private insurance companies, but they’re not allowed to make a profit and it’s mandatory to have insurance. Anyway, my partner and I together pay about €300 per month, which actually doubled is about what you pay for 4 people (though for kids here it’s free).
Copay is not a thing here. The legal minimum deductible is €385 per year. You can raise it to max €885 and then you pay less for insurance every month. I have the max deductible, my partner has the lowest.
$4500 seems like an insane amount! I have never reached that or even gotten close. The government here sets the limit for deductibles and that’s always a big political discussion. There’s some talks now of removing the deductible altogether, though that would mean raising taxes elsewhere.
How do deductibles even work in the US? I had my appendix removed and here you then never pay anything because it’s like a life threatening thing. I think you do pay for things like medicine and the ambulance ride until you reach your deductible, but for things like going to the GP or life saving surgery it’s just covered.
And here if you’re not working or earn less than certain thresholds it becomes cheaper or free. But isn’t that similar in the US, like medicaid or something?
I pay quite a lot of income tax too of course which also partially goes to the health care system. I think it’s actually quite expensive here for people who have a reasonable income. If you don’t earn anything it’s mostly free but you still have plenty of health related costs like the deductible but also stuff that isn’t automatically included with insurance like dental care.
Last question: what do you mean by “max out of pocket $15000”? Is that like your combined max deductible for your family?
I had a max out of network out of pocket of $5k and insurance told me after my surgery that it didn’t count because they didn’t have a contract with where I went. So basically they needed to be in network to count towards out of network? $28k later they said they miscalculated and I owed another $14k I told them I’m living in a different country now so try and get it and they dropped the extra amount
$28k later they said they miscalculated and I owed another $14k
Who did? The insurance or the healthcare provider? Cause why the fuck would the insurance company tell you that you owe them money after they didn’t cover the healthcare expenses that you were paying for a plan for them to cover?
So this is a bit of a complicated thing that I admittedly still don’t fully understand and I did word it a bit wrong. I paid a bunch of money to the hospital/surgery, insurance reimbursed them, hospital reimbursed me, insurance said woopsies we reimbursed too much, the hospital paid back that amount to insurance, then the hospital asked me for money. I told insurance and the hospital tough fucking titties they better figure it out because they’re not getting that money back.
I was originally told I would pay the hospital, then I would hit my out of network out of pocket max, the hospital would be reimbursed the full amount after my max, then the hospital would reimburse me. I got fucked from both sides and eventually their woopsie was my “I have enough money to fight you but nobody wants that because even if you win you have to get it from me across the world” so they folded
Who do you have? I pay that much for just myself in FL marketplace (bronze plan, high deductible)
I see more of the world watching in horror than I see laughing.
Political reform is tough, no doubt but it can be done and has been elsewhere. Also no better time than the present while the worst problems are so clearly visible.
Plenty are laughing and cheering at all the suffering because we “deserve it”
You see it plenty in comments here on lemmy.
I am sorry to hear you think everybody abroad enjoys your suffering, but I think you are getting the wrong impression from lemmy (which does not represent the average people). I admit that it’s often hard to feel sympathetic towards someone who voted for what’s coming to them, because believing in karma feels good. But I do also feel pity for all the people that are struggling economically or are getting deported without fault.
If you meet normal (=not from lemmy) people abroad you will find that most will want a very hardline stance against the US as a country, wishing to punish the US administration even more for all the wars and hostile behavior, while also be very welcoming to any US person that want to escape that hell.
I wish you the best in changing the system there, but unfortunately I fear there’s at least 2 more years (likely more) of things becoming worse and worse ahead of us.
PS: upvoted because I think you are not alone in your feeling, and it’s something worth discussing.
I think about a third of the US does not actively deserve it. The rest is either actively fucking with lives in other countries or accept it as either inevitable or as “cost of doing business”, with no intention to change anything. Did you know there is a national census about the percentage of people in the US who can get rekt in my view and the view of many others? It’s called “presidential elections”.
because we “deserve it”
As an American myself … yes, we (collectively) deserve it. A lot of the people suffering from this are exactly the same people who voted against fixing it in every fucking election.
27 million with no coverage, the rest with extremely poor coverage.
