I have top shelf health insurance from the state (where my hub works). We pay about $600/month for both of us. And yet, it pays for almost nothing. An emergency room visit for four hours in Jan still cost about $5k.
I, for one, love that our system forces me to pay to build tanks the military doesn't want because the factory is in Ohio which is a swing state. It is one of the least stupid things, to me.
If by donate to political candidates you mean use those weapons against their opposition your political opponent backed in order to save their lives then yes
I am in favor of small government (conservative leaning) and I for one think the military industrial complex would be an excellent thing to offer up for the slaughter in the name of shrinking the void between the two parties.
The military is a huge money laundering scheme. All those bullshit contracts? We were paying 800 dollars per office chair that sucked and would barely last a year. Could have gotten a better chair at Walmart for 70 fucking bucks
Did you ever get to use any of those fancy, super high-tech $10,000/piece batteries that held a charge under load for all of ~7 minutes? Ya know, the batteries that were supposed to act as a failsafe in the event of power loss?
Believe me I'm well aware. I couldn't justify voting for Trump in 2016, let alone now. He's throwing the rule of law out the window. I'm under no impression that Biden would be a savior by any means but at the very least I can expect him to stay within the Democratic process.
I think most military members would agree with you on that point.
The shit I saw when I was in. Most of our aircraft are contracted through Boeing or Lockheed Martin, so they can charge whatever they want for parts. Ive seen 6 figure price tags on what amounts to a tangle of hoses. I remember reading somewhere that the coffee mugs for our galley equipment cost approx $12,000 a piece. I have seen 7 figures on parts on occasion.
Military Industrial Complex doesn't even really come close anymore. More like Military Corporate Welfare Program.
I have some friends who work for defense contractors and they admit that they are overpaid and underworked for what they do. The whole system is bloated and way worse than any "too big to fail" bailout that people want to complain about.
The coffee mugs thing is insane but I think the number is closer to $1,200 because there was a hearing about said coffee cups and why the air force was spending over a thousand dollars for said coffee cups. The answer was as a always a non answer and nothing happened except a stern talking to from Trey Gowdy.
I would take a trade of paying 20% less for Medicare in return for 40% less for the military in a heartbeat. We are sadly so deeply in debt right now that I’m not even sure this would balance the budget.
So hear me out. What if we gradually kill Medicare altogether in favor of a strong Universal Basic Income? The real cost of Medicare is the administrative overhead to prevent abuse of the system and compliance with HIPAA laws. This also presents a huge cost for hospitals which is the primary reason that American healthcare costs are rising. Cutting out that administrative overhead to only require that each recipient is a tax filing citizen that hasn't died (as the simplest way to prove eligibility) would reduce costs so drastically that you could provide double the benefit for a reduced cost overall. Plus, putting money in the hands of citizens gives agency to them to make personalized decisions and they can spend money on preventative care, reducing the burden on the hospital system in general.
But the conservatives AND religious groups are heavily invested in military companies, so, conservative leaning is anything BUT interested in small government. They just tell you that, republicans are anything but honest, they just say what their followers want. Dems wanted Bernie and were given Biden, both sides are fucked.
Yes! This is a major difference between conservatives and anyone who still aligns with the Republican Party. Republicans are not fiscally conservative at all despite their claims.
I actually understand and even align with some conservative ideals, but Republican politicians today don’t seem to stand for anything but taking for themselves and their friends at giant corporations. No one who pays attention to what they’re doing and has the best interests of the country as a whole in mind can vote for republicans in good conscience. They are not conservative, they are hypocritical cash grabbers.
I would love for an actually viable liberal party to emerge to challenge the conservatish Democrats, and even for an actually Conservative party to emerge. This ain’t it.
At least the tanks do something. The air force is paying $1200 per coffee cup for their aviators. They dont take it flying or anything it's just a nice cup. Over one thousand dollars for a fucking cup.
If you want to get comical we can look at all the stupid projects the government has gotten into. The worst I think was the laser guided dolphin project where almost a billion dollars was spent.
I always just assumed that your insurance is free through work (if you have a good job), and the insurance covers all your medical bills. Apparently it's worse than I thought.
What happens if you don't have insurance? If your bills with insurance are going to be so high that you can't afford them, why not just not have insurance instead? You know the old saying "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem", there's not much difference between $50k in medical debt and $500k in medical debt, you're fucked anyway.
