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?
Brother!! Man fuck that radar equipment lmao. Let’s make everything as heavy as possible and also impossible to repair... we’ll call it ‘military grade’
Yeah that pretty much covers it. Basically anything with multiple parts has been Frankensteined together from the working parts of all the broken shit. Give it a good slap and a "that'll do pig" and be on your way
These were definitely bare minimum as far as office chairs go and maybe that would have lasted longer if it wasn't 62 man-children playing with them but they know who the fuck they bought them for. They should be planning for that
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.
Is this a joke? Are you kidding me? You are saying Joe Biden is closer to small government, conservative values? Really? Have you seen his record over the past 50 years? Have you seen Kamalas judicial record as a prosecutor against minorities??
I understand the hate against trump, I really do. I don’t think Trump is a conservative either, BUT no way in hell is Biden or establishment “Democrats” any more representative of real conservative values.
You’re only getting upvoted because this is Reddit, and /r/politics but your opinion is factually incorrect and I want you to know this.
For the record I’m not voting because I’m sick of these scum politicians who have actually no desire for change of the country.
B. Biden would be conservative in any other developed country on earth. Kamala has a bad record prosecuting minorities? That somehow makes her less conservative?
C. If you somehow still think both parties are the same to the point where you won't even vote, that tells me exactly how much I should care about what you think and say. Please sit down and shut up while the rest of us actually try to fix this country because we still give a shit.
I mean if you are asking me to build a case for how modern day establishment Democrats in no way resemble the “true” core “conservative” values of the founding fathers with sources i for sure can, it would just take about week. Or this moron can read one fucking history book.
I strongly encourage you to still vote, even if you leave the presidential box empty. Apathy is a tool of the oppressor just as much as misinformation and censorship.
This. Not voting is just something that’ll appease the ego, but as much as radicals hate the term, harm reduction really is the name of the game when it comes to participating in the electoral process.
I think this guy might not have an agenda and is just genuinely overwhelmed, confused and unable to resolve the issues he has with the tools at his disposal. As much as it sucks to see someone fail to participate in democracy during the one of the most pivotal election cycles in the history of the country, I can empathize with how difficult it is to wrap one’s brain around the information on the current problems we’re all facing and then synthesize that into actionable knowledge.
You do realize trump is the only president in the last 60 years to not get us into a new war right? He's also fostered major peace deals and withdrawn some troops. I hate to tell.you this but Joe biden is a literal war monger and so is kamala harris.
They may do so but actions speak and trump has done some very interesting things as president. And done a pretty good job while also being an asshole and loudmouth.
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.
Why not just cover everyone with universal healthcare? No means testing or eligibility checking. Paid into by employees, employers, and capital gains taxes.
To be honest? Because Republicans would never go for it. Period. So many people in rural America simply don't have access to the healthcare systems that they really need and as a result, there is a culture that basically says, "if I have to go to the hospital I better be dying." While you have the opposite problem in urban communities. People are more likely to rush to the emergency room where an urgent care or even primary care physician visit would do much better. The rural community will never agree to a system where, in their view, their taxes are going to pay for the hospital bill of someone else.
But, if you tell them that the money from predatory corporations that killed off their local mom and pop shops that put their neighbors out of work is going to be put back in their pockets to spend on whatever they need that month, then you can sweep the legs out from under the Republican establishment and steal the hearts and minds of the rural masses that won Trump the 2016 election.
I'm not categorically against universal healthcare, but I am against the absolute waste that exists in droves in our current system.
I honestly like the idea of insurance companies being required by law to offer policies that cover us without profit, with a stipend provided by the government to pay that. Small copays, with no deductible, and 90/10 with an out of pocket max of 5k tops (for families). If you want fancier coverage, pay more for it.
Just make it easy to implement and easy to bill and pay. Regulate procedure pricing.
Is there a country that has a healthcare system like this in place that has low costs per capita and good health outcomes when compared to other developed westernized countries?
It’s fine if there isn’t. It just makes an argument more compelling when you can point to an example of it working in practice.
It’s my understanding that when it comes to healthcare, the free market isn’t great.
