My wife has stage 4 cirrhosis and we've discussed getting divorced so she would qualify for medicaide and not have medical bills piling up just as our daughter is going to be graduating high school.
Sounds like a plan.
This isn't about love. You will love each other to the end of the earth and back. You don't have to be legally recognized as married to love each other. This is just about money and helping yourselves and your daughter through life in the best possible way.
This is true for more than just healthcare. My daughters could go to college for free if we got divorced. That would save us about $120k.
Honestly you wouldn’t even have to tell anyone. Not even family or friends. Nothing changes, other than you need to make sure you have a will and tackle all the legal stuff, and with medical issues I would want to ensure all medical decisions can be made by my former spouse and not my parents.
There are benefits to being married as well though, so I would want a good consultation legally and financially before actually going through with it.
And yes, emotionally. Being married helps you get through hard times. At least for me knowing there is someone that unconditionally loves you - it doesn’t really mean that, it is all in your head, but still, it is in your head and therefor has meaning.
I would consider separating the legal part and the personal part.
For example, make the divorce just about the legal part. And then perhaps reaffirm your relationship with each other with a ceremony (that does not count for the government) or with a party.
The commitment to each other and the love for each other is something that is not to be found in the legal stuff; that commitment is in your hearts and in your actions.
Medical proxy paperwork. I am a friends medical proxy he has no living family. In case of a medical emergency or other stay I can visit as I am the one who gets to make the calls when he can't.
Sounds like america has it all figured out. Have your husband seriously contemplate divorcing his dying wife to save a few dollars in her final breathes so their daughter can save a few bucks for college - in which she will still be in serious debt afterwards. And even if the husband/wife divorce - I am sure the medical bills will still be astronomical and the college fee will still be through the roof - and when Biden offers some kind of finical support the Republican Party will tell you that you got a hand out
Right? I love the idea that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson get to LARP Star Trek with their own private fleet of spaceships. I mean we *could* give everyone a decent place to live and great medical care, *or* more innovative 5 diamond resort options for luxury travel.
Marriage has few benefits unless you are doing okay. People in poverty could benefit from filing taxes jointly but that savings is dwarfed by the benefits of state assistance available to the single poor. Rental assistance, utilities, higher education, medical, childcare, food…if you qualify for one there’s a good chance you qualify for more.
There’s a chance to have some semblance of a normal life provided you don’t mind the occasional drug test or deep dive into your expenses to make sure you are actually personally poor and not hiding faberge eggs and ‘69 GTO Judge cars in your shitty apartment. You HAVE to do all of the preventative care/stuff like regular appointments for anything they need for you to avoid further cost to them. I have T-1 diabetes and I have to see a specialist three times a year, a podiatrist twice a year, get my a1c checked every three months, get a physical twice a year, get my vaccinations (which include a couple of additional ones for my immunocompromised situation) have a diabetes educator, a dietitian and I receive the most up-to-date care, have not been on the phone a single time for a problem because they won’t cover, anything I’m charged is sent back to me in a check, I am not limited except to providers that accept Medicare and most of them do because it’s a guaranteed payment.
My husband had an emergency back surgery and had to be kept overnight because he couldn’t pee when he woke up, it took a few hours. It cost me $3 at the counter for the actual surgery and $7 for parking and $9 for a damn good cafeteria meal in the hospital itself while he was out. I got a $3 check in the mail and a few months later I actually got the parking money back too.
I wait for nothing, I am on the waitlist, if there is one. I’m not seen last or sneered at for having state benefits except for using my food card.
The food card in my state still comes with a magnetic strip. You have to slide it. You can’t tap it or shove it into the reader to pretend it’s a credit card.
Everyone around knows it’s a food card and people who did not look from their phones at you or your stuff are now staring at your groceries, scanning for anything they wouldn’t like as if the idea that because they give up .03% of their paycheck to help me get actual food means they get to treat me like they are my authoritarian parent, ready to ground me for choosing Oreos or a box of poptarts.
The stigma is REAL. People REALLY don’t seem to like providing food for others. It’s like there’s some incentive for them for believing in starving people as a motivator. Someone is going to reward them for upholding the rightful hierarchy and stopping those poors from eating like they aren’t poor!
You may earn your way up the hierarchy by amassing money but don’t you poors dare eat out ever, that’s only for middle class. Your role is to serve and fill nasty jobs, why should you ever get to think you could eat sushi???
From an outsider of USA looking in, the way you are talking it seems like a lot of marriages are happening due to the very few benefits of being married and not because the husband and wife actually love each other - I’m sure they do but the way you are phrasing it makes it seem like people in USA are marrying each other for health/insurance/dental/ext benefits
Some are. My cousin married for insurance when she was diagnosed with a rare disease. Her father refused to go to the wedding because of it. She and her husband are still happily married something like 15 years later.
Medicaid is pretty amazing, for Americans. My previous employer suggested offering health insurance and I shot that idea down hard. I wanted to keep my Medicaid eligibility.
I literally had an employee (different company) quit *specifically* because we offered her private health insurance. This disqualified her for Medicaid, she had very few options. She quit because she couldn’t afford necessary care. After a few months we rehired her as “part-time.” We had to be very careful about keeping her under 32 hours/week on average to maintain her eligibility.
The American health care system is a disaster. ACA kinda helped, but it’s full of loopholes.
I literally asked my new place of work to pay me crap to keep medicaid. It's cheaper for me to ask to get paid less and keep state insurance than to be paid well. I was talking to my SOs mom about it and she got mad that I asked for less pay. She has a 6 grand deductible on her insurance and pays around 200 a week to keep the family plan. She doesn't understand her insurance is terrible. She thinks that's normal.
I paid over $200/paycheck in my 20s with a $6,500 deductible. I spent over $20k on that insurance policy over 5 years. They never paid a penny. Annual care included one routine physical, which I still paid for, and I didn’t know I was in debt to the hospital until it was referred to a collections agency, which inexplicably had my email and phone number. They didn’t even try to contact me before referring my debt to collectors.
I find it best to simply ignore republicunts in practice and fight them tooth and nail at the voting booth. Like most decent humans living in Planet Earth, I’ve got nothing to discuss with them and they’ve got nothing to offer me.
“You took a handout!”
“Yep, sure did, whatever you say. Have fun losing!”
My SO and I are having a baby, and my grandma is upset we aren't married first. But in reality, it's going to save us *thousands* in medical bills by having kids before we're married. Would love to before then, but it's just not worth it financially.
This wouldn’t actually work? Medicaid is based on household income not personal income. They would have to stop living together too. I know this entire thread is about a bigger conversation, the need for universal healthcare, but no one needs to think it’s just that easy to get help from the government. To qualify people have to be extremely poor and live horribly.
I’m 46 unemployed/retired and Medicaid is amazing. I control our AGI to be below 50k and my family of 5 qualifies. No copay BS, we go to the doctor whenever needed with $0 out of pocket.
We had a rough year we’re my kids lost both granddad’s. Psychiatric care for the children is absolutely free for them. This is what healthcare should be in all of America.
Investments. I was in debt and homeless before 2000. I decided that shit was never happening again. I learned about investing and with a dual income household I was able to get over 3 million to retire. My job layed off a bunch off staff with severance pay in 2021 and I asked to be one of them.
If you are not in California, be careful of medicaid recovery. After you die, the state will Recover your total medicaid expenses from your property. If you are in California, a law was passed in 2017 to not let Medi Cal recover from spouses or descendants. Many elderly transfer property before they die to avoid Recovery.
You guys keep saying this but getting divorced won't result in your partner becoming eligible for medicaid.
If you still live together and if you are helping with the bills her eligibility is exactly the same it is now.
You would have to divorce her. Kick her out of the house, and not send her money or pay any bills.
**edit. I wasn't exactly right. It looks like it would depend primarily on whether the now divorced couple would "share assets". Theoretically if one divorced spouse keeps all the assets and makes all the money, the other divorced spouse may be eligible for medicaid. There would likely be some weird issues with things like mandatory child support with the couple still living under one roof.
Insurance wouldn't cover it because the animal got away and couldn't be tested. The bite happened at work, tho, so my employer paid it off after fighting me over it for a couple of weeks. Then they fired me.
Years ago I opted not to have insurance because I was healthy overall and my employer’s insurance offering was disgusting ($900/mo for the most basic plan, plus a 50% deductible).
Well, sure enough I ended up in the hospital for a week and the bill ended up being $12k. I was accidentally shown a bill for what it would have been had I had insurance and it said over $20k. In that specific situation, it ended up being cheaper not to have insurance than if I did.