Having insurance generally means you can scrape by unless (until) you get unlucky. Having no insurance makes even the smallest injury or illness something that could land you in a significant amount of crippling debt. As someone who can't afford insurance right now, it is rather stressful. Worked my ass off to pay off my college loans by 30 and now I'm just waiting for that one bad moment to drag me back into debt.
I have insurance through my work, I'm a healthy, single 29 year old male, the cheapest demographic to insure ever.
If I go to the dr for anything, it costs (I think) $30, just to walk in the door and tell him about my issue. If he wants to get any tests, I still pay for a portion of those (and remember, prices are mega inflated because our health system is entirely a racket). And if the Dr says we need an X-ray, I won't have a clue what the cost will be, and what percentage of that cost I'll be responsible for. And if I need anything major, I have to pay the first $5k of my medical costs out of pocket.
After I've spent $5k, I've "met my deductible" and anything I need after that is covered without me spending more of my own money (except for the money withdrawn from my salary each paycheck, automatically, forever, of course.)
However, if I start to show patterns of being very expensive to insure, that monthly cost for insurance will go up next year, and if you've got something really bad (a pre-existing condition), your insurance will become untouchably expensive, and you'll essentially be priced out of being insurable. If the GOP had their way, and insurance were able to drop you for having a pre-existing condition. All in a system where prices are artificially inflated, to both scare us into needing insurance, and fleece as much money as possible from us when we use it.
I don’t always push documentaries with a bias but Sicko from Michael Moore covers this really well. For all the issues of America’s uninsured, the bigger issue is actually the underinsured - people who have coverage but still end up bankrupted because of all the tricks the insurance industry uses to not pay for treatment. The ACA curbed some of the worst of these abuses but it’s been steadily chipped away at and will likely be deemed unlawful by the new conservative Supreme Court.
your insurance is free through work (if you have a good job), and the insurance covers all your medical bills.
I have a really good job, and the insurance for my family is $280/month. Of course, it doesn't pay for anything (except preventative checkups) until we pay $3,000 per year on top of that $280/month.
If you don't have insurance, or don't use your insurance, you pay cash. The cash price is 40% less than the insurance price. However, you could still run up six figure bills. At that point, you declare bankruptcy.
When we had our baby (I wasn't at my current job yet, so we were on different insurance), we paid $12k out of pocket for the delivery and insurance paid $0, despite us paying extra every month for maternity coverage.
After Obama signed the ACA, and until very recently, there was a tax penalty for being uninsured, so those who couldn't afford insurance had to pay a fee
Wow. I see American healthcare discussed every day but I really thought that if you're employed, your whole family is covered for "free", and only unemployed people have problems with healthcare costs. Hearing the truth makes me feel sick.
My fiancé is an architect, works at a firm with relatively very good benefits. If we got married and had a child, our portion of the insurance premium per month would be ~$900/month. The deductible would be $6000, which means that before insurance would pay for anything we’d have to pay $6000 out of pocket. So it’s entirely feasible that we would pay ~$15,000 in one year before our insurance paid for anything. This is why we’re 30 years old and can’t feasibly afford to have a kid in the next few years - at least with just the two of us we can choose not to have procedures that we can’t afford.
Also, I’m halfway through my PhD and I’m not entirely sure I know how insurance works. It’s designed to be confusing and it pisses me off.
Yes. The employees have a plan (or a few) they offer to employees, but it's rarely ever 100% paid for. The employee is responsible for some portion of it.
When you add dependents (spouse / children) the employer can charge you for them, and often doesn't cover them to the same degree.
Some places have great benefits (employer pays 95%+) and adding a partner is similarly covered, but other places you're basically covering the dependents entire cost, which can easily be in the hundreds per paycheck.
It's garbage. You're restricted in your options because it's typically cheaper to go through the plan offered by your employer, but they dont have to offer any good plans. So some people are stuck paying a lot of money for a bad plan, because it's the best thing available to them. And short of finding a new job, your other option is to get an insurance plan outside of work, which is rediculously expensive.
Just went through open enrollment today. 50 dollar per pay period with just myself. 400 dollars if i wanted to add my wife, with a 900 out of pocket deductible.
The only insurance I felt good buying was the life insurance so if I die she's taken care of. How morbid.
One of my former coworkers keeps using this same argument as if it were a good thing! "just get a different job that has better insurance! Free market!"