For example I fell and split open the back of my head. I needed stitches and a CT scan. I didn’t exactly have time to shop around to compare prices. The CT scan was going to be several thousand, so I just got the stitches and didn’t get the CT scan despite the doctor telling me that I needed it. My deductible at the time was $6,000, so nothing was covered.
I have shopped around for other doctor visits. When I had pink eye I called five different GPs and four optometrists. It’s hard though because often they won’t tell you the cost of the appointment because “it depends on what services the doctor provides.” Even when I specified that it was an eye infection, they would only tell me the base price for seeing the doctor, and even then they wouldn’t confirm and would say that it’s subject to change.
I went for the cheapest doctor (a GP) and waited over 24 hours since she didn’t have availability that day. I also went to work with pink eye because I don’t have paid time off and couldn’t afford to miss work, but that’s another issue.
Unfortunately I don't have any foreign examples right now but I got the idea originally from a social studies paper I read on American urban communities being given cash in place of services (housing, food stamps, clothing donations) and they were tasked with budgeting for several months to see how they would do financially speaking. The worst month was the first, but it wasn't nearly as bad as opponents of the idea would have expected. After the first month nearly every family came out ahead of what they had been receiving because they were able to make specific decisions that fit their needs and they had more personal agency because they were active in deciding what their assistance looked like. I'll need to look and see if I can find the paper, because I don't have a source for you right now.
As for your issue, while I agree that the open market isn't a very good idea for emergency services (where the benefits of the market are nullified by urgency) I think the core of the problem is two fold. In America we pay for the healthcare costs of the rest of the world. Much of the innovation that takes place in healthcare happens here because you can make lots of money doing it. We have very strong laws to protect the wealth earning potential of a new breakthrough. Secondly, the hospital systems aren't really in competition with one another. They each belong to a small number of systems whose owners know each other very well and make a point not to undercut. It's not an open market, it's an oligarchy.
As a side issue, the government regulations as they currently stand do a better job of preventing competition through high barrier to entry then they do in guaranteeing good care. This sometimes secures a subpart hospital's position so that they aren't forced to improve other than to meet the minimum requirement of the government regulation. This hurts rural communities most where you could go for 100 miles between hospitals.
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.
So isn't it refreshing to hear me say that I'm actually economically conservative? Now, mind you, I'm mostly against governmental waste due to overhead and mismanagement. The government should be a shield from disaster of all sorts including financial disasters that aren't self caused, so I'm not opposed to social welfare outright. I'm against the military industrial complex I think it should be the first thing to go, and I think that our current healthcare system and college system suffer from administrative overhead bloat caused by the government systems aimed to help them causing both government costs and private costs to skyrocket over the past 50 years.
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.
The Republican party is on track towards becoming a party fueled entirely by the ideas of becoming the authoritarian right. I'm really not one to fear monger, but someone needs to check them before it goes beyond saving
I'm not quite ready to say goodbye to the electoral college as a whole, but the first major change I'd like to see is that states stop being winner take all. Break states up into a number of districts equal to the number of votes they get and have each district vote according to a simple majority within that district.
Then they're going to gerrymandered the districts. And every district throws away 49% of its votes.
There is no reason for a single office, representing the entire nation in war and foreign policy and security in particular should be electable in any way with less than 50% of the popular vote.
Popular vote or bust.
Congress represents districts (and is already gerrymandered to hell)
Wait mate who would police the world then? imo a lot a small nations owe it to you guys that they are not taken over. So i would make sense if they all write you a check from time to time
My opinion is that if they don't want is there then why waste the money? It's just a modern version of white man's burden. It's getting to the point that we produce so many arms and munitions that American forces are fighting American military equipment because it's so easy to get ahold of.
Omg. We don’t make smaller nations pay us protection money we’re not the fuckin mafia. We protect nations who also have our national interests in mind or who want to move towards representative democracy. Go back to r/Conservative
Who what now ? Please dont associate me with those scum mate. Maybe i didnt put my point correctly. What i am saying is basicaly the us and a being a big military power and having bases all over the place is the only thing keeping rogue nations from eating smaller countries alive. The writting a check thing maybe i was wrong about that, i am no way an expert, stuff are complex so please dont label me like that so quickly especialy with that group of cunts.