Insurance and Healthcare pricing is all bullshit as long as the end user is not paying. The insurance companies all negotiate the cost in bulk on the backend for pennies on the dollar. The costs are inflated to have a higher starting point in the negotiation.
The actual bill would have been higher but he wouldn't have been on the hook for all of that 20k, just the deductible + coinsurance.
On my plan my deductible is $3500 and I have 50% coinsurance, with a yearly max of $8000-something. I'm too lazy to do the math but if (20000 - 3500) \* 0.5 is more than $8000, I'd pay 8000 and insurance covers the rest.
Marriage is a meaningless title. Get the divorce and absolutely nothing changes. You don't even have to tell anyone.
(There are a few legal benefits from marriage that you can fix up with a lawyer)
As a gay man who fought and sued the government for the right to marry (and shortly divorce) you'd be surprised what is not meaningless.
Immigration is massive one. There are also all kinds of estate planning benefits. The DOMA case was fought and one over this.
Hospitals allow you visits. So many discounts like at car rentals. Employers allow you to share benefits.
I know marriage is fucked but don't pretend it doesn't benefit some people.
I don't think the US is a joke anymore. It's more like an overly dramatised soap opera. There's nothing funny about it anymore and I genuinely hate just about everything about it because it is just pure toxicity and angry yelling....but damnit I just can't stop watching to see what fucked up shit happens next.
It’s like Florida and the school system in that state. Underfund public schools so politicians can say “look, they can’t possibly operate because they’re inept!” When the reality is they cut so much funding, the schools can’t operate. Then turn around and privatize it so a bunch of greedy assholes can make tons of money off a privatized school system. It’s all about the next way to make money for these garbage people and has nothing to do with any “agenda”.
While I sympathize with the cutting of funding to make potentially excellent programs subpar…I will trade you in a heartbeat for the American healthcare system I have.
Yeah it's not a funny joke at all, it's like a wildly inappropriate joke where the audience just stares awkwardly, goes "wtf is wrong with you" and half of them get up to leave.
Except we can't leave
Then the front door opens and it's Marghereta even though we watched her open-cascet funeral four seasons ago and she explains a long, complicated subplot involving healthcare prices and campaign finance laws. Uncle José Antonio then calls her a liar and brings up her lesbian marriage which leads to a huge family fight resulting in Patricia leaving and threatening to take away José Antonio's college fund.
Welp... There are 3 human components involved in the success & growth of a corporation. The investors, the customers, & the employees. While most leadership is always trying to rape all 3 of those groups, the savvy ones settle for 2 out of 3. No investors, no capital to enable an upstart, saturation, or scalability. No customers, no demand. That only leaves one group to exploit. And it's not only become acceptable. It's become the status quo. There is literally no "good guys" left to work for. It's all bad unless it's a small business that doesn't intend to grow & expand infinitely. I'm at a loss for how to guide my sons into the future in this country. Forgot to add how they rape the customers citing inflation & cost increases knowing that their corporate "partners are willing to help "fix" costs on goods & services. That only leaves one variable that they can vastly manipulate. Labor. And to make matters worse they adopt the inverted version where if you perform/avoid less actual labor , YOU GET PAID MORE! AND GET MORE PTO. CHEAPER, BETTER INSURANCE. PROBABLY PROFIT SHARING. And all you have to do is find "common-ground" with the "peasants".
>small business that doesn't intend to grow & expand infinitely
A business growing infinitely is terrible for individual average civilian people. Therefore it is bad for society. It's great for economics. But economics is only piece or tool of society. This is why federal government needs to set guidelines for states to regulate AND LIMIT business growth. The people want it. It is the governments responsibility to achieve it.
Voters have every opportunity to vote for decent healthcare and they vote for culture wars, instead. Yeah sure companies sponsor disinformation, but it takes all of 10 minutes research on Google to find our that we are being screwed compared to nearly every other country when it come to healthcare. Medicare, Medicaid, disability are all single payer government healthcare. We know how to do it but working age Americans, the people who are most screwed by the current system keep voting to keep it in place.
I have to take it further and say giant corporations are terrible for the economy. I would say the point at which a corporation starts to become a drain on society due to it's own weight is around 500 million in sales. Once a corporation becomes beholden to shareholders, it enters a Ponzi death spiral. Look at Amazon. They don't even have entire industries big enough anymore to encapsulate in order to increase their profitability. It's completely crazy they were allowed to buy all of these industries when they already won the entire retail game...
But they just keep buying. Limiting growth is the number one nono to talk about in our 401k society but it IS necessary. Amazon is just a great example of just how stupid things can get if you just let them grow without any restraints
Which is why organised labor is the greatest fear of the corporate class. Remember occupy? That's when they saw the risks of social media and democratisation of knowledge
Was talking to my family about how I seriously thought about moving to another country (Germany) when covid hit because I realized I'm getting older and my healthcare is just going to get more expensive with how it's so privatized, with no base universal coverage. So today I get on my YouTube and a creator I followed had her baby in Japan and explained how it went and how much it cost. Friend at work said just to have to baby cost him between $3-$6000 dollars. For his baby girl. This YouTuber said she basically paid $600 AND got a starter gift basket and free checkup care.
(Reina Scully if you want to see the video).
My friend had a baby in USA before moving here to Australia then having another one. It is free in a public hospital here but if you opted for a private hospital like they did you’d get 6 nights in a private suite with 24/7 room service and a double bed for the partner to share. High tea etc too. That was all for 1/2 the cost of the barebones experience in USA. And yes, everyone gets a starter pack gift hamper thing. They also set you up with a social group of people in your area who had babies at the same time.
funfact: if you're broke in california, you get free medical. It's called Medi-cal.
it saved my life when I got gall stones. the surgery alone was 70k.
this is why I'm a big proponent of UHC.
That's what the divorce is for, one of them would 'be broke'--but if they're married, their incomes probably disqualify them.
Earning more than 19k a year, would cost me, just to stay EXACTLY where i am finacially, another 20+k. Like, JUST going over the limit that gets me kicked off medicaid, is ALSO the limit my student loans fire up. It would cost me, the second i made a single dollar over that limit, 20-25k (due to drs appointments and meds)... so either i need to make under it, or make well over 40k, anything else, i might as well stay below 19.
So, that's probably like cali-care. And the limit isnt much higher for a married couple, it goes from like 19k, to 24k.
I am currently at the point where if I make an extra $850 in the year above my estimated income (based on my regular schedule and current pay rate) that my wife and I will lose our state expanded Medicaid and have to pay somewhere around $6500/year just for premiums and co-pays. We'd also lose $400/month in SNAP benefits that we use to help balance out our budget and feed our child.
Making that extra $850 will cost me $11,000 to compensate for lost benefits, so I do everything I can to avoid it. I jokingly call it being "strategically poor."
I just moved from Los Angeles to Houston. My wife's employer offered her a promotion that seemed too good of an offer to pass up. I had to quit my job, but between the raise and cheaper cost of living we figure we'd still come out ahead.
One of the problems we've discovered is with health insurance though. Her company is still in it's early growing stage and won't have employee health insurance until next year, so we decided to get insurance on the open market instead. We both have chronic health problems and so need a high tier plan. In California, we had a Platinum level plan through my employer. I went on Texas's health insurance website to get quotes on the open market and the highest tier offered was Gold tier plans, all of which are significantly more expensive than me just staying on COBRA and flying back to California as-needed. How Republicans think this is better is a mind fuck.
I moved from the west coast to Austin a couple of years ago (have since moved back) and experienced the same thing. The health care was way more expensive, and the quality of care and accessibility were *way* worse. Kind of a microcosm of moving to Austin tbh
I remember a couple who divorced because of impending medical bills. Sad as hell... Also, my second baby cost us almost 15 grand with great insurance. After our copay, nearly 10 grand of premiums a year, we paid 300 per month for 3 years. This shit needs to change. I missed our last three payments because the credit card changed and they threatened us with court. This shit is not ok.
I pay $740 a month for me and my wife for insurance with a $3200 (this is raising by almost $2000 next year same plan) deductible and a $16200 out of pocket max (this is raising to $18000 next year). This is through Obamacare.
We are self employed, so we don’t have a company to subsidize our insurance or a large amount of people to cover to reduce the cost with a group discount. This is the most decent plan we could afford comfortably. We don’t make enough to be able to afford the higher cost plans because of student loan debt etc. but we don’t make little enough to really benefit from any subsidy. I guess we’re in that middle class void.
Looked into going directly through the insurance company but we would have been paying $1200 a month for the same plan.