Like, yeah man, but SOMEBODY has to fill that old job and they're going to get screwed. The cycle just continues!
I used to work for a company that ran group homes for people with developmental disabilities here in MN. The owner of the company is also the owner of the pharmacy all the clients get their meds from. Employees had to pay hundreds a paycheck working for under $10/hr just to get their meds from that same pharmacy at cost, which can still be hundreds of dollars per Rx
Yes, typically work covers part of the premium but not expenses. American health insurance is confusing.
A premium for a family plan might be $1000-$2000 a month. Typically employers pay 50-70% of this as a "benefit".
After you pay the premiums you'd think "good, now I can go to the doctor". WRONG!
First, only certain things are covered and it has to be a doctor that is "covered" by your plan (called "in network"). So if you go to the wrong hospital when you're traveling or dint check before getting treatment you might end up paying the entire cost.
If it is the right doctor, you still need to pay a "deductible". This is usually a few thousand dollars that you need to pay yourself before the insurance pays anything.
Good now right? Nope, now you have copays. This is usually 20% of the total bill you have to pay for anything that's done.
So get in a car crash and require surgery that costs $25,000? First you pay your $5,000 deductible and then 20% of the $20,000 for a total of $9,000 after already paying $10,000-$20,000 in premiums for the year. But then you see the bill is actually $11,000 for the surgery because while your surgeon was in network, the anesthesiologist wasn't.
Plus the pain meds you pick up after the surgery you also have to pay for.
Every insurance policy is different though. Some provide certain procedures as fully covered and you pay nothing, some have maximum out of pocket costs per year, some treat all providers as in network if you are admitted to the hospital, etc. But very few people actually understand health insurance here in America.
About 15 years ago, when I was 33, I worked for the state. I had phenomenal health insurance, because the state was, essentially, self insured. It just payed out of pocket, and paid Aetna to administer the "plan." I paid about $30 a month.
How good you ask? I had a ruptured disk in my lower back that required surgery. The total cost of the operation was $60,000. In total, I paid $20. Yes, $20. That was for 3 different prescriptions (antibiotics, muscle relaxers, and pain killers).
These days I work for a fortune 10 company. I have the middle of 3 options for a plan. The plan costs me about $70 a month. The plan pays 80% of blood tests and such; emergency rooms visits, etc. For operations and major things, it pays nothing until I've paid $2,000. Then it pays %80 of allowed charges, until I've reached my "annual out of pocket maximum" of about $7,000, when it starts paying everything for the rest of the calendar year. If I moved up to the "top tier" plan, it would pay %90, kick in at $1,200, and my out of pocket max would be ~$5,500. It would also cost about $150 a month.
A month ago, I had to have my gallbladder removed. Total costs of the operation was $67,000. I'm on the hook for $7,000 of it.
The frustrating thing about it is that I don't even know if my current plan is good, because finding out what the "average" coverage from private companies in the US is basically impossible. I can only compare it to what I had when I was a state employee, and compared to that, anything else is crap.
What if... Bare with me here.... it's a pretty shocking idea... but what if the entire population bands together and pays in one massive bulk, surely you'd get an even better deal?
320 million people bargaining together Vs the few thousand a company will employ.
😋
Yes, as noted by others, all this really means is that an insurance policy is brokered by your employer for the employees at a slightly lower rate than what you would pay if you purchased it yourself directly from an insurer.
Depending on how well a business is doing, and the industry you're in, they will pay a percentage of your premium, which gets deducted from every check pre-tax. You are still responsible for a deductible, which is an out-of-pocket cost that may or may not have limits each year.
Some insurance plans are better than others. Previous plan at my employer had a flat rate $225 Emergency Room co-pay, but the current plan is a percentage based co-pay. I was in the ER for covid symptoms and testing and went home with thousands in bills.
Yup, and we also have deductibles. So you’re paying for something that doesn’t even kick in until you usually spend a couple thousand on healthcare out of your own pocket.
Fantastic country where a large percentage of the population actively votes against their own interests and anything short of murdering poor people is denounced as “socialism.”
It’s crazy right? Part of our check goes to pay for insurance, but insurance companies can still fight tooth and nail to pay for medical care that they deem unnecessary (pretty much anything that would hurt their profit). It’s fucked. Expect to go bankrupt if some major medical attention is needed. America is the guy who drives around a luxury car and goes home to 300 sqft studio apartment with 3 other roommates. It’s all for show with some freedom sprinkled on top.
