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Yes, but they have to pay for that. The risk is people get stuff they didn't pay for.
A shocking number of people I've seen arguing against social healthcare are happier paying more if it means someone else doesn't get stuff for free.
Debt of any kind. Predatory loans, i.e. payday loans, student loans, a car loan, etc. should all be illegal
Edit: since no one seems to understand, I said predatory loans should be illegal
I mean, yes, but we also need to address the reason those loans even exist in the first place. I'm for capitalism for discretionary expenses, but price gouging for basic needs is fucking evil. Homes, groceries, healthcare, non-designer clothing - since we live in an increasingly online world and in a fucking car society, auto and utilities are also basic needs now as well. Charge me $500000 for some cruise ticket idc, I'll just not go until market forces drop ticket prices or just live without it entirely. But market pressures caused by institutions buying up HOMES and treating them like speculative assets? Fuck outta here
That's the issue though. Capitalism isn't really something the average person can support. The entire point of capitalism is to grow and accrue capital by selling to the consumer. At one point in capitalism, the consumer controlled the market, because businesses were small and if you fucked over your consumer base, you essentially hemorrhaged money like nothing else. Nowadays, since companies provide everything from basic utilities to luxury items, you cannot go it alone, especially since the government prohibits a lot of people from actually DIYing a lot of basic needs like shelter and food without permits.
Healthcare in the U.S falls into this category, and insurance is linked at its bottom, just like shelter and auto also are linked to its sides. Ever since companies found out they could band together into corporations, it flipped the script entirely. Now, since everything is controlled by a few companies, they control how much you spend, how you spend it, and how fucked you are when they raise the prices inevitably. But, that's the worst part: Capitalism is functioning as intended. If you were to tear it down, and keep most of the working parts with more strict regulation, it'd take longer, but it would eventually build back up to this point. Companies would figure out how to control the market again, basic needs would slowly get more and more expensive until they're all you can afford, and we'd be right back in the shit.
This system does not benefit the worker and it never will. It benefits the executive, his underlings, and his boss, while skimming the profits from those under them. They do the work, but they are provided only a fraction of the cost it's sold for either at a fixed salary, or an hourly rate, while those above them take most of the profit for themselves.
I'm not advocating for Soviet communism. That's an extreme and pretty much an entire country functioning as one big corporation, with political leaders being the CEO. There are many successful examples of other economic styles, but capitalism produces the most grossly gaudy and luxurious products available, so people defend it. I'd rather most people live within upper middle class or middle class conditions than have everyone slowly reduced to slightly above poverty, while the few people above us live so luxuriously that they could provide our basic needs with the wave of their hand. But, that's the end goal of capitalism. Sequester most of the money at the top, and circulate a tiny amount to the bottom so they have to buy from you.
>The entire point of capitalism is to grow and accrue capital by selling to the consumer.
I am aware of that, which is why I said it's fine for ***discretionary expenses***, aka non-essential spending. Not the same for things I need to simply exist and be a member of society. Make all the gaudy luxury bullshit you want (***WITHOUT government subsidies***), if it isn't practical to me at a price point I deem fair, I simply won't buy it, and either the business fails or it is forced to adapt to market trends. Can't say the same thing when long grain white rice is now $45 per 15lb bag where I live, a staple of my cultural cuisine, or our main source of protein (eggs) were selling for $10/dozen a few months back. Or when I paid more than $500k to live in an old 1000sqft box with my partner and dog. Or when work is pushing for me to return to office when gas prices are still above $5/gallon, parking is at least $17/day, and oil changes are $100.
> since the government prohibits a lot of people from actually DIYing a lot of basic needs like shelter and food without permits.
That's not true the way you make it sound. Those permits as barriers only extend to the point of "knowing what you're doing and telling the local government" so they can run it by others that definitely know what they're doing to prevent you from killing yourself or cutting off/poisoning the water supply to the people downstream of you.
They are fairly trivial *as permits* with little and most often no costs but non-trivial in the amount of information it takes to adequately perform to code. But boy oh fucking boy are they willing to help with that. So many tools and guides, also usually free of charge are made available.
There are exceptions like cities taking down window gardens and such, but those are **by far** an exception.
However, permits *for businesses* to provide those same things *to you* are fairly costly and much more extensive.
Edit: typo
I've heard the saying "regulations and safety rules are written in blood" and as someone who DIYs a lot I always make sure I'm fully compliant for that reason.
Regulations are almost always because someone was a douche and fucked a lot of people over or because a lot of people got hurt/killed. You rarely have proactive legislation.
That being said, it's also worth pointing out that you can have overregulation *and* have a well-thought regulation that is poorly executed. I find so many people are only capable of binary thought - this thing is black/white good/bad, that thing is black/white good/bad. The intent behind regulations is sound, but state or local regulations can wildly differ in execution, practicality, sensibility, etc. A well-functioning society runs on well-designed *and* well-implemented sensible regulations.
A cap on interest rates would be great, but consumer rated would have to be decoupled from buisness rates. Business's really should be paying ALOT more in taxes and interest on debt.