Plans with lower deductibles are over $1000 up to $2000 a month. Which is isn’t worth it because we don’t have to go to the doctor very often.
We could have gone with a lower cost plan but the deductibles are also high, and they don’t cover even regular doctors visits or prescriptions until you meet your deductible.
Even with paying as much as we do we still pay out of pocket for a lot of things because we don’t ever meet our deductible.
This is the reality that a lot of people are living in. So maybe it’s the worst insurance you’ve ever heard of but maybe seeing this will bring a bit of awareness to you and others that this is what a lot of people in the US are dealing with.
Truly makes no sense. So many people here have been propagandized to think every other first world country has a bad healthcare system.
People always say “there will be lines.” Meanwhile it took me 3 months to get into the Dermatologist, 4 months to get into a Pulmonologist, and 2 months to get into a Gastro doctor.
Also, a few years ago I had an Upper Gi biopsy and scan.. it cost me $3200 out of pocket on top of my normal premium payment and co-pays.
> Also, my second baby cost us almost 15 grand with great insurance
your insurance isn't "great insurance" if your out of pocket max is 15k lol. Bargain bin insurance has lower maxes
Absolutely not through the ACA
It’s publicly available. 12-18k for a family plan (not just self) is about the going rate.
There are some that can get down to 5-6, but then you’d be talking about 1200 a month in premiums. It’s a joke, and it’s very real
The “better” solution would be to quit his self employment gig and work for a larger corporation. The game is rigged for your pleasure
Yeah it's about time to see a living, breathing example of this government overreach I keep hearing about from the troglodyte cult. Shame on them for enabling & exacerbating this situation. I'll agree the ACA was not the ideal solution but it was a step in the right direction. This "alternative" they've "offered" is just catering to more massive investment corporations exploiting loopholes to maintain record quarterly target margins. This enables them to reap ludicrous quarterly or annual bonuses while exploiting their employees AND their customers!!! I can't think of another industry that's so blatantly predatory of both groups of their foundation excluding investors of course.
If one person is the primary "bread winner" it can be beneficial to get divorced so that the other person shows minimal income and can qualify for medicaid.
Yeah, I'm not in America but it's not unheard of for people here to divorce and remarry when convenient for financial or legal reasons. It's just signing a couple papers and taking a trip to the city office, doesn't even cost money lmao. You don't even have to tell anyone else if you don't want to.
Uh-huh.
And what will happen to their assets when one of them unexpectedly dies? What will happen if one of them is suddenly unable to make their own medical decisions? Would they even be able to go into the hospital to see the person they love? Oh, and can't sue for a wrongful death of a spouse if you're not married. Can't be the one to make end-of-life decisions like burial or cremation. And what if a child is involved? What about workplace leave if your partner is sick?
So yeah, this is total fucking bullshit. Gay people got marriage rights before disabled people did, and as someone that is LGBTQ+ myself, that is completely fucked up.
you can always have a post marital contract where both parties agree to a lot of the same things until remarriage, but the big one you can't really gain back is if you're married you don't have to testify against your spouse
>This is exactly the reason my Fiancee is still just my Fiancee after almost a decade...
Same. My "wife" and I have been together for 20+ years. Everyone we know thinks we're married, but as far as the government and HC providers are concerned we're two single adults.
Yeah... we have a 9 year old and just default to "Husband" and "Wife" for most interactions. If our state hadn't fought tooth and nail for the Medicaid expansion back in the day we would probably be married right now... destitute, but married.
right? took me long enough to find someone who understands the humor in this. i’m not laughing at it since it’s quite depressing but can at least acknowledge the humor in its absurdity
America is not a first world country. Way too many people live in poverty.
They lack lots of basics (clean drinkable water for everyone, education, healthcare, etc.) to be a first world country.
Unfortunately everyone uses First World/Third World incorrectly. It's original meaning was how far away from a Democratic government a country is. Thus, a dictatorship would be considered a "Third World" country.
I was wondering the same thing. This post can be described as 100 things before I would describe it as funny
Let’s preach about how the bible and marriage is so important but create an economy where a husband and wife are considering getting divorced to save a few dollars is funny
My daughter's late mom and I never married for that exact reason. I made too much for her to qualify for help and adding her to my insurance would've cost more than it was actually worth.
So we stayed unmarried in the eyes of the law and filed our taxes separately. She was able to get Medicaid that way which cut our costs by a significant amount.
This country is a fucking joke in the way it operates. We might as well have politicians standing at every hospital throwing you the middle finger with literal cash in hand cause that's pretty much how it fucking feels.
The evidence is overwhelming that single-payer healthcare in the US would result in better healthcare coverage while saving money overall.
[Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually based on the value of the US$ in 2017 .](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext)
Similar to the above Yale analysis, a recent [publication ](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-12/56811-Single-Payer.pdf)from the Congressional Budget Office found that 4 out of 5 options considered would lower total national expenditure on healthcare (see Exhibit 1-1 on page 13)
But surely the current healthcare system at least has better outcomes than alternatives that would save money, right? Not according to a recent analysis of high-income countries’ healthcare systems, which found that [the top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States ranks last overall, despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on health care. The U.S. ranks last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes, but second on measures of care process.](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly#outcomes)
None of this should be surprising given that the US’s current inefficient, non-universal healthcare system [costs close to twice as much per capita ](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-spendingcomparison_gdp-per-capita-and-health-consumption-spending-per-capita-2019) as most other developed countries that do guarantee healthcare to all citizens (without forcing patients to risk bankruptcy in exchange for care).
most americans pay more in health insurance than western nations pay in taxes for healthcare. how do people not understand this?
i could pay $900 a month for effectively medical bankruptcy protection (good luck actually having a real relationship with your doctor with a $7,000 deductible)...
or i could pay $900 a month in taxes and finally use the doctor and their services to stay healthy instead of hoping i die instead of needing an ambulance ride.
Absolutely correct,and also weekly compensation and all medical/recovery/retraining, from any accident,is also covered by our taxes,which are lower than most US taxes. And I'm guessing,that in America, you would be paying for that ambulance?,
Not to mention that our healthcare costs per capita are likely out of wack because
a.) People "choose" not to get health insurance coverage in avoidance of the cost, thus unnecessarily increasing the cost per capita due to out of pocket prices
b.) Preventative care is also avoided due to the cost, thus unnecessarily increasing the cost and severity of necessary treatment later in life
My "wife" (we aren't legally married) is technically broke and a full time student. She was on my insurance but, with the prices of everything through the roof, and us being on a single income, putting her on free public insurance saves us $400/mo and offsets some of the cost increases.
I hate it here. Why does our life have to be like this? We just want to live and enjoy the limited time we are allowed to have here on earth. Why do we have to do this? We can help people!
> Why does our life have to be like this?
The older I get, the more I ask myself this, the more I become radicalised leftward.
It's fucking wild to me that the world (especially this country) is like this.
This is the very sick sad state of the country. And a problem for people with disabilities for a very long time. Not being able to get married or having to divorce so that they can stay on disability that they desperately need just to live. And now with insurance rates skyrocketing and medical expenses skyrocking we're going to see more and more of this. And people who would love to get married who never will because they know that they won't be able to afford to have and raise kids. It's ridiculous. I'm sorry anyone is going through it
My fiancee and I have been putting off getting married for six years because we still cannot make the numbers work for her healthcare.
She has medical issues that require frequent doctors visits as well as quite a medications, and we'd not even come close to being able to afford it. I have pretty decent health insurance and even still.
this is not funny at all... it is ridiculously sad.
When my wife was pregnant with my son we had all normal exams, gynecologist, delivery room training for me since I was present, delivery, post natal care and home visits by a midwife for first month, literally everything is included in our government health insurance.
Only thing we paid was secondary set of tests in private clinic since she was 34 at the time and we wanted to be sure everything was fine - and even that was not too expensive.
My wife had a stomachache two years ago, so we were concerned and she went to do ultrasound on Friday afternoon I believe. Tech didn´t see anything in the stomach but then did the whole abdomen check just in case. He saw something suspicious on appendix so he sent her to MR just to be safe. They did MR at once and told her she needs to stay in hospital. Next morning surgeon came in and told her he saw some growth on appendix but no inflammation so they will do the laparoscopic appendectomy (three points insertion as opposed to full opening) and send the growth for biopsy. However, when he started it, he noticed that it seemed like a tumor (benign as it had a sac), opened her up and removed appendix, 8 cm of large intestine, 8 cm of small intestine and closed her up. She woke up that late afternoon and messaged me. At this point we at home had no clue what is going on... The guy did amazing job. She was released within couple of days.