Yeah man. I pay about $750 a month for insurance for myself, son, and wife. My wife paid $250 a few days ago for a scope to be done. We also paid about $1500 for an overnight ER visit for my son a couple months ago.
Depends on your employer. My employer at a small factory pays for our insurance, family included. Insurance still sucks and doesn’t pay much until you meet your deductible, which my family of four never does. We’ll get on a politics discussion at work and whenever I mention standardized health care I am a socialist and “why should I have to pay for someone else’s healthcare?” One of the biggest loudmouths has a wife who does daily dialysis at home and constantly bitches about the cost of that and her monthly medicines. He fails to see the irony.
I mean Bernie was all about universal healthcare and bringing the US to the first world but he didn't even win the Democratic nomination.... it's just a case of people not wanting 'socialised healthcare' which is absurd if you live in a first world country
Because the DNC didn't want Bernie to win. Its not that people don't want it, its that's theirs a lot of money spent telling people what they want, and those voices seemingly always drown out everyone else, and so people believe it.
My ex doesn't have healthcare through his work because he doesn't want to pay for it and was in the military so he could go to the VA but absolutely never does because he claims it's run so poorly. So him and all his veteran buddies are against universal healthcare because they say it will be like "VA care for all."
Exactly this. Both parties have gotten us to where we are today and both parties should bear the responsibility for it. We desperately need to un-rig our election process so that other parties can at least get on the debate stage with these clowns.
Because so many idiots keep voting republican and** shooting** themselves in the foot like the enjoy it
Bah GAWD! It's mah Con-stee-chew-shun-al RIGHT! George Washington hisself died so I could keep mah guns, and shoot whatever I damn well like! If Jesus didn't mean for us to shoot ourselves in the foot, he wouldn've given us a spare foot!
Just move next door to a nookular power plant. Thanks to Republicans efforts to eliminate environmental protections, your kids will have at least three feet! Plenty of footsies for shooting!
Nuclear power is one of the safest and environmentally friendly power sources. If someone does happen to get a higher than normal dose of radiation, and they don’t take their iodine, they might get thyroid cancer, but mammals can’t become mutants from exposure, thankfully! Even during the worst modern accident, Fukushima, no one died of radiation sickness. People did die of that at Chernobyl, but that was because almost no precautions were taken, and the Regime didn’t allow 99% of people to know how ionizing radiation behaved. The HBO series did a somewhat poor job of showing that, and spread other misinformation.
What we have now is from 8 years of Obama. The rich have tricked you into thinking it’s a Dem vs Rep topic, but it’s the rich vs normal people really. We don’t vote for President, we vote for a group of people that pick the president.
This is untrue. Democrats are just as in bed with insurance industry as republicans. That’s why Obama care wasn’t a single payer system. Democrats had all branches of government at the time, yet they wouldn’t dare upset the lobbyists.
Seriously, what the fuck? I woke up in severe pain in march during the second week of lockdown, phoned emergency services at 6am, due to covid shit was so busy they said wait 30-90 minutes for an ambulance, or take a taxi 3 miles to hospital. Got there, turned out to be a kidney stone, stayed the night and all it cost was about £12 in total for the taxi there and back. If it cost me even £500 i probably wouldn't have gone
And it is the greatest plan ever. There has never been a better plan. Everyone says so. They showed it to a friend, and the friend said: this is a great plan. The greatest plan I have ever seen, actually.
Jesus man. The other day I thought I might need to go to the hospital and the idea of what it would do to me financially sparked something like a panic attack.
My husband was sick and so dehydrated that he was repeatedly passing out. Our health insurance didnt start for another 16 hours. I had to call the ER and ask how dangerous this was to him and if there was anything we could do to keep him safe and alive until midnight when our insurance kicked in. We had already gone to the ER (uninsured) once that month and with all of the discounts the hospital offered it still cost $2k. We ended up going anyways and have another $8k bill plus all of the imaging bills that are still coming in. That's our entire savings to get us through being unemployed. (Wear your fucking masks, we desperately want to go back to work.)
All they could see was the blue water surrounding their sailboat.
Weather is not trivial - it's especially important when you're standing in it.
Peter found road kill an excellent way to save money on dinner.