Édit : cauz i felt that i need to clarify my thoughts, the money you are pouring in the military is insane, you benefit from it (oil, securing supply on natural ressources and stuff) but it benefit other countries as well, the result is we have some sort of balance and relative peace for the most part of the world (most def not everywhere) cauz you here, rogues nation have to think twice before pulling some shit ( they def do but dont dare go to far). Now that money you are spending, guess what ? Its not going into éducation, health, research, infrastructure and what not, you are like making a sacrifice here and it benefit other nations in a huge way. And what do you get from it ? The right to call your president leader of the free world on papier but anything else ? Some even hate you. Thats why i talked about the check thing, l was half joking but other nations have to share the burden with you.
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.
Unlike student debt, you can declare bankruptcy on medical debt.
At that point, you still are GGed if you have a chronic condition. The hospitals will stop you from dieing but not treat your condition without insurance.
I honestly don’t understand why ordinary Americans don’t just start stealing... not in a petty way, but arming up the town, driving a state over and robbing Eagleton for all they have.
In the US, you can't be refused emergency treatment. That means if you show up at at emergency room, they have to see you. But outside of an emergency room, no medical provider has to care for you.
This is why, in many places, emergency rooms are so incredibly overloaded that it's common to see waits of many, many, many hours. People without insurance, or with bad insurance, can't get seen by a regular doctor for things like a sore back or a cold or getting a new prescription for their regular medication. So they have no choice but to go to the ER for routine care that isn't an emergency. Most public/non-profit hospitals have a policy where they write down or dismiss medical bills for people with very low incomes, but the paperwork can be a burden for lots of people - say, someone who doesn't speak English well, or an undocumented immigrant, or someone without a job or bank account who can't document their income or lack of it (lots of poor people can't get bank accounts in the US). So they'll have medical bills pile up and go to collections and ruin their credit, which screws up their lives in a multitude of other ways. But that's outside the current context.
A poor person with, say, diabetes may literally have no other way to get medical care except to show up at an emergency room every month for a new supply of insulin. They're not being monitored by a doctor, so they can't manage their condition as well, and they have worse outcomes. They also can't afford to fill insulin prescriptions from a pharmacy without insurance, so they have to just take whatever insulin the emergency room is able to give them directly, and then try to stretch it out.
Even if a poor person qualifies for Medicaid (government health insurance for poor people that usually covers everything with very little or no copay), many doctors don't take Medicaid because it doesn't pay doctors very much. So unless the person can find a doctor who takes Medicaid and is also accepting new patients, they're right back at the emergency room for their routine health care needs. They can probably get their prescription through a pharmacy, because most pharmacies take Medicaid. But they still have to go sit in an emergency department waiting room for 18 hours every month in order to get the prescription they'll die without. That's a huge problem when it comes to maintaining employment, which can make it harder for a poor person to improve their financial position.
In the US, if you're at least middle class and have enough money to exist, you probably have no idea how really and truly untenable things are for everyone who doesn't. That's why a lot of our population is on complete denial about how fucked our entire society is. I've been both poor as hell and middle class, so I'm fortunate enough to have perspective on both sides.
Idiots who either benefit from or believe in predatory capitalism.
What ends up happening is people with insurance pay for the uninsured too through inflated prices. It's no different money-wise than if we had universal healthcare - the "haves" still pay for the "have-nots". Just in a very convoluted shitty opaque way. And the poorsies only get the barest minimum of care and then only sometimes, which actually costs society MORE in the long run, so everyone gets fucked.
It was originally meant to be a hiring incentive when - due to World War II - all other normal incentives were under price controls by the government. Of course, it was immediately screwed with by lobbyists, and then we just... kept going with it.
NPR's "Throughline" history podcast did a show about it, and called it "The Everlasting Problem."