What? Paying a mortgage payment monthly for the privilege of having a $10,000 deductible isn’t good enough?
also theres a “limbo” in between medicaid and decent insurance, too much income for eligible medicaid insurance and not enough for decent insurance(enough where you do pay out the behind for emergencies, surgeries and hospitals, the largest cost)
Japan is not technically correct. One is required to have healthcare coverage, but some people skirt the law and don’t. We also pay at point of service, pay for prescriptions, etc. This is on top of paying for insurance (though your company may offer insurance that it pays some/all of). There are tax procedures once medical out-of-pocket reaches 100k JPY in a year and a way to reduce/eliminate further cost.
There’s only one shithole on this list
UK, Germany, Canada and France have high homelessness rates. Partly because disability pay is low and healthcare costs are minimally made up for. Those in ill health may not be able to find work and land on the streets. These countries do nothing substantial like building housing and implementing pro-tenant reforms to stop it. This is not to say that healthcare is bad, I think healthcare must be socialised like postal services and the fire brigade, but it’s not at all straight forward.
So those are like pissholes?
I mean, this is inaccurate, at least for Germany. Although health insurance is technically mandatory in Germany, there are over 50k citizens that are uninsured, not 0
Interesting. How are they uninsured? If they go to get care are they turned away or have to pay more?
As far as I understand it nost of these people are jobless, not on welfare and can’t pay the amount of money the insurence wants them to pay. Oh and also above 25 years old or without parenta as otherwise you could get insurance over them.
It happens if people don’t pay their health insurance for more than 3 months in a row, and yes, they will get turned away by doctors unless they are willing to pay their entire treatment cost out of pocket.
As a Canadian, I do want to point out that it’s not enough to be above the united states, considering how their bar is dropping lower and lower.
I am very thankful for our existing healthcare system, and I want to see people protect it against the american inspired groups that are trying to privatize parts of it.
There are also areas where we were originally SUPPOSED to have coverage based on the original plan decades ago (ex. pharmaceuticals, homecare, dental), but those phases never got implemented.
As an also-Canadian I’ll chime in here to say that there are definitely people in this country without health insurance coverage. If you’re here as a non-resident, you typically don’t have government insurance and are subject to out-of-pocket billing. I believe there are about half a million people in Ontario in this situation, not sure about other provinces.
I know the OP was supposed to be rhetorical, and I agree that the American healthcare is an embarrassment — but the reality of healthcare administration is complicated, and I’m not sure dumbing it down like this is all that helpful.
These aren’t any republicans, these are the rich ones with not enough imagination to think of anything but other people’s sexual preferences.
Not laughing. Crying
Technically, Ireland doesn’t have free healthcare either, but it’s government subsidised and most people still have free healthcare for most cases.
This is not completely true the countries that have zeros have tons of people who are not covered. Take a look at the map on this website.
Even with single-payer healthcare, which is commonly considered optimal for understandable reasons, hospitals, clinics and other services may be privatised and or are subject to severe budget cuts.
Stop pointing out the truth, it doesn’t fit the narrative that everything in the US is bad. Plus, healthcare isn’t “free” in any of those countries, unless you’re unemployed. Otherwise you’re paying double the tax if you have a job.
You do realize that there are many governments spending less on healthcare than the US that do have universal healthcare, right? And I mean that as a percent of GDP rather than a flat figure per person and that’s NOT counting insurance and out of pocket spending for the US. The US government already spends a fucktonne of money on it.
You don’t need to increase taxes significantly to pay for it. Might not need to do it at all. A neat side effect of poor people having access to healthcare is that they’re healthier and can work, meaning they also pay tax.
This is not what I was saying.
Lol. Double the tax? The fuck are you on about? Yes the taxes are higher but not THAT high. Stop distorting the truth for YOUR own purposes.
Just saying our personal tax rate has never exceeded 15% in the u.s. The average is 14.5% not sure where you got 35%.
Edit: In Canada its closer to 17% and 22% in Norway for example. 28% in France(very variable)
Either way, your argument is wrong. Its not double. At all.
I think you are talking about someone else
I am amazed it’s only 27 million. If they could, they would charge all 340 million Americans and all immigrants yet to nationalize, and give no service at all. Which is their obvious aim. Charge for being alive.