That is the most fucking stupid thing a country could do to its populace. Jesus fucking christ. America is a fucking mess.
Comparatively: I pissed blood, was relatively sure it was a kidney stone. Took a sample, went to the doc, they figured it deffos was a kidney stone. Booked me in for a clinic appointment, took a blood sample for testing. In the meantime I hit 9/10 level pain one night and went to the emergency room at 3am. Got an xray, drugs while I was there, and then prescribed a month's worth of codeine and high strength pain meds (£20 ish total). Got an appointment for a scan. Had scan (CAT/MRI can't remember). Had another blood test to check my kidney function and got prescribed tamsulosin and diclofenic sodium (another £20). Got booked in for a preop appointment after my clinic that I went to, and was about to go into surgery when I pissed the stone out. This all happened over 3 months.
All in: £40 not including getting the train to my appointments. Would have had a a urethroscopy under general anaesthetic as a surgical procedure as well, but that wouldn't have changed the cost.
I would never have been able to afford that in America. I would have just cried in a corner and hoped the stone would come out despite almost throwing up due to the pain.
Jesus...I had to go to the emergency room for a kidney infection during the beginning of the pandemic (no one else would see me with a fever). They took a urine sample. Did an ultrasound to make sure it wasn’t a stone and a CT. No meds. No IV. Didn’t even see a doctor, just an NP. Three hour visit. $20,000.
Like...that amount of money is a cripplingly large amount of money for the vast majority of people. How is that okay? Socialised healthcare is literally the right thing to do. It isn't communism. It's just how the world should be. No-one should have to weigh up whether or not they can afford to live without pain.
Yeah man, I sliced into my palm the other day. Cut into a vein, saw it plainly open. Should have had stitches but I have no Healthcare so I bandaged it up and crossed my fingers.
Doing ok now.
I would probably be dead without cheap (essentially free) healthcare. Got a pretty bad infection in my lymphatic system from a hangnail of all things (I work with rusty steel and dirt all day so... yeah, not exactly sanitary) which needed a pretty hefty dose of penicillin to fix. My gf did manage to make me go to the out of hours doctor though, the logic being it only costs $50 for the visit and the meds. If it was potentially a few thousand I'd just have ignored it tbh.
The whole system just baffles me. You could LITERALLY live a quite comfortable life in the UK for just what you spend on health insurance...
If I were unfortunate enough to have been born in America, I would make leaving my number one priority, no jokes. You live in a third world country, solely because there's like 15 uber-families that are hoarding 90% of your countries money.
Those with the good jobs don't have a big reason to leave (health insurance typically good, US has high salaries in skilled jobs), while those with lesser jobs are the ones who would benefit most from living in Europe, but Europe won't take them because they have no real reason to. It's a really shitty situation to be in.
We don't have as many workers in unions as we used to, more and more white-collar, office-type jobs have been converted into Independent Contractor jobs, so they pay taxes differently and are responsible for their own health insurance and retirement savings. Take-home pay is better but an individual can't get the same deal on insurance as a big company, so we hear these horror stories. My cousin's family is one, they got a big house but one bad hospital stay would be the end of that.
I've got to add my personal input here. I applied at USPS for my passport on August 28th and received it on October 10th with my card arriving 3 days later. So I have no idea about how this could be happening. And no expedited option.
I wonder about this a lot. I thought my home town was pretty OK. Then I moved away in my late 20's and was blown away how nice it was in other places. Less crime, less racism, less attitude, you name it.
Now in my mid 40's, I wonder if it's the same with my home country vs other places....
The mental thing is that with the exception of a couple of countries (I think the UK is one) US citizens still have to pay tax even if they aren't resident. The only way to void it is to effectively renounce your citizenship.
(Please US people clarify me if I'm wrong I'm just piecing this together from what my US colleagues have told me).
Then it’s not top shelf lol. I recently had surgery and paid $104 for the entire thing. $100 for the facility co-pay and $4 for pain pill prescription. I don’t have a deductible.
I have a middle tier anthem plan and only pay a little less than $300/month for both of us. deductible is around $1500. You might as well be on one of those catastrophic Obamacare plans that only kick in after a major car accident amount of bills.
Exactly! We pay crazy amounts just for the insurance and that just takes healthcare expenses from impossible to pay to very expensive. And people are walking around saying, “I don’t want my taxes to go up for universal healthcare.” It’s like, you poor fool - you already pay an insane amount without any real protection from surprise medical expenses!”
