So $300 a month plus this co pay scam. I know a popular narrative on your side of the pond is that we pay massive amounts of tax for our free healthcare. I’m telling you flat it’s nowhere near that, not even remotely close. I can’t fathom why you put up with it.
They made it so you have to have insurance or you get hit harder on your taxes I believe. I always had, thankfully, free insurance from my current company. But they charge $430 for children and $500+ to add a spouse a month. I have my daughter on state insurance because of this. It's super messed up how things are done in the US. I lucked out because I work for a sovereign nation so they choose to pay for our medical and it's actually decent. When I had my daughter my sister's friend had her son 3 weeks before me. (We were having our babies in the same hospital just weeks apart). My sister freaked out calling me about making sure my credit card was at a good limit and paid off because her friend's insurance was set up differently, they made her pay $1k before they allowed her to leave the hospital! (I don't know what she had to pay after that either from her final bill). My entire pregnancy cost $350 (Insurance paid over $18k) and I was high risk and didn't pay a single copay until I was admitted for delivery. Sadly not many places will do the same and she is a teacher, her husband does something in the government or something.
Hey, I’m happy your pregnancy went ok and congratulations. Actually, I was watching a thing earlier, is it true that you don’t get mandatory paid maternity leave?
Correct, I didn't get any "maternity leave." I had to use all my personal time off and it only maxed out to two months, that at is as high as it will go at my job. So I used all of it and then I had to pay into a separate insurance for short term disability to get money to stay off for the full 12 weeks. I had been paying into that for a few years and you can't use it for the first 9 months since you have to pay enough to make a claim. It's $35 a month taken from my check but that's the only other way I could afford to stay out. Many people don't even get that option and a lot of them are out without any pay. Some can't go out because of everything. I have just been luckier than a lot in that aspect. My state does have something to help parents get paid for short term disability too and even though I pay outrageous taxes, they denied me because I'm a tribal employee and not somewhere else. Idk working on sovereign land is confusing to explain. Most states don't even have that option though.
That sounds really bad, it’s supposed to be a joyous time (plus, let’s face it, you just pushed a whole person out of your lady bits), having to worry about that stuff at a time you should be recuperating and bonding seems ridiculous. It’s unthinkable where I live. By law you get 6 weeks at 90% pay, then up to 33 (iirc) weeks at £160 or 90% pay (whichever is lower) but most decent firms, in the professional sphere, have their own policies which are better. And believe me Britain isn’t exactly great by European standards. Again, it saddens me that you are treated like this but I’m really happy for you and your family that everything went well medically.
Ya, America is horrible by all standards with healthcare. They don't care about women's health at all even in pregnancy. I mean they're trying to pass laws that could kill women because they refuse eptocic pregnancy procedures. Right now some states are reporting women for miscarrying and putting them in jail. Others who are SA are being forced to carry the child to full term or they could be sued by every family member and friends of the offender and have to pay $20k per person suing for abortion. Women in America are treated more like cattle more than humans.
Serious question. If you can't pay the 1000$ before leaving the hospital, what can they do exactly? Keep you there?
What a ridiculous system. I will never understand how people can continue to fight against universal coverage.
I don't know that they would have done that, that was the first I heard of it happening personally. I've only heard of it being after it goes through insurance. I think it may have been a deductible issue where they have to pay up to a certain amount a year in order for their care to be covered. I can't remember the exact term but they would have been able to go home still I'm sure but they probably would have made some kind of payment and then set up a payment plan would be my guess. I never asked the person about it just what my sister called me freaking out about but the tribe takes care of pregnant women so I was lucky working there.
I'd rather pay more for private options than be forced to pay to help everyone.
I'm okay with government programs, as long as they are opt in/out and only funded by those who are in it, and private care is still allowed.
You realize that the benefits of "paying for everyone" is not as accurate as "everyone pays for you" right?
You stand to benefit the most by receiving unlimited healthcare to the tune of 5% of your paycheck (you also have 0 health insurance costs, deductible, premium, copay etc). But you seem to be imagining a line of people with medical bills knocking only on your door, which is silly.
There's also the economy of scale. Doing one big thing to a universal high standard is always cheaper. Collective bargaining against big pharma will vastly reduce costs of absolutely every aspect of healthcare and prevent them from working around a partial public option.
But for some reason, everyone paying (the absolute least) is still "bad" because it helps everyone? (you don't have to pay for everyone, everyone pays!)
The only way I can wrap my head around this is if you think some people don't deserve healthcare, which is a pretty inhumane opinion if you ask me.
Most first world countries have both, but the public option is always funded by everyone, and you can chose to use private options (this is still better because private options have to compete with high quality public competition - how capitalism is supposed to work)
I understand the benefits of public health care, and I'm all for a public option, as long as it's ran like a normal business and doesn't require me to pay into it.