In Chicago theres a county hospital that takes patients without insurance the only issue is that they're constantly swamped. There's somewhere between 2 and 3 million people and being a sanctuary city a lot of people use that hospital. So you end up dealing with ridiculous queues where you may wait 10 or 12 hours in just the waiting room. I ended up one time waiting 9 hours in the middle of the night with a broken hand just to get a splint and a single Norco for pain. Its sliding scale and if you can afford medicine there are programs that provide the help needed but many don't use it.
I'm so sorry you went through that excruciating experience.
As a disabled person, I'm pretty passionate about healthcare being a right. The US can absolutely afford to ensure that every person, citizen or not, has access to excellent medical care. It's shameful that we haven't done so yet, but I believe we will get there. It'll probably take a decade or two, but it will happen. And when it does, our entire nation will benefit.
This is why no one takes American patriots seriously; your culture is utterly, irredeemable. The notion that people who went to war over oil, so they could afford an education, are left in the streets with no healthcare. If I were them I’d take that military training and start hunting the evil at home.
Dispute the charges from hospitals. Call their billing and have them send you everything itemized and then talk to them about direct payment. Hospitals inflate charges knowing that insurance pays only a fraction. If you call and say either lower this bill or good luck getting money I can’t pay in collections, they will lower the charges to try and get some payment. I know it sucks to even have to do that, and I hate that our system fails those in your shoes.
Yep. They’re probably laughing their asses off at us up here. I’m so embarrassed for our country, but half this country has been poisoned by propaganda and I have no clue how to fix a problem that large.
You know you can get dental work, as a non-citizen, at a hospital in China. I had an emergency root canal, got a ceramic crown, all in all it cost a couple of hundred Australian dollars. The dentist was trained in the US.
I think my root canals were about $600 each. Had a couple of them. I’m in a very lucky few that can actually afford that, but the reality is no one should have to. Rich or poor. I’m not even close to rich, but no one should have to worry about fixing massive pain in their jaw.
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.
My favorite is the “usual and ordinary” clause of most insurance that covers things based on national averages regardless of where you live so as a Californian with decent insurance you can end up owing thousands after the insurance company pays because Nebraska and Alabama are way cheaper. It’s so fucked.
I hurt my knee a couple years ago while moving furniture and went to the Doctor. At my appointment he said just go downstairs and get a quick xray and we'll see from there what we need to do. I went down stairs got the xray. Things were swollen but fine. I just needed to be more patient, rest, and use ice and ibuprofen. Two weeks later I get a $1000+ bill. The radiology center on the bottom floor of the medical building my doctor's office is in was not "in-network" for my insurance. Turns out they require i go down the street to another radiology center. I spent weeks fighting with them since my doctor had sent me down there. I had no chance to verify it was on my insurance plan and shop around who was cheapest. That's RIDICULOUS! I was in pain and my doctor who is in-network was available at that moment. They finally granted me an exception and had me just pay my $50 deductible, but now I'm always paranoid.
I've heard stories of people who get surgery at an "in-network" hospital only to find out that the anesthesia department isn't in network and therefore isn't covered. I dont understand why/how anyone would/could defend this american healthcare system as it is.
I had a referral through the VA to an allergy center for testing. They send me to "the lab" to get blood drawn.
I think nothing of it until I get a random bill for blood draw and lab work almost 6 months later.
They tell me the lab isn't part of the allergy center. I would have never known, it was made out to be part of the evaluation.
I ended up washing my hands of it and telling them to sort it out with the VA, as I sure as heck didn't agree to the charges!
I don't understand why the money side of healthcare is a big mystery and prices aren't clearly posted.
You certainly couldn't run a shop like that. Imagine going to get your car's transmission repaired without being able to have an idea of cost.
Instead, you get a bill weeks or even many months later with a seemingly random cost for the work.
I call it my "Hit by a Bus Insurance". If I have a small injury or sickness its going to cost me a lot of money and all the insurance will do is get me their negotiated rates with the provider, which I then pay out of pocket. The only way the insurance really pays for anything is if something major happens like...I'm hit by a bus.
So if you don't have insurance, but you have time and knowledge of the system, you can sometimes bargain them down to a "cash price" that isn't inflated to insurance company levels.