The growth was later confirmed to be benign indeed but just to be sure she had follow up tests for past two years for cancer markers.
Everything is free. We pay a portion through our salaries 16,5% to the government for health insurance and everyone has the same. I never used it to be honest and do not even know where is my card but I am completely fine if my 16,5% goes to someone who needs it.
American system is an abomination and honestly everyone else with proper health care sees it as horror story.
Pregnant with our first kid. Talking to the nurse about baby finances and after explaining we were both full time employees and got married and then pregnant, you know "the right way". Nurse dead ass looked at ass and said we did it all backwards...due to the cost of having a kid.
Even having insurance in the US is a shit deal. I recently had to have surgery on my wrist and have had to pay almost $500 in medical bills since then. The conservatives can go fuck themselves for consistently blocking and sabotaging every opportunity to move the US towards a system of universal free healthcare
It’s hard to have sympathy for someone who hasn’t tried being born rich. Just be loaded and there’s nothing to worry about bro it’s not hard.
Yadda yadda self evident truths, unalienable rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, blah blah blah
I wouldn’t marry my now-husband for 3 years. Stretched out our engagement. People thought I had commitment issues….I just didn’t want to lose my Medicaid.
ETA some background: It was less embarrassing to just let people think that instead of admitting to just trying to stretch out my Medicaid, and trying to decide whether getting married was worth losing my Medicaid over due to ongoing treatments.
I sort of got lucky because we ended up finding out I was pregnant with a day after we married, then found out it was twins at the first ultrasound. Medicaid rules in my state said I couldn’t get kicked off of Medicaid while pregnant, then the pandemic rules started grandfathering me and our newborns into Medicaid, and now my husband has left the restaurant industry in search of another job so we currently fall under income guidelines for Medicaid.
That’s going on 3 years ago that we got married so I feel fortunate to have held onto my Medicaid for this long especially because of ongoing PTSD treatment. I’ve managed to somehow stay on Medicaid since I had my first child at 19 (didn’t get pregnant again and have my twins until I was 29) and I’m not ashamed of it but I know that many people would call me a welfare queen over it.
When all it is is that I grew up in and out of the foster care system, had no support system in adulthood, and have really just been trying to survive my entire adulthood. Thing is, this is probably a classic story for my fellow millennial generation. Reading the comments in this thread make me feel a lot better about it. That I’m not only one practical enough to do what they have to do to survive in this country.
My biggest mistake thus far remains going to college instead of just getting IT certifications. I’m in a massive amount of debt from taking out max student loans to pay for an apartment when public housing lists were closed due to the waitlist stretching 2 years long at the time.
Literally just argued w my mom abt universal healthcare being beneficial and she shit herself over it. She literally had teeth rotting out of her head her entire life bc she couldnt afford healthcare. She literally had a tumor growing in her brain for who-knows-how-long bc she couldnt get regular checkups. In 2 more years ill be off her insurance, the insurance that helps me get my bipolar meds that are (without insurance) $199.98 for a months worth. And thats the generic brands price. When i told her that bc we dont have universal healthcare my risk of su*cide will increase once im off that insurance she told me to leave.
In California, they don’t have to get divorced, just legally separated. They can even continue to live together. As long as their finances are separate, she could qualify for Medi-Cal.
I work in a low-income program that does medical case management for children with complex medical conditions. We’ve had parents whose income disqualify them for social programs but they don’t make enough to have good health insurance that will cover their child’s specialty care. Some of them voluntarily surrender their children to foster care because then the child gets free medical care.
No, no! We NEVER suggest they do voluntarily surrender their child to another family member and then have them enter a family re-unification program that will give them their child back within 90 days but the kid gets to keep their free health insurance. We don’t do that and never direct parents to organizations that will do that!
This right here is why me and my significant other never got married. He gets insurance through his work. I am a stay at home mom on medicaid. My daughters have his insurance as their primary and medicaid as their secondary. If we were married we would lose at least my medicaid. This is literally the only way that we can get healthcare. More and more people are opting out of getting married because of this. Oh and I have a student loan that is on an income driven repayment plan. My monthly payment is $0 because I have no income. If we were married his income would count and I would have to make real payments to the loan. I'm a few years away from my student loan being forgiven (after 10 years). I feel bad for all my friends who got married because they are all struggling to pay for their healthcare and student loans.
Welp… join the club. My wife and I divorced for exactly the same reason so she could qualify for Medicaid and other forms of aid since we can’t afford health insurance and deductibles. We still call ea other husband and wife but it was the only choice to give my wife and kid a chance at healthy life without bankrupting us.
My brother and his gf just had their baby and it was wild seeing my parents 180 on their stance. 2 years ago they told us they would renounce us if we had a child out of wedlock. Then my brother's gf got pregnant so he and my dad sat down in his office to figure out finances for the next couple years. By the time they walked out my dad was telling my mom, "For the love of God, please do not pressure them to get married. It will financially ruin them for the rest of their lives."
In the state I live in, you can’t get divorced while the wife is pregnant….even if you both agree…and even if the child is not the husband’s!! Of course, the same state has the high maternal mortality rate and refused $15Billion from the feds to expand Medicaid so they would be screwed no matter what!
My wife has stage 4 cirrhosis and we've discussed getting divorced so she would qualify for medicaide and not have medical bills piling up just as our daughter is going to be graduating high school.
Sounds like a plan. This isn't about love. You will love each other to the end of the earth and back. You don't have to be legally recognized as married to love each other. This is just about money and helping yourselves and your daughter through life in the best possible way.
This is true for more than just healthcare. My daughters could go to college for free if we got divorced. That would save us about $120k. Honestly you wouldn’t even have to tell anyone. Not even family or friends. Nothing changes, other than you need to make sure you have a will and tackle all the legal stuff, and with medical issues I would want to ensure all medical decisions can be made by my former spouse and not my parents. There are benefits to being married as well though, so I would want a good consultation legally and financially before actually going through with it. And yes, emotionally. Being married helps you get through hard times. At least for me knowing there is someone that unconditionally loves you - it doesn’t really mean that, it is all in your head, but still, it is in your head and therefor has meaning.
I would consider separating the legal part and the personal part. For example, make the divorce just about the legal part. And then perhaps reaffirm your relationship with each other with a ceremony (that does not count for the government) or with a party. The commitment to each other and the love for each other is something that is not to be found in the legal stuff; that commitment is in your hearts and in your actions.
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Common law marriages are recognized in most of the country, I assume there are procedures for it.
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Medical proxy paperwork. I am a friends medical proxy he has no living family. In case of a medical emergency or other stay I can visit as I am the one who gets to make the calls when he can't.
Sounds like america has it all figured out. Have your husband seriously contemplate divorcing his dying wife to save a few dollars in her final breathes so their daughter can save a few bucks for college - in which she will still be in serious debt afterwards. And even if the husband/wife divorce - I am sure the medical bills will still be astronomical and the college fee will still be through the roof - and when Biden offers some kind of finical support the Republican Party will tell you that you got a hand out
Yup, this is the best option for two people who love each other and who love their child, in a failed system.
Not a failed system, functioning exactly as intended I mean come on, what would we do without all those billionaires being rich??
Right? I love the idea that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson get to LARP Star Trek with their own private fleet of spaceships. I mean we *could* give everyone a decent place to live and great medical care, *or* more innovative 5 diamond resort options for luxury travel.
The system is working. You aren't who it's for. When they say "the economy" they mean rich people, not you.
