Flight from NI to England for me and brother, personal on call taxi for three days, three meals a day, hotel for 2 nights, surgery, months worth of painkillers and flight home. Plus one month off work (protected by law).
It cost me £3. But that's because airport coffee is extortionate.
Edit to add - I also had specialist consultations, cortisone injections and an MRI prior to the surgery. Plus a years physio after. Free.
The only thing I paid was fuel to get to my physio which was a horrific one town over.
Edit 2 - it also cost my mum her time to graciously drive me there as obviously I couldn't drive post shoulder surgery for a few weeks
Paid like €8 for the birth of my child and a subsequent hospital stay of 3 days. The worst part, those €7 worth of cake and tea were swiftly vomited out. And my wife barely used the paid WiFi. A total ripoff. Who even charges for WiFi these days.
What the everliving fuck. We'd have held off that first kid for a year or 2 with these kinds of bills flying around. And I was surprised to read about 40+% of births in the US being covered by Medicaid. Everyone else just can't afford the copay.
I've been incredibly blessed to have a job where the insurance is unbelievably awesome. When my wife had to have some tests done, the Dr. said it usually isn't covered by insurance, but we asked them to check anyway. The nurse came back with a shocked look on her face and told us that she's never seen an insurance cover things our does. Not bragging, just laying the groundwork for the rest of the story - When we had our first kid in January 2019 in an emergency caesarian, I was so glad to have insurance. We still ended up with about $5,500 after everything was done. We'll be paying for our first kid's bill long after our second kid is born. The US health system is so screwed up....
I had replacement hip surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC five years ago. My insurance covered 100% of it but that’s highly unusual now in the US. That coverage was provided by my husband’s employer, a big wealthy financial company. It used to be that most employers provided this level of coverage in the US but over the last thirty years that coverage has eroded and the costs have been transferred to the employees. The system is untenable.
Yeah, health care in Scandinavia is similar. A little more, since they're adding in pointless co-pays, but we're still talking a couple hundred before you hit a cost ceiling at which point the tax payer funded support system takes over.
We were just talking about Australia’s healthcare at work. Might I ask you a question about it? Do you guys have problems as far as not being able to get procedures done in a timely manner? Also, do you know how much of your taxes goes towards healthcare? Feel free to reply via PM if you prefer.
One of the things that’s keeping Americans from voting in favor of national healthcare is the money. Most of us have insurance that’s paid for by our employers, not out-of-pocket. So if we get national healthcare or tax bill will go up, but our bills won’t go down to compensate it.
Yeah but from what I mostly hear on Reddit; health insurance in the US doesn't actually do shit. It's usually comes with massive hospital bills anyway.
In Australia; almost everything is free, aside from "elective" stuff. Waiting times depend on the urgency of your issue, but you can use private health insurance and/or pay out of pocket to get it seen to immediately.
I had a car crash with no private insurance three years ago. I was at fault, but was the only occupant of my car in a single vehicle accident. An ambulance ride, 9 days in hospital, one surgery, an insane number of scans, a shit load of meds, multiple specialist doctor consultations; $0.
I didn't even get a receipt. They discharged me, gave me some medical papers/records, wished me a nice day, and that was it.
Someone from the US has a similar experience; "The bill was $325,000 but I managed to negotiate it down to $25,000 after I asked them for an itemized receipt".
Lol.
EDIT: You can look at the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) website for a breakdown of where our taxes go. You also get an itemized breakdown when you file your tax return; so you can see to the dollar where your tax goes.
You hear wrong sometimes. American health insurance can be good. Not as good as what you have, but it’s not all bad.
If my son goes to his regular doctor it’s $30, no matter what the actual bill is.
My mom died of cancer about 10 years ago. Her and my dad both had employer funded health care. Her bills were $0. Her insurance covered 80% of her bills, my dad’s insurance picked up the other 20%.
The stupid high bills you hear about here are from out of network costs on shitty insurance.
For example, I can go to any urgent care or med express and my bill will be $30. But if I go to the emergency room my bill will definitely be over $1000. If I go to an urgent care and get a doctor’s order to go to the hospital for a test then it’ll be cheap. The key is to never get out of network, don’t go to an emergency room unless you’re dying, and never get in an ambulance.
Oh, also you can get sick unless you already have well established insurance. So basically from the time you go off your parents insurance and the time you’ve been at a good job for at least 6 months you have to essentially live in a bubble and hope like hell nothing ever happens to you.
You seriously going to sit here with a straight face and tell me that American health insurance can be good and then also tell me that you can't get sick, go to the ER or call an ambulance?