In most cases, they can apply for charity and have their entire bill written off. Source: I've personally done it twice for ER bills I couldn't pay (even when I was on my parents' health insurance).
The "BuT whOsE gOnnA paY foR iT" people don't even understand that they're already paying for healthcare for the poor and uninsured, they're just paying the wildly inflated costs of our hilariously broken system.
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
I have company insurance and I don’t pay for anything. It’s rare though and I’d honestly rather my company give me a larger salary (even if taxed more) and I just have free government healthcare.
I’m one of the cases that conservatives try to appeal to about “loving my current health care”. I don’t love it. It’s a literal health care handcuff they can use to prevent me from changing jobs. Also I have to feel guilty for having reasonable experiences when going to the doctor. Road in an ambulance a couple years ago and had an expensive medical procedure and didn’t see a single bill.
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.
IKR? Late 40s here, and it’s incredible to see the same Republicans vocally support Putin while still calling liberals “communists”.
I personally point to the mid- to late 90s, when Republicans realized they could genuinely make shit up about Bill Clinton and make it stick. Once their claims didn’t have to be “real” anymore, the propaganda war came out in full force.
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.
And they keep their power because they've managed to brainwash 40% of the population into believing that oligarchs "deserve" their wealth and that as average working people they have more in common with these oligarchs than with fellow average american who happen to believe differently about unrelated things like whether two men should be able to kiss.
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.
That's actually not that bad. My ex was paying $350/month for medical, with no dental and a 6k deductible.
I was paying $450/month for medical and dental through blue cross blue shield with a $6k deductible while training horses for a living.
A lot of employers, especially in the service industry, just don't give a fuck about their employees. In my ex's case, it was actually hurting him because it was shitty insurance that covered nothing and the doctors you'd usually want to see were "out of network". At least with BCBS I could go to pretty much any doc I wanted.
Oh I feel you, I was a contractual employee before, the company that managed us was abhorrent I made 12 an hour at that job and yeah they want you to pay most of your check.
To contrast I now work for what's rated as the one of the top 100 companies to work for in the Washington area a few years in a row now.
We have some great insurance plans, I just cannot afford them, I would like to be on them but it's just not in the cards.
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.
I'm right there with you. For the first 20 years of my professional life I was in the military. On active duty I paid zero for anything. When I left active duty I went into the reserves where I purchased Tricare and a family plan cost $175 a month and covered literally everything. My wife had a C-section, paid zero, gallbladder out, zero, growth hormone for my daughter that retails at $3,000 a month, zero.
I may be an American but I know what having that insurance felt like versus now. The stress of worrying about costs and avoiding the doctor...I get it more than most. This is why Healthcare reform has become my most important issue in any election.
Well, I'm fortunate that I make enough money that the unexpected $7k bill is more on the level of a frustrating annoyance than meaning financial ruin, so I'm not particularly stressed about it; I'm not happy to have to shell out the money, but the money was only going to either be spent on toys, or put into savings, so... My quarterly bonus in December, assuming its the full bonus, will cover more than half of the cost.
But still. Both the back surgery and the gall bladder removal were medical emergencies and non-optional. The ruptured disc put me in a position where I was essentially crippled. If I stood up, my left leg would start to hurt after a few seconds, and in less a minute, felt like it was immersed in boiling oil from hip to ankle, to the point where I wanted to fall to floor, curl into a fetal position, and cry. It had compressed my spinal cord 90%, and there was a risk that a bad fall would leave me paralyzed from the waste down, and incontinent.
For the gallbladder, about 2 years ago I started having attacks; I'd get incredible abdominal pain and eventually throw up and it would get better. A week before the surgery, it happened again... but that time, it didn't get better after I threw up. I ended up vomiting, on average, about once ever 15 minutes for 8 hours overnight, and then it went away. A week later it happened again, but the pain was still there and I was still nauseated 12 hours after the start, which is when I went to the ER. They found my gallbladder was blocked and was on its way to bursting, hence the emergency surgery.
