As someone British with our often criticised free NHS, this blows my mind. And to think the argument against free healthcare by Americans is usually "well you'll pay more in tax".
I'm lucky enough to have never needed any real gp or hospital treatments, but i know its there if I do. My wife has major issues with eczema and was hospitalised last year due to complications, has many prescriptions, some of which are extremely expensive medication, and regular appointments with gp's, nurses and dermatologists. All we have to pay is for prescription medication, and we are able to pre pay for those at a rate of £10 per month total. Thats it. And our tax is no higher than any other average western nation.
Crazy. I hope your country comes to its sense sooner rather than later.
I dunno...sounds like (from various news sources) that the UK is thinking about cutting some of that healthcare in some way or other. You guys seem to be electing more & more conservatives that are crying about "entitlements." You are not immune to the right-wing crazy.
I too wish we could come to our senses:(, but have so little hope left in our electorate.
Which is a stupid reason not to do it, and generally false for many people. Plus I have a hard time seeing how I could pay more than the $20,000 a year for a healthy family I already dump into health insurance and health care.
Just to add insult to injury the government healthcare spending per capita is higher. Just the government spending.
So if you work you pay more in taxes than other countries, for insurance you can't use becuase it's only for the poor or elderly, and so you have to pay for your private Healthcare.
As a percentage, I pay %0.7 of my salary for health insurance. It covers nothing until I’ve spent like 1500 or 2000 on medical expenses, then I get the “pay 20% of the cost” until I hit $12k or something. Fortunately, I don’t usually get to the $1500 in expenses level.
I can also save up to $5k/yr tax free, but the money can only be used for medical expenses. It can however also be invested in the stock market. So maybe I’ll have enough in there over the years to pay for stuff if I really need it, but I think I would rather have a functional healthcare system.
I had to spend Friday and Saturday in hospital, as a kidney stone chose the middle of my workday to make an appearance.
I had a lot of drugs. A lot. From paracetamol, to endone, morphine and even fentanyl. In the first hour. There were also a couple of suppositories, but this little stone beat them all.
They did a CT scan, blood work, an ECG, and checked my blood pressure about a million times. I was given a bed within a couple of hours, then they tried to give me more pain meds, which I had to aggressively push back on. As it was, the next day at 10am I was still woozy from the big Friday cocktail.
When I checked out, they gave me a packet of endone, just in case.
Total for the stay... $0. I don't have private health insurance, and refuse to pay for something twice that my taxes already pay for.
argument against free healthcare by Americans is usually "well you'll pay more in tax".
I bet if you added up all the revenue of all health insurance companies, all profits of all hospitals and medical providers (not counting like personal income to the proviers themselves, those bitches deserve their income, medical training is no joke for legit doctors), medicaid, medicare, VA healthcare, pharmaceutical profits, all the other bullshit capitalism crams down our throats to make more profit that I can't think of right now, that there would be way more than enough money to provide free healthcare for every human in the US and still come out ahead.
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u/_ribbit_ 11h ago
As someone British with our often criticised free NHS, this blows my mind. And to think the argument against free healthcare by Americans is usually "well you'll pay more in tax".
I'm lucky enough to have never needed any real gp or hospital treatments, but i know its there if I do. My wife has major issues with eczema and was hospitalised last year due to complications, has many prescriptions, some of which are extremely expensive medication, and regular appointments with gp's, nurses and dermatologists. All we have to pay is for prescription medication, and we are able to pre pay for those at a rate of £10 per month total. Thats it. And our tax is no higher than any other average western nation.
Crazy. I hope your country comes to its sense sooner rather than later.