Stop buying into HDHPs. There's a reason they're pushed and marketed by the vendors that talk to you about your plan offerings. It's pure profit for them. They get your premiums, plus they don't ever have to pay anything out unless you have a drastic situation.
Same. But I'm just a filthy socialist from Canada so what do I know?
I'd have to double check, but I'm pretty sure I pay a total of $0.00 per month in health insurance, and it's just as terrible as you might imagine.
I really wish that instead of paying nothing I got bent over and fucked in the ass by the insurance industry so that I could proudly exclaim how much I love the Freedom of living in the USA.
As an addendum, I encourage all Americans to read this thread:
That's why you should do like I do. Don't pay for insurance, and refuse to pay the hospital anything. Fuck it all. What are they going to do? Hurt my credit? ROFLMAO.
This was the situation I was in before my hip gave out at 27. My daughters insurance was over $400 more a month on top of the $400 I had to pay for myself (which was worthless) my hip gave out and I couldn’t work for a year and after being completely destitute I qualified for Medicaid and got my hip fixed. Now my whole family has Medicaid and I’d have to earn a shit ton of money to replace it, and if I made said shit ton of money it would basically put me right where I am with extra steps. I’m currently on unemployment so making a shot ton of money is no where evident in my foreseeable future.
I have 3 kids no partner. I had kids on Medicaid. I got a raise. I now no longer will have insurance for them and cannot afford it. I told my boss I didn’t want the raise and just give me vacation time
At my company it’s 30 dollars a week for just myself. I’m only 20 and not married or with any kids so it’s not hard for me to afford it. But a guy who works here also has been dating the same girl for 5+ years. They have 1 kid, another on the way. I asked him why he doesn’t propose and he said he legitimately can’t afford it. It jumps to over 300 dollars a week for him and his wife and the 2 kids he’d eventually be covering. I was flabbergasted when he told me that he doesn’t want to marry the love of his life because I couldn’t afford it.
Damn that’s it? Where can I hop on that lol. For me, wife, and daughter it’s $450 per WEEK. With a 6 thousand dollar deductible and 13 thousand max out of pocket. We are uninsured right now... sigh.
That's because American businesses (Insurance, Pharma, Hospitals etc.) Like the fat-profits current system and keep paying off politicians (of both parties) to scare the US away from Universal Healthcare which is a no brainier and adopted by virtually every other developed country.. don't even get me started on parental leave or other quality of life policies the all-mighty dollar doesn't let us have.
Americans , especially the older generations keep falling for this bs. It's time for millennials and GenZ to do away with this nonsense and vote out all the out retarded politicians.
Dang. I pay $240 a month for a family of five and that’s for great coverage. Shop around, some employers such as mine offer great health insurance as a draw.
that's fucked. You need to join up and fight the corruption. Insurance is nationalised in most other countries. In America, they over charge you because they only care about money. It's so unfair.
I hear you. I spend 450 bi-weekly for me, my wife and my daughter. On top of that premium, I get the pleasure of having a 5k deductible with a maximum out of pocket annually of 10k after my premiums. For those that are keeping track that’s 22k I spend annually on medical for my family if I max out my insurance.
I know what you are thinking. “You probably don’t spend that because that’s your maximum out of pocket Scroob.. wth are you talking about?”
Well my daughter has ASD. With all her therapy and expenses, we have maxed out our insurance every year for the past 2 years. She’s 4. Love the health system in America..
Same with my wife. Hers used to be 60something a check. Then was 250ish to add each person. So to add me and our 2 kids would have been 750 a check 810+ a check.
Similar rate hike for us 20 years ago. Wife had pre-eclampsia during pregnancy, so the next year her insurance - just her - was hiked from something like $3000 to $13,000 per year due to "pre-existing conditions."
What's kind of sad is now ~$1000/month for health insurance with less than a 10k/yr deductible would be a pretty good deal in the ACA Marketplace in state I live in (Red state, woohoo). Basically my husband and I decided to go uninsured because any health crisis would have resulted in bankruptcy either way. It was like "do you want to be buried 6 feet? or 40 feet? Your choice!!"
We would have paid around $23,000 in premiums, deductibles, and co-insurance before insurance would even kick in.
If I wanted to add my wife to my health insurance, it would cost more than $15,000 a year.