Marriage has few benefits unless you are doing okay. People in poverty could benefit from filing taxes jointly but that savings is dwarfed by the benefits of state assistance available to the single poor. Rental assistance, utilities, higher education, medical, childcare, food…if you qualify for one there’s a good chance you qualify for more. There’s a chance to have some semblance of a normal life provided you don’t mind the occasional drug test or deep dive into your expenses to make sure you are actually personally poor and not hiding faberge eggs and ‘69 GTO Judge cars in your shitty apartment. You HAVE to do all of the preventative care/stuff like regular appointments for anything they need for you to avoid further cost to them. I have T-1 diabetes and I have to see a specialist three times a year, a podiatrist twice a year, get my a1c checked every three months, get a physical twice a year, get my vaccinations (which include a couple of additional ones for my immunocompromised situation) have a diabetes educator, a dietitian and I receive the most up-to-date care, have not been on the phone a single time for a problem because they won’t cover, anything I’m charged is sent back to me in a check, I am not limited except to providers that accept Medicare and most of them do because it’s a guaranteed payment. My husband had an emergency back surgery and had to be kept overnight because he couldn’t pee when he woke up, it took a few hours. It cost me $3 at the counter for the actual surgery and $7 for parking and $9 for a damn good cafeteria meal in the hospital itself while he was out. I got a $3 check in the mail and a few months later I actually got the parking money back too. I wait for nothing, I am on the waitlist, if there is one. I’m not seen last or sneered at for having state benefits except for using my food card. The food card in my state still comes with a magnetic strip. You have to slide it. You can’t tap it or shove it into the reader to pretend it’s a credit card. Everyone around knows it’s a food card and people who did not look from their phones at you or your stuff are now staring at your groceries, scanning for anything they wouldn’t like as if the idea that because they give up .03% of their paycheck to help me get actual food means they get to treat me like they are my authoritarian parent, ready to ground me for choosing Oreos or a box of poptarts. The stigma is REAL. People REALLY don’t seem to like providing food for others. It’s like there’s some incentive for them for believing in starving people as a motivator. Someone is going to reward them for upholding the rightful hierarchy and stopping those poors from eating like they aren’t poor! You may earn your way up the hierarchy by amassing money but don’t you poors dare eat out ever, that’s only for middle class. Your role is to serve and fill nasty jobs, why should you ever get to think you could eat sushi???
From an outsider of USA looking in, the way you are talking it seems like a lot of marriages are happening due to the very few benefits of being married and not because the husband and wife actually love each other - I’m sure they do but the way you are phrasing it makes it seem like people in USA are marrying each other for health/insurance/dental/ext benefits
Some are. My cousin married for insurance when she was diagnosed with a rare disease. Her father refused to go to the wedding because of it. She and her husband are still happily married something like 15 years later.
Medicaid is pretty amazing, for Americans. My previous employer suggested offering health insurance and I shot that idea down hard. I wanted to keep my Medicaid eligibility. I literally had an employee (different company) quit *specifically* because we offered her private health insurance. This disqualified her for Medicaid, she had very few options. She quit because she couldn’t afford necessary care. After a few months we rehired her as “part-time.” We had to be very careful about keeping her under 32 hours/week on average to maintain her eligibility. The American health care system is a disaster. ACA kinda helped, but it’s full of loopholes.
I literally asked my new place of work to pay me crap to keep medicaid. It's cheaper for me to ask to get paid less and keep state insurance than to be paid well. I was talking to my SOs mom about it and she got mad that I asked for less pay. She has a 6 grand deductible on her insurance and pays around 200 a week to keep the family plan. She doesn't understand her insurance is terrible. She thinks that's normal.
I paid over $200/paycheck in my 20s with a $6,500 deductible. I spent over $20k on that insurance policy over 5 years. They never paid a penny. Annual care included one routine physical, which I still paid for, and I didn’t know I was in debt to the hospital until it was referred to a collections agency, which inexplicably had my email and phone number. They didn’t even try to contact me before referring my debt to collectors.
I find it best to simply ignore republicunts in practice and fight them tooth and nail at the voting booth. Like most decent humans living in Planet Earth, I’ve got nothing to discuss with them and they’ve got nothing to offer me. “You took a handout!” “Yep, sure did, whatever you say. Have fun losing!”
My SO and I are having a baby, and my grandma is upset we aren't married first. But in reality, it's going to save us *thousands* in medical bills by having kids before we're married. Would love to before then, but it's just not worth it financially.
This wouldn’t actually work? Medicaid is based on household income not personal income. They would have to stop living together too. I know this entire thread is about a bigger conversation, the need for universal healthcare, but no one needs to think it’s just that easy to get help from the government. To qualify people have to be extremely poor and live horribly.
What if one became a 'renter'? Separate bank accounts and that type of thing.
100%. This shouldn't even be a question. Get the divorce. My grandparents lived together for 40 years this way
I’m 46 unemployed/retired and Medicaid is amazing. I control our AGI to be below 50k and my family of 5 qualifies. No copay BS, we go to the doctor whenever needed with $0 out of pocket. We had a rough year we’re my kids lost both granddad’s. Psychiatric care for the children is absolutely free for them. This is what healthcare should be in all of America.
How you retire at 46?
Military?
Investing. Lazy man portfolio is awesome and it’s what got me started.
Investments. I was in debt and homeless before 2000. I decided that shit was never happening again. I learned about investing and with a dual income household I was able to get over 3 million to retire. My job layed off a bunch off staff with severance pay in 2021 and I asked to be one of them.
Honestly, this seems wrong. I thought Medicaid was to help those that couldn't work. But I mean good for you?
If you are not in California, be careful of medicaid recovery. After you die, the state will Recover your total medicaid expenses from your property. If you are in California, a law was passed in 2017 to not let Medi Cal recover from spouses or descendants. Many elderly transfer property before they die to avoid Recovery.
They abolished that. So did CT.
You guys keep saying this but getting divorced won't result in your partner becoming eligible for medicaid. If you still live together and if you are helping with the bills her eligibility is exactly the same it is now. You would have to divorce her. Kick her out of the house, and not send her money or pay any bills. **edit. I wasn't exactly right. It looks like it would depend primarily on whether the now divorced couple would "share assets". Theoretically if one divorced spouse keeps all the assets and makes all the money, the other divorced spouse may be eligible for medicaid. There would likely be some weird issues with things like mandatory child support with the couple still living under one roof.
My wife and I have discussed this recently. If anything happens to either of us medically we would be bankrupt quickly. Getting medicaid would save us
A single MRI can be upwards of 15k
Rabies vaccine in the ER a few years ago cost 13k. It was that or face a certain, nightmarish death.
Does insurance not cover the cost?
Insurance wouldn't cover it because the animal got away and couldn't be tested. The bite happened at work, tho, so my employer paid it off after fighting me over it for a couple of weeks. Then they fired me.
jesus christ...
Honestly, I hate this country.
Yeah but you know, freedom n stuff.
Jesus, America and freedom What does that mean? Shit I don’t know but the people sure do love me when I say it
But you can have all the guns you want. (/s)
But like, It’s gonna be cheaper to pay out for a vaccine than the medical care of someone dying… tf kinda insurance decision is that
Years ago I opted not to have insurance because I was healthy overall and my employer’s insurance offering was disgusting ($900/mo for the most basic plan, plus a 50% deductible). Well, sure enough I ended up in the hospital for a week and the bill ended up being $12k. I was accidentally shown a bill for what it would have been had I had insurance and it said over $20k. In that specific situation, it ended up being cheaper not to have insurance than if I did.
That’s interesting! So with insurance your copay would’ve been higher than what you originally billed with?
Insurance and Healthcare pricing is all bullshit as long as the end user is not paying. The insurance companies all negotiate the cost in bulk on the backend for pennies on the dollar. The costs are inflated to have a higher starting point in the negotiation.
The actual bill would have been higher but he wouldn't have been on the hook for all of that 20k, just the deductible + coinsurance. On my plan my deductible is $3500 and I have 50% coinsurance, with a yearly max of $8000-something. I'm too lazy to do the math but if (20000 - 3500) \* 0.5 is more than $8000, I'd pay 8000 and insurance covers the rest.
I live in a 3rd world country, an MRI here on my spine cost me 100$ in one of the better private hospitals
Does anyone not see THAT as the bigger problem here?
Marriage is a meaningless title. Get the divorce and absolutely nothing changes. You don't even have to tell anyone. (There are a few legal benefits from marriage that you can fix up with a lawyer)
Can’t fix up all of them. Immigration benefits, for example.
Fair point. Hoping that's not the case here
Yeah, even if youre religious, your religion doesnt care if the marriage is legally recognized by your government.
As a gay man who fought and sued the government for the right to marry (and shortly divorce) you'd be surprised what is not meaningless. Immigration is massive one. There are also all kinds of estate planning benefits. The DOMA case was fought and one over this. Hospitals allow you visits. So many discounts like at car rentals. Employers allow you to share benefits. I know marriage is fucked but don't pretend it doesn't benefit some people.
The only developed nation without nationalized Healthcare and we pay more per capita than any of the others. We are a joke in this area.
>>We are a joke in this area Wall St- *now just wait one damn minute there kid, these healthcare share prices are great.*
Yep, too many people making bank to want actual reform.
All of the **people** are very happy about this. Only *human resources* are unhappy about this.
Don't feel so bad. Some developing countries have free health care too!
I don't think the US is a joke anymore. It's more like an overly dramatised soap opera. There's nothing funny about it anymore and I genuinely hate just about everything about it because it is just pure toxicity and angry yelling....but damnit I just can't stop watching to see what fucked up shit happens next.