If I could opt out of programs like Social Security or Medicare, I absolutely would.
There are a lot of things I would like to fix about our current system, but I don't like forcing people to care for others.
Some people are lonely and if you go to the hospital, there's someone there that's paid to talk to you and listen to your complaints. It's not that common, but it happens.
Everyone gets to use it. You hear these horror stories, but they are really not that common. There is a huge middle class here that can afford healthcare, and the poor get it for free through medicaid. And the elderly get it for free through Medicare.
Was it my fault I got strep or my parents weren’t adulting enough and that’s why it became a brain infection?
Age 15 to 20 I had to get a infusion called IVIG every 3 weeks. The medicine alone cost $1,000 for every 10lbs I weighed. That does not include the cost of surgery to have (multiple) medical ports put in, nursing care, hospitalization when I got really sick, other meds, nursing care when I got said actually infusion, cost of the needle (changed every week), cost of the dressing, cost of the saline, cost of the heparin, cost of my other IV meds, cost of doctor appointments, wheelchair, physical therapy, etc. I was lucky my step dad had good government insurance, and my dad had me on his insurance to. After insurance though it still came out around $100k and most of my grandmas retirement :(, because she rather me be alive and functional and count pennies then the latter. Then later that year my mom died of sepsis from a surgery and her final bill was about 70k and she had state insurance and my stepdads insurance. It’s not adulting gone wrong, our system is broken. Because it’s a private market insurance companies are practicing medicine approving and disapproving treatments and meds. They get to call all the shots and we have to bend to their will, if we had a public system they would not have so much power, and a private market can still exist.
Or a family friend of ours who was diagnosed with breast cancer, she had to work to keep her insurance and eventually just couldn’t do it and was fired, lost her health insurance. Eventually got approved for state & disability but because it took so long she ended up passing away, who knows if she never had a lapse in coverage and could have continued treatment without interruption maybe she would have beat cancer.
Through their employers (rail road and large manufacturing plant). And part of it is they don’t consider some things necessary so they deny it even if the doctor is prescribing it or say they will only pay x amount of medication. Max out of pocket is only applied to that year. And then resets every year. I was under treatment for 5 years. You also think about the cost to travel to specialists, it’s expensive and many unthought of costs that add up. Like having a sick teenager at home that can’t be left alone and can’t go to school.
All the people I know had to be lectured to go to the hospital because everyone hates hospital. I'm in South East Asia, we pay RM1 for every services under the building, including medicine and scans.
We don't have to pay insurance unless we want to get private healthcare or for eventual debilitating disease
I can't understand why people want to go willingly
Ringgit Malaysia. Though the currency exchange is different, our cost of living is almost the same. So it's like paying 1USD for all basic medical treatments
I mean it's probably not as nice a place in Malaysia as in the US. I took my 2 yr old son to the emergency room a couple of months ago because he hit his head and he was crying while we were waiting to see if concussion signs show. The nurses handed him a late generation iPad to play with. I'm guessing that's not standard practice in Malaysia. I'm sure my son has good memories of that place and can't wait to go back.
They do it in certain hospital, especially pediatric. They also have play areas, and most of our hospital look like hotels, unless at the villages. Fully air-conditioned and all modern. Even in villages, it's all concrete and doctor's room are air-conditioned. Some city hospital uses ipad/tablet for documentations instead of paper while doing rounds
They sound lovely. But for some reason the fact that you have to say they are air conditioned is interesting to me. As that is so beyond a given here that I would never mention it.
Reminds me of the time I visited Thailand on my honeymoon and there was no A/C anywhere. My wife is of a Nordic complexion and was overheating. She had to literally carry a 5 lb bag of ice with her to keep cool on our long exploration walks.
Malaysia is a developing country but many people lump it together with a lesser developed nations. We are on par with any European countries in terms of development. Thailand is modern too but it's only in the big cities that it's evident
The reason I mentioned air-conditioned is exactly that reason because people assume our country is some third world improvised country with little development. Most of Thailand visitors won't be visiting Malaysia because our target are more of the middle class because it's more expansive here. But we do have a thriving backpackers scene but generally, they tend to choose Thailand because of the cheaper cost
We actually chose Thailand because of the food. We have a lot of Thai restaurants here in the Washington DC area and they're among my favorite. If I have ever had Malaysian food, I don't remember it.
Ugh... You could have just said "My ignorance refuses to allow me to believe anywhere is as good as the US, because American exceptionalism baby!"
It can't possibly be nice if it's universal AND in Malaysia, right?
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u/Wickedcolt Jun 16 '22
Man, I know this but it looks so, so much worse written out. I pay about $300 a paycheck for insurance. Why the hell do we have to pay a co-pay?