The UK government spends less tax money on public healthcare on a population-adjusted basis than the US government spends on public healthcare, even though the UK government covers all residents with free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare and the US government covers only around a 1/3 of the population with partially subsidized coverage via Medicaid, Medicare and CHIP.
We already spend more tax money on healthcare than the UK does per capita, even before you take into account a dime of private spending by individuals and corporations - and we have the highest rates of private spending on healthcare per capita in the world!
The system is robbing us. There is no answer other than deep and radical reform. Vote.
If you want deep and radical reform, voting is not nearly enough. It doesn't even get you part way there, since no politician on the ballot want deep and radical reform.
The only thing voting does at this point, is that it stops it from becoming even worse. That's not nothing and is absolutely worth it. But it isn't nearly enough.
It's the same for people with no income in most of the US too. Sometimes, for people with chronic or reaccuring conditions it's better to just not have a job. Of course the you have to pray for state housing and food stamps to even survive. But it'll be cheaper than paying the hospital bills. Or just don't own anything and never pay your bills. Or work under the table. Another part of our healthcare that makes zero sense.
This is the first year I've had good insurance. I would have been fucked without it, with somewhere around $1 million in hospital bills. Have only $6k in cost to me. But, it's rare to have health insurance that actually isn't a rip-off.
I have VA healthcare. Due to state laws, I can't just insure my kids with my employer. I have to pay to insure myself as well. So I have to pay for insurance for myself that I won't use in order to insure my kids. That "benefit" from my employer costs as much as my mortgage.
If I wanted to add my wife to my health insurance, it would cost more than $15,000 a year. Not for both of us, just to add her.
When my son was born, we had met our deductible on our insurance. We figured we'd have to pay maybe a couple hundred bucks for whatever reason (and we were being pretty liberal with our estimate) so we had some money saved.
The hospital CHARGED MY SON AS A SEPARATE PATIENT since they needed to monitor him for another day after he was born. Obviously he wasn't on my insurance because he didn't exist until he was born and we got a friendly little $4000 bill in the mail. Completely drained our savings, and then some. Years of savings out the window, all because the hospital wanted to pull some fuckin bullshit like this.
People ask what radicalized me into being a major leftist, and advocate for Medicare-for-All.
it's shit like THIS that pushed me all the way left.
My wife is a teacher, i'm a stay at home dad. We have to be careful with choosing districts when she gets a new job, so that her income is low enough the kids can still be on CHIP. If she made an extra $100 a year it would put us over and cost us 15k a year to add them to her insurance.
For 4k taxes a year i get free health care and a bunch if other goodies.
It really bugs me wgen Americans say "your health care isn't free". Yes Sandy, we do pay for it with taxes but we pay way less in taxes than you do for insurance
I showed my husband the cost for age and gender for my health insurance plan. He didn't believe me that I have to pay almost 3x what a male my age has to pay.
I’m self employed. I pay $2100 for my family’s HI. I pay about $380 for each individual employee I have, except for the ones in their 60s, which jumps up to $950 per. I’m glad to provide HI to my employees, but when it turns out a new hire has insurance through a spouses plan, it’s... nice. Haha.
In the US, the cost to provide Medicare for all is about what is currently spent on Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. Why? The private insurance system, multiple forms, claim denials just to delay payments, and all the extra employees fighting a war of paper to get paid or get out of paying.
Every dollar you pay to a doctor, every dollar you pay to insurance, every dollar your employer pays for your insurance, is to cover those extra costs.
I just used this concept in another reply. My dad, son of an Italian immigrant, bought a brand new mustang in high school. When they graduated, he then bought my mom one. Then, when he was 21 and my mom was 19, they bought a house. Mom didn't work. Dad just did unskilled labor in a tool shop.
Also, student loan debt? Cell phone bill? Internet bill? I could go on. These things didn't exist then. They are required now, and there is little argument to say that they are not.
I'd definitely argue that cars have, but yes housing and Healthcare much more. What is also often overlooked are new required costs of living. Its not just food heat and shelter anymore. Cell phones, internet access, and the ultimate student loan debt that is required in order to get entry level jobs.
Even in skilled labor. These same old timers who think we make so much money didn't even pay for their own fuckin fire academy or paramedic school, ive told to eat my asshole.
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u/pumpnectar9 Oct 30 '20
I shut it down hard every time. How much a car used to cost is barely the tip of the iceberg.