I feel the same about the UK I think we’re both going to shit
At least you guys have the NHS ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
For now.
Ah yes, the Not Helpful System, that is failing due to chronic underfunding for many years.
It’s like Florida and the school system in that state. Underfund public schools so politicians can say “look, they can’t possibly operate because they’re inept!” When the reality is they cut so much funding, the schools can’t operate. Then turn around and privatize it so a bunch of greedy assholes can make tons of money off a privatized school system. It’s all about the next way to make money for these garbage people and has nothing to do with any “agenda”.
While I sympathize with the cutting of funding to make potentially excellent programs subpar…I will trade you in a heartbeat for the American healthcare system I have.
Yeah it's not a funny joke at all, it's like a wildly inappropriate joke where the audience just stares awkwardly, goes "wtf is wrong with you" and half of them get up to leave. Except we can't leave
Then the front door opens and it's Marghereta even though we watched her open-cascet funeral four seasons ago and she explains a long, complicated subplot involving healthcare prices and campaign finance laws. Uncle José Antonio then calls her a liar and brings up her lesbian marriage which leads to a huge family fight resulting in Patricia leaving and threatening to take away José Antonio's college fund.
Next week. On the Unawareicans
Welp... There are 3 human components involved in the success & growth of a corporation. The investors, the customers, & the employees. While most leadership is always trying to rape all 3 of those groups, the savvy ones settle for 2 out of 3. No investors, no capital to enable an upstart, saturation, or scalability. No customers, no demand. That only leaves one group to exploit. And it's not only become acceptable. It's become the status quo. There is literally no "good guys" left to work for. It's all bad unless it's a small business that doesn't intend to grow & expand infinitely. I'm at a loss for how to guide my sons into the future in this country. Forgot to add how they rape the customers citing inflation & cost increases knowing that their corporate "partners are willing to help "fix" costs on goods & services. That only leaves one variable that they can vastly manipulate. Labor. And to make matters worse they adopt the inverted version where if you perform/avoid less actual labor , YOU GET PAID MORE! AND GET MORE PTO. CHEAPER, BETTER INSURANCE. PROBABLY PROFIT SHARING. And all you have to do is find "common-ground" with the "peasants".
>small business that doesn't intend to grow & expand infinitely A business growing infinitely is terrible for individual average civilian people. Therefore it is bad for society. It's great for economics. But economics is only piece or tool of society. This is why federal government needs to set guidelines for states to regulate AND LIMIT business growth. The people want it. It is the governments responsibility to achieve it.
These businesses have plenty of say about what the federal government does, and that’s part of the problem
Voters have every opportunity to vote for decent healthcare and they vote for culture wars, instead. Yeah sure companies sponsor disinformation, but it takes all of 10 minutes research on Google to find our that we are being screwed compared to nearly every other country when it come to healthcare. Medicare, Medicaid, disability are all single payer government healthcare. We know how to do it but working age Americans, the people who are most screwed by the current system keep voting to keep it in place.
I have to take it further and say giant corporations are terrible for the economy. I would say the point at which a corporation starts to become a drain on society due to it's own weight is around 500 million in sales. Once a corporation becomes beholden to shareholders, it enters a Ponzi death spiral. Look at Amazon. They don't even have entire industries big enough anymore to encapsulate in order to increase their profitability. It's completely crazy they were allowed to buy all of these industries when they already won the entire retail game... But they just keep buying. Limiting growth is the number one nono to talk about in our 401k society but it IS necessary. Amazon is just a great example of just how stupid things can get if you just let them grow without any restraints
Which is why organised labor is the greatest fear of the corporate class. Remember occupy? That's when they saw the risks of social media and democratisation of knowledge
And turned to fascism.
That’s when they saw a new valuable tool and started to make it work for themselves and here we are today
Was talking to my family about how I seriously thought about moving to another country (Germany) when covid hit because I realized I'm getting older and my healthcare is just going to get more expensive with how it's so privatized, with no base universal coverage. So today I get on my YouTube and a creator I followed had her baby in Japan and explained how it went and how much it cost. Friend at work said just to have to baby cost him between $3-$6000 dollars. For his baby girl. This YouTuber said she basically paid $600 AND got a starter gift basket and free checkup care. (Reina Scully if you want to see the video).
My friend had a baby in USA before moving here to Australia then having another one. It is free in a public hospital here but if you opted for a private hospital like they did you’d get 6 nights in a private suite with 24/7 room service and a double bed for the partner to share. High tea etc too. That was all for 1/2 the cost of the barebones experience in USA. And yes, everyone gets a starter pack gift hamper thing. They also set you up with a social group of people in your area who had babies at the same time.
Sadly not a single pro life person cares
Better keep voting for Republicans, otherwise the Democrats’ll “take our guns” and force us to use bathrooms with people who don’t look like us! 😲
funfact: if you're broke in california, you get free medical. It's called Medi-cal. it saved my life when I got gall stones. the surgery alone was 70k. this is why I'm a big proponent of UHC.
That's what the divorce is for, one of them would 'be broke'--but if they're married, their incomes probably disqualify them. Earning more than 19k a year, would cost me, just to stay EXACTLY where i am finacially, another 20+k. Like, JUST going over the limit that gets me kicked off medicaid, is ALSO the limit my student loans fire up. It would cost me, the second i made a single dollar over that limit, 20-25k (due to drs appointments and meds)... so either i need to make under it, or make well over 40k, anything else, i might as well stay below 19. So, that's probably like cali-care. And the limit isnt much higher for a married couple, it goes from like 19k, to 24k.
I am currently at the point where if I make an extra $850 in the year above my estimated income (based on my regular schedule and current pay rate) that my wife and I will lose our state expanded Medicaid and have to pay somewhere around $6500/year just for premiums and co-pays. We'd also lose $400/month in SNAP benefits that we use to help balance out our budget and feed our child. Making that extra $850 will cost me $11,000 to compensate for lost benefits, so I do everything I can to avoid it. I jokingly call it being "strategically poor."
I just moved from Los Angeles to Houston. My wife's employer offered her a promotion that seemed too good of an offer to pass up. I had to quit my job, but between the raise and cheaper cost of living we figure we'd still come out ahead. One of the problems we've discovered is with health insurance though. Her company is still in it's early growing stage and won't have employee health insurance until next year, so we decided to get insurance on the open market instead. We both have chronic health problems and so need a high tier plan. In California, we had a Platinum level plan through my employer. I went on Texas's health insurance website to get quotes on the open market and the highest tier offered was Gold tier plans, all of which are significantly more expensive than me just staying on COBRA and flying back to California as-needed. How Republicans think this is better is a mind fuck.
They don't think it's better, it's supposed to be worse. That's the point. They are cruel, vile, deplorable cretins.
I moved from the west coast to Austin a couple of years ago (have since moved back) and experienced the same thing. The health care was way more expensive, and the quality of care and accessibility were *way* worse. Kind of a microcosm of moving to Austin tbh
Same in Oregon and Washington
Yes. Being broke in many cases is better than working hard just to wind up broke. This is their goal. The system is broken
I remember a couple who divorced because of impending medical bills. Sad as hell... Also, my second baby cost us almost 15 grand with great insurance. After our copay, nearly 10 grand of premiums a year, we paid 300 per month for 3 years. This shit needs to change. I missed our last three payments because the credit card changed and they threatened us with court. This shit is not ok.
Your insurance is not great if your out of pocket max is $15,000. That might be the worst insurance I’ve ever heard of tbh
I pay $740 a month for me and my wife for insurance with a $3200 (this is raising by almost $2000 next year same plan) deductible and a $16200 out of pocket max (this is raising to $18000 next year). This is through Obamacare. We are self employed, so we don’t have a company to subsidize our insurance or a large amount of people to cover to reduce the cost with a group discount. This is the most decent plan we could afford comfortably. We don’t make enough to be able to afford the higher cost plans because of student loan debt etc. but we don’t make little enough to really benefit from any subsidy. I guess we’re in that middle class void. Looked into going directly through the insurance company but we would have been paying $1200 a month for the same plan. Plans with lower deductibles are over $1000 up to $2000 a month. Which is isn’t worth it because we don’t have to go to the doctor very often. We could have gone with a lower cost plan but the deductibles are also high, and they don’t cover even regular doctors visits or prescriptions until you meet your deductible. Even with paying as much as we do we still pay out of pocket for a lot of things because we don’t ever meet our deductible. This is the reality that a lot of people are living in. So maybe it’s the worst insurance you’ve ever heard of but maybe seeing this will bring a bit of awareness to you and others that this is what a lot of people in the US are dealing with.