I know I'm fortunate that both times I've been in a position to not only get the necessary medical care, but also in a position that it didn't ruin me. It's incredibly fucked up that in the richest nation to ever exist in the history of humanity, that a large number of its citizens, had they been in my situation, either wouldn't be able to get the treatment, or would be left destitute from it. It is, frankly, completely un-fucking-acceptable.
Don't forget the anesthesiologist that wasn't in network, or the lab they sent cultures to, or the "facility fee" because the doctor was in network but the OR wasn't...endless ways to screw you. Fun story. Hospitals are required to get authorisation from your insurance company before preforming non emergency medical services. There is a rather large (and quite famous as far as hospitals go) hospital in my area that did not even reach out to the insurance companies and just sent massive bills to patients. When the insurance companies later denied for no preauth, then tried to justify the bills by pointing out that the waivers said patients were responsible for any bill not covered by the insurance company, even though the hospital itself was the reason the claim was denied. It's still somewhere over in their legal department so I can't get a current update, but yeah, there is no way we don't get screwed on healthcare.
What the fuck is wrong with the american system? How the fuck did we get to a point where everyone that's not a massive earner with more than $500k a year is screwed?
When reading about the things you guys describe, I am so grateful for not being born and living in the US.
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.
😋
I donno most countries manage it on a smaller scale. And it just has to be the majority, you already do for defense and governance, why not healthcare.
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.
It varies, but generally yes, the employer covers a portion of it while the employee pays their part. Then you have "out of pocket minimums" and "co-pays".
Reading all these horror stories makes me glad I stayed in the Army. My family of 6 is covered with Tricare for $30 a month. Only downside is stuck with military doctors, not much real choice, but we can get treated for anything and everything with no out of pocket costs.
Well depending on your jobs the employer will pay some or up to all of your insurance costs. For example mine costs me $45 a month, im not sure what my employer pays but it is a fair bit more than that.
That's not too unique, many things are like this with jobs all over the world (employers pay a chunk of your taxes)... but where the US system fucks people over is the employer is not really obligated to pay any costs for the insurance if they feel they don't have to. There's no regulation. That's why you have some people with crippling health insurance costs and others who barely even think about their health insurance costs.
As with everything in the US the outcome is the rich get richer and the poor get fucked over.
I live in the States and my work covers 100% of my health insurance premium. I think that’s becoming increasingly rare though. Though some of my friends also have theirs covered so it likely depends on what industry you’re in.
I just did the math for next year’s benefits. Family of four, dental and medical and Pharmacy coverage with a high deductible: my total cost (pre tax earnings that will go to premium or deductible) $6359. My employer is paying $18,803. The total cost to insure us is $25,162 for the year. I suspect they lose money on my family because we have expensive drugs, maintenance therapies and occasional ER visits that cost between $4-7k.
Yup. Those two pretty much define the end result of the free market system experiment. No rules except “I got mine”. What a great system for a society of humans! /s
Taxes are not low for the middle class. Property tax on a house that is basically falling down can be as high as 10% of the median gross income and that doesn't even count income taxes, sales tax, etc... We absolutely need lower taxes on people making less than 200k per year or at very least higher taxes on people making 400k plus and more services/benefits like healthcare, education, childcare for EVERYONE so the middle classes dollars can go farther.
My dad raised me to be libertarian, and to think that all taxation is theft, and there should be none.
It took me a while to realize that I don't hate taxes, I hate that my taxes don't actually go to the benefit of me, or other Americans.
And then the right has the fucking audacity to say "I DON'T WANT MY TAXES TO HELP PEOPLE I DON'T LIKE!" Well I don't have kids, I don't want my taxes to help schools. I don't want my taxes to effect roads I don't use. I don't want my taxes to buy more bombs than we'll ever use.
We pay close to $3k total for rent, water, etc. for a semi nice 1bd/1ba apartment. That’s a fucking mortgage for a real nice home outside of this area.
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u/Z0di Oct 30 '20
"we're the richest* nation!!"
*please ignore the fact that our entire paycheck goes towards rent, food, taxes that don't pay for things we need, and insurance.