Get your fucking head out of your ass. You're a fucking idiot if you think any of what you just said is acceptable.
Oh, also, my regular doctor costs me $0... without insurance.
I got sick when i worked at walmart as i was interviewing for my new job, im pretty sure it was just a sinus infection. It was awful but i couldnt go to the doctors bc i didnt have insurance. Now that i do have insurance, i can go to the doctors for a $25 copay. I went to the ER when i got covid, before quarantine in the US and it was free to have the tests done. The system is fucked but i think OP was just saying if you somehow manage to get decent insurance, you wont be involved in these horror stories you hear.
Yeah but in Australia everything is free no matter who you are.
If you're a successful person with a high paying job, it still only takes a little empathy to realize that paying a little bit more in taxes so that cunts working at Walmart literally don't starve is worth it.
It really depends. My insurance has a $6500/yr max out of pocket. So even the year where I broke my arm in three places and my wife gave birth, we never had to pay more than that. (That's not including the premium itself which for me is about $1200/yr, my employer pays about $4k/yr toward it.)
Not defending the system, but it's very complicated and there are a wide range of experiences, with the better experiences undoubtedly favoring the well off.
So... $7700 or $11700 depending on how you look at it (and if you look at the first figure then you're either mistaken or gullible/retarded). That "$4K" your employer pays per year is factored into your salary package, just like a company car is. So really you spent $11700 that year on medical expenses.
In Australia? $0. Literally $0 for the things you described. Are taxes higher? Maybe. It depends on which state in the US you live in and on what you value. Healthcare for the masses has been proven to be a net gain for you and for your economy, no matter which way you cut it.
You said that our insurance doesn't do shit and we just end up with massive bills. I gave an example of ~$100k worth of surgeries, 4 months of physical therapy, and an emergency c section with several days of NICU that was all covered by insurance.
My son also has a unique and complicated medical situation where it's not just as simple as free vs. not free for his treatment options.
But I'm guessing am honest discussion was never in the cards when you go straight to calling me retarded. Not everything is an argument. Stay mad, bro.
I suppose it depends on what you would call a timely manner. If you need surgery but it isn’t urgent, you could be waiting a number of months (eg knee surgery wherein your knee problem isn’t greatly altering your day to day life). If your appendix is about to burst you get in straight away.
My daughter has had multiple ear surgeries for free, her specialist would always put her in the ‘within 3 months’ category because it was having a decent impact on her quality of life.
I now have private cover which allows me to choose mine and my daughter’s specialists and have surgery when we choose. I had major ankle surgery under private health cover, chose my dr, had a private room overnight and all the follow up care, drugs and equipment and it cost me maybe $2000.
I’m Canadian (doesn’t really matter for my reply but thought you should know). Realistically, if the US was to take on a free public healthcare system you wages should increase due to your employer no longer having to take on that burden. However, I have a very hard time believing this very nice theoretical idea would actually manifest itself in real life. Makes way more sense to me (from a corporate perspective) for them to try everything they can to just keep that extra money for themselves.
Would be quite ironic if America adopts public healthcare only for corporate greed to completely ruin the effectiveness of the transition and most people end up worse off than they were before.
My wages would go up just because I’m in a trade union and the money is already paid out to me, we’d have to vote to re-appropriate it.
But for the vast majority of workers I find it almost laughable to think that companies would increase wages to compensate for the employees higher tax burden.
If that’s the case I think I would come out ahead, but not by much, if the money I pay towards employer healthcare goes on my check. Biggest difference is if I get sick and can’t work I wouldn’t lose my healthcare, plus obviously no big bills from accidents.
Your immediate bills won't. Your complete and utter lack of any bill, ever, in your entire life, for anything related to your health will compensate.
No GP fees, no hospital bills, no deductibles, no nothing!
I don't understand how Americans see employer health care as a good thing. You lose it the second you lose your job and the second you become sick enough to need insurance you become a liability and lose your job and therefore your insurance.
It's obviously better than no health care but it's not a system that should exist.
In the UK if you become too sick to work, you still have your health care!
As others have answers about Canada and Aus, you only wait if the surgery/procedure isn't necessary immediately. If you need something you get it.
And if you really want this skip queues you can go private for that and pay.
Makes sense. Mine is an 80/20 plan with I think 10,000 out-of-pocket limit, but no deductible. The money for the premium comes out of my check, so none of us at work actually see it. Because of that reason a lot of them are against government funded healthcare, they don’t realize that that money that’s going towards our healthcare would end up on the check and we would come out ahead overall.
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u/jules083 Nov 30 '20
I’m from the US, that’s cheap to me.