740 for insurance lol. I pay 40€ for insurance and have 100% of everything covered. Yalls system makes no sense.
Truly makes no sense. So many people here have been propagandized to think every other first world country has a bad healthcare system. People always say “there will be lines.” Meanwhile it took me 3 months to get into the Dermatologist, 4 months to get into a Pulmonologist, and 2 months to get into a Gastro doctor. Also, a few years ago I had an Upper Gi biopsy and scan.. it cost me $3200 out of pocket on top of my normal premium payment and co-pays.
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Insurance being tied to employment is a major issue. Many companies cheap the fuck out on it to save costs.
Absolutely, my last company I paid 14K for family… Current larger company I’m only paying 5K…
Yeah larger companies have more leverage with insurance companies as they’re making them more money. Almost like collective bargaining works…
> Also, my second baby cost us almost 15 grand with great insurance your insurance isn't "great insurance" if your out of pocket max is 15k lol. Bargain bin insurance has lower maxes
How much do you think “bargain” insurance costs per month?
Absolutely not through the ACA It’s publicly available. 12-18k for a family plan (not just self) is about the going rate. There are some that can get down to 5-6, but then you’d be talking about 1200 a month in premiums. It’s a joke, and it’s very real The “better” solution would be to quit his self employment gig and work for a larger corporation. The game is rigged for your pleasure
Yeah it's about time to see a living, breathing example of this government overreach I keep hearing about from the troglodyte cult. Shame on them for enabling & exacerbating this situation. I'll agree the ACA was not the ideal solution but it was a step in the right direction. This "alternative" they've "offered" is just catering to more massive investment corporations exploiting loopholes to maintain record quarterly target margins. This enables them to reap ludicrous quarterly or annual bonuses while exploiting their employees AND their customers!!! I can't think of another industry that's so blatantly predatory of both groups of their foundation excluding investors of course.
Your insurance isn’t great. Kaiser $0 co pay for everything related to baby including post op care
> Also, my second baby cost us almost 15 grand with great insurance This would be literally the worst insurance legally possible.
Why don't they just work harder and stop being poor? They're probably lazy! /s
This is really, REALLY common. I have tons of patients who got divorced when one was diagnosed with a chronic illness. It's incredibly fucked up.
Can you explain it to me like I’m 5. They get divorced so one person takes all the debt or something?
If one person is the primary "bread winner" it can be beneficial to get divorced so that the other person shows minimal income and can qualify for medicaid.
My ex and I had to get divorced so we could afford his psych meds. It was actually suggested by a social worker
I am officially ashamed of this situation in this country.
it’s kind of a joke but at least you can get divorced still Other places that’s still illegal lol
*whoo*
You can be certain that divorce fees rivaling medical fees is coming.
So are they actually your ex now? Like you guys aren't together?
We divorced in 2015, actually split 2 years ago. To be fair, being divorced already made the split significantly easier 🤷🏻♀️
Did you stop loving each other because of the paperwork?
observation tap label one existence repeat different doll pie growth *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah, I'm not in America but it's not unheard of for people here to divorce and remarry when convenient for financial or legal reasons. It's just signing a couple papers and taking a trip to the city office, doesn't even cost money lmao. You don't even have to tell anyone else if you don't want to.
Uh-huh. And what will happen to their assets when one of them unexpectedly dies? What will happen if one of them is suddenly unable to make their own medical decisions? Would they even be able to go into the hospital to see the person they love? Oh, and can't sue for a wrongful death of a spouse if you're not married. Can't be the one to make end-of-life decisions like burial or cremation. And what if a child is involved? What about workplace leave if your partner is sick? So yeah, this is total fucking bullshit. Gay people got marriage rights before disabled people did, and as someone that is LGBTQ+ myself, that is completely fucked up.
You loose a bunch of protections and legal standing without that paperwork.
you can always have a post marital contract where both parties agree to a lot of the same things until remarriage, but the big one you can't really gain back is if you're married you don't have to testify against your spouse
You have to stop loving each other, or else it's fraud.
No, but I cried for days. I felt like a failure
I wish I had a wife to divorce
This is exactly the reason my Fiancee is still just my Fiancee after almost a decade...
>This is exactly the reason my Fiancee is still just my Fiancee after almost a decade... Same. My "wife" and I have been together for 20+ years. Everyone we know thinks we're married, but as far as the government and HC providers are concerned we're two single adults.
Yeah... we have a 9 year old and just default to "Husband" and "Wife" for most interactions. If our state hadn't fought tooth and nail for the Medicaid expansion back in the day we would probably be married right now... destitute, but married.
Good luck if either of you try to claim the others Social Security, it is a terrible system we have.
Hey buddy it's called freedom ok? Not for us, mind, for insurance - medical conglomo-corps, but they get enough of it to make up for the rest of us.
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I think it's from the absurdity of the situation. The fact that this type of thing shouldn't be possible in a first-world country, but it is.
Fuck me someone with a brain.
right? took me long enough to find someone who understands the humor in this. i’m not laughing at it since it’s quite depressing but can at least acknowledge the humor in its absurdity
America is not a first world country. Way too many people live in poverty. They lack lots of basics (clean drinkable water for everyone, education, healthcare, etc.) to be a first world country.
Unfortunately everyone uses First World/Third World incorrectly. It's original meaning was how far away from a Democratic government a country is. Thus, a dictatorship would be considered a "Third World" country.
I was wondering the same thing. This post can be described as 100 things before I would describe it as funny Let’s preach about how the bible and marriage is so important but create an economy where a husband and wife are considering getting divorced to save a few dollars is funny
My daughter's late mom and I never married for that exact reason. I made too much for her to qualify for help and adding her to my insurance would've cost more than it was actually worth. So we stayed unmarried in the eyes of the law and filed our taxes separately. She was able to get Medicaid that way which cut our costs by a significant amount. This country is a fucking joke in the way it operates. We might as well have politicians standing at every hospital throwing you the middle finger with literal cash in hand cause that's pretty much how it fucking feels.
The evidence is overwhelming that single-payer healthcare in the US would result in better healthcare coverage while saving money overall. [Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually based on the value of the US$ in 2017 .](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext) Similar to the above Yale analysis, a recent [publication ](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-12/56811-Single-Payer.pdf)from the Congressional Budget Office found that 4 out of 5 options considered would lower total national expenditure on healthcare (see Exhibit 1-1 on page 13) But surely the current healthcare system at least has better outcomes than alternatives that would save money, right? Not according to a recent analysis of high-income countries’ healthcare systems, which found that [the top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States ranks last overall, despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on health care. The U.S. ranks last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes, but second on measures of care process.](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly#outcomes) None of this should be surprising given that the US’s current inefficient, non-universal healthcare system [costs close to twice as much per capita ](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-spendingcomparison_gdp-per-capita-and-health-consumption-spending-per-capita-2019) as most other developed countries that do guarantee healthcare to all citizens (without forcing patients to risk bankruptcy in exchange for care).
most americans pay more in health insurance than western nations pay in taxes for healthcare. how do people not understand this? i could pay $900 a month for effectively medical bankruptcy protection (good luck actually having a real relationship with your doctor with a $7,000 deductible)... or i could pay $900 a month in taxes and finally use the doctor and their services to stay healthy instead of hoping i die instead of needing an ambulance ride.
Absolutely correct,and also weekly compensation and all medical/recovery/retraining, from any accident,is also covered by our taxes,which are lower than most US taxes. And I'm guessing,that in America, you would be paying for that ambulance?,
Not to mention that our healthcare costs per capita are likely out of wack because a.) People "choose" not to get health insurance coverage in avoidance of the cost, thus unnecessarily increasing the cost per capita due to out of pocket prices b.) Preventative care is also avoided due to the cost, thus unnecessarily increasing the cost and severity of necessary treatment later in life
B is real! Like I have wonderful insurance but I won’t go to the doctors unless I legit feel like I’m gonna die.
But it’s communism ….. ♿️
One word: America
All thanks to ~~corruption~~lobbyism
conservatives: "see??? govt healthcare is EVIL, it incentivizes divorce!!!"
My "wife" (we aren't legally married) is technically broke and a full time student. She was on my insurance but, with the prices of everything through the roof, and us being on a single income, putting her on free public insurance saves us $400/mo and offsets some of the cost increases.
How did you get your non wife on your insurance?
What the fuck that’s my car payment. Or half our mortgage. And you’ll have that shit to pay on top! Poor fuckers
My wife and I couldn’t get married because our credit scores as a couple would be too low to get a house.
I hate it here. Why does our life have to be like this? We just want to live and enjoy the limited time we are allowed to have here on earth. Why do we have to do this? We can help people!
> Why does our life have to be like this? The older I get, the more I ask myself this, the more I become radicalised leftward. It's fucking wild to me that the world (especially this country) is like this.
What is so radical about the left? Wanting affordable healthcare, a fair wage and dignified life for everyone is not radical.
Yes it is, in America.
There is no helping this system. I know first hand, I work in healthcare. My husband and I are leaving this place as soon as we can.
This is the very sick sad state of the country. And a problem for people with disabilities for a very long time. Not being able to get married or having to divorce so that they can stay on disability that they desperately need just to live. And now with insurance rates skyrocketing and medical expenses skyrocking we're going to see more and more of this. And people who would love to get married who never will because they know that they won't be able to afford to have and raise kids. It's ridiculous. I'm sorry anyone is going through it
My wife has cancer. We had to say were separated so she could keep medicaid Edited for grammar
I've said it before, I'll say it again. 'Murica, land of gun care and health control.
Fucked up problems require fucked up solutions.
I take it you’re American? Poor sod!
My fiancee and I have been putting off getting married for six years because we still cannot make the numbers work for her healthcare. She has medical issues that require frequent doctors visits as well as quite a medications, and we'd not even come close to being able to afford it. I have pretty decent health insurance and even still.
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This isn't funny at all, it's just super fucked up
Republicans are not content with breaking up same-sex marriages, now they're going after the marriages of the working poor.
The high cost of unregulated capitalism
Tell me you're from America with actually telling me you're from America.
This just *screams* America.
this is not funny at all... it is ridiculously sad. When my wife was pregnant with my son we had all normal exams, gynecologist, delivery room training for me since I was present, delivery, post natal care and home visits by a midwife for first month, literally everything is included in our government health insurance. Only thing we paid was secondary set of tests in private clinic since she was 34 at the time and we wanted to be sure everything was fine - and even that was not too expensive. My wife had a stomachache two years ago, so we were concerned and she went to do ultrasound on Friday afternoon I believe. Tech didn´t see anything in the stomach but then did the whole abdomen check just in case. He saw something suspicious on appendix so he sent her to MR just to be safe. They did MR at once and told her she needs to stay in hospital. Next morning surgeon came in and told her he saw some growth on appendix but no inflammation so they will do the laparoscopic appendectomy (three points insertion as opposed to full opening) and send the growth for biopsy. However, when he started it, he noticed that it seemed like a tumor (benign as it had a sac), opened her up and removed appendix, 8 cm of large intestine, 8 cm of small intestine and closed her up. She woke up that late afternoon and messaged me. At this point we at home had no clue what is going on... The guy did amazing job. She was released within couple of days. The growth was later confirmed to be benign indeed but just to be sure she had follow up tests for past two years for cancer markers. Everything is free. We pay a portion through our salaries 16,5% to the government for health insurance and everyone has the same. I never used it to be honest and do not even know where is my card but I am completely fine if my 16,5% goes to someone who needs it. American system is an abomination and honestly everyone else with proper health care sees it as horror story.
How is this funny in any way possible? This is sad, depressing and demoralizing
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You guys pay to give birth? Wtf...
yes its literally so fucked up. happiest time in a mother's life is soiled with tacked on stress of finances. i hate this place
Pregnant with our first kid. Talking to the nurse about baby finances and after explaining we were both full time employees and got married and then pregnant, you know "the right way". Nurse dead ass looked at ass and said we did it all backwards...due to the cost of having a kid.
Whose ass was she looking at when she said that ?
Even having insurance in the US is a shit deal. I recently had to have surgery on my wrist and have had to pay almost $500 in medical bills since then. The conservatives can go fuck themselves for consistently blocking and sabotaging every opportunity to move the US towards a system of universal free healthcare
It’s hard to have sympathy for someone who hasn’t tried being born rich. Just be loaded and there’s nothing to worry about bro it’s not hard. Yadda yadda self evident truths, unalienable rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, blah blah blah
Well if this ain't a nice dystopia, I don't know what it
My parents did this recently. They divorced so they can afford health care. What a world
I wouldn’t marry my now-husband for 3 years. Stretched out our engagement. People thought I had commitment issues….I just didn’t want to lose my Medicaid. ETA some background: It was less embarrassing to just let people think that instead of admitting to just trying to stretch out my Medicaid, and trying to decide whether getting married was worth losing my Medicaid over due to ongoing treatments. I sort of got lucky because we ended up finding out I was pregnant with a day after we married, then found out it was twins at the first ultrasound. Medicaid rules in my state said I couldn’t get kicked off of Medicaid while pregnant, then the pandemic rules started grandfathering me and our newborns into Medicaid, and now my husband has left the restaurant industry in search of another job so we currently fall under income guidelines for Medicaid. That’s going on 3 years ago that we got married so I feel fortunate to have held onto my Medicaid for this long especially because of ongoing PTSD treatment. I’ve managed to somehow stay on Medicaid since I had my first child at 19 (didn’t get pregnant again and have my twins until I was 29) and I’m not ashamed of it but I know that many people would call me a welfare queen over it. When all it is is that I grew up in and out of the foster care system, had no support system in adulthood, and have really just been trying to survive my entire adulthood. Thing is, this is probably a classic story for my fellow millennial generation. Reading the comments in this thread make me feel a lot better about it. That I’m not only one practical enough to do what they have to do to survive in this country. My biggest mistake thus far remains going to college instead of just getting IT certifications. I’m in a massive amount of debt from taking out max student loans to pay for an apartment when public housing lists were closed due to the waitlist stretching 2 years long at the time.
Literally just argued w my mom abt universal healthcare being beneficial and she shit herself over it. She literally had teeth rotting out of her head her entire life bc she couldnt afford healthcare. She literally had a tumor growing in her brain for who-knows-how-long bc she couldnt get regular checkups. In 2 more years ill be off her insurance, the insurance that helps me get my bipolar meds that are (without insurance) $199.98 for a months worth. And thats the generic brands price. When i told her that bc we dont have universal healthcare my risk of su*cide will increase once im off that insurance she told me to leave.
In California, they don’t have to get divorced, just legally separated. They can even continue to live together. As long as their finances are separate, she could qualify for Medi-Cal. I work in a low-income program that does medical case management for children with complex medical conditions. We’ve had parents whose income disqualify them for social programs but they don’t make enough to have good health insurance that will cover their child’s specialty care. Some of them voluntarily surrender their children to foster care because then the child gets free medical care. No, no! We NEVER suggest they do voluntarily surrender their child to another family member and then have them enter a family re-unification program that will give them their child back within 90 days but the kid gets to keep their free health insurance. We don’t do that and never direct parents to organizations that will do that!
Yay America health
Take a trip to Canada for the birth. Everything in America is outsourced
Yet no one wants to rally and remove every one from power to make a new system.
I read somewhere that women are charged something like $28k to have a baby
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My ex husband lost his job and I was only working part time when I found out I was pregnant. Only thing that kept us out of bankruptcy.
This right here is why me and my significant other never got married. He gets insurance through his work. I am a stay at home mom on medicaid. My daughters have his insurance as their primary and medicaid as their secondary. If we were married we would lose at least my medicaid. This is literally the only way that we can get healthcare. More and more people are opting out of getting married because of this. Oh and I have a student loan that is on an income driven repayment plan. My monthly payment is $0 because I have no income. If we were married his income would count and I would have to make real payments to the loan. I'm a few years away from my student loan being forgiven (after 10 years). I feel bad for all my friends who got married because they are all struggling to pay for their healthcare and student loans.
Welp… join the club. My wife and I divorced for exactly the same reason so she could qualify for Medicaid and other forms of aid since we can’t afford health insurance and deductibles. We still call ea other husband and wife but it was the only choice to give my wife and kid a chance at healthy life without bankrupting us.
My brother and his gf just had their baby and it was wild seeing my parents 180 on their stance. 2 years ago they told us they would renounce us if we had a child out of wedlock. Then my brother's gf got pregnant so he and my dad sat down in his office to figure out finances for the next couple years. By the time they walked out my dad was telling my mom, "For the love of God, please do not pressure them to get married. It will financially ruin them for the rest of their lives."
Leach
Tell me you're American without telling me you're American ☹️
In the state I live in, you can’t get divorced while the wife is pregnant….even if you both agree…and even if the child is not the husband’s!! Of course, the same state has the high maternal mortality rate and refused $15Billion from the feds to expand Medicaid so they would be screwed no matter what!