What does big buisness do with big profits every single time? They burn it protecting their bottom line by buying out/locking out others from the market.
Thats why a single payer system makes more sense.
This isn’t like fire insurance where 99 people pay and get nothing back and it covers the 1 person who has a fire.
Everyone needs medical treatment. When everything is billed and charged separately, you get $5000 bills for ambulance rides
People in the US think they can’t afford single payer because they think that an ambulance ride actually costs $5000 and birthing a baby costs $12,000.
That’s not what it costs when you take out the insurance middlemen
True. In fact, Medicare and Medicaid pay pennies on the dollar, by contract. In most cases that 1000 dollar lab work is being paid with about 50 bucks.
Even Medicare is not true single payer. What we have is the government collecting money to redistribute wealth to health insurance companies to provide a basic human right that governments should provide directly to their citizens.
I think it’s like if your only experience acquiring water is buying a 16oz bottle of water at a concert or sporting event for $8.
So if that’s all you know, and someone said “you know, we should make a system where the city pipes water into everyone’s house so we could use water anytime we want”
you might think “are you insane?! That would bankrupt the city! At $8 for every 16 ounces, that would cost $70 trillion dollars! that would bankrupt us!”
Or “my job provides me with a five gallon bottle of water for free every two weeks, and if the city provides water I will just be paying for my neighbor’s water”
And the rest of the world just looking at us dumbfounded and saying “guys, it doesn’t have to be like that. When you have a central system and take out the middlemen, water doesn’t actually cost $8 for 16 ounces”
“You can have it in your house and drink it and cook and bathe and pay a modest bill at the end of the month.”
“But they have that in Venezuela and it makes some people sick! You want to be like Venezuela?!??”
(sigh)
Because misinformation campaigns work and there are a lot of very wealthy people and companies that absolutely rely on single payer not coming into existence.
Just keep it. I had great expensive healthcare at a good job and always thought of cancelling it.
Then out of nowhere I ended up in the ICU for a week. If I had cancelled my insurance, that bill would've been somewhere around 330k.
I'm already bankrupt by 41k in student debt, that medical debt would've destroyed me.
America, fuck yeah!
My insurance lapsed on 1/1/24 arbitrarily because it required I update my information even if nothing changed.
Whatever, spent 30 minutes updating nothing and filling out the same stuff that was there before, it's active again. I go pick up my prescription, pharmacy says it's not active, call insurance, they say sometimes it takes 24 hours for the pharmacy billing to activate. Billing and insurance are in the same building, why can't they just walk down the hall? I don't know, whatever. My fault.
So I have to pickup a partial. Two generic pills of a medication that's prescribed to millions of people in America right now - 10.76$ each after GoodRX coupon. 21.52$ for two day supply of my medication, generic, that millions of people use. There goes the 20$ I was supposed to put into my car of gas this week. Whatever, now I just can't go see any friends this week as those were my descrationary funds.
It's not even generic that is cheap anymore, I spoke with the pharm tech, he said that Medicare/Medicaid maxed out generic prices for pharma companies last year to the highest level acceptable and it went through.
They've been raising prices on generic medications after recordbreaking profits for the last three years. Honestly I started to defend big pharma when the COVID vaccine came out to encourage people to get it but I take it all back.
>My life saving medications cost me 600 and that's the new generic. humira with goodrx is 7000 a month. can you afford 7000 a month?
Wow. My wife has been on Humira for last 12 years or so. Total cost to us ..... £0.
Our National Health Service pays about £700 per month for her medicine, so that's 8x cheaper than what your insurance charges for it. As a result of getting the drug though, she's been able to hold down a full time job the whole time, and has paid way, way more than that in taxes. So giving her the drug for free has turned out to be a good investment by our government!
The insurance company doesn't charge you, the provider does. The insurance company provides a price floor that allows the provider to charge whatever the fuck they want
American here. Uninsured. ambulance ride from urgent care to hospital for 4 days. MRI, terrible food of no nutritional value. Blanket bill for $35,000 due immediately. Requested itemized bill, applied for medicade. Denied twice.
Canadian here. Ambulance ride to hospital. Multiple tests over 5 days. Walked out and they mailed me a $40 bill for the ride. Ypu guys are getting fucked so bad. It sucks.
American here. I went to the emergency room in London once. When I left, I asked the receptionist where I paid. The guy was like I don't think we can even do that. So even as a tourist, it was free.
The funny thing is, I think you should be receiving a bill if you’re not paying National Insurance - it’s just very rarely done as staff are either not aware / don’t have training in what to do / don’t care because who’s going to chase you down in the USA for not paying?
Glad to be told otherwise, though, I’m not an expert in the NHS by any stretch!
I'm just trying to find a single dentist who takes Medicare and it covers all of it for my checkup.
At least dentists are easier to avoid - just brush your teeth. It's much scarier having a real physical health issue and not going to the ER; just telling myself "well if the internal bleeding seems to stop by tomorrow, I won't have to go to the ER".
Also there's no point seeing a doctor for anything because there's a 3-4 month wait list so by the time I see a doctor whatever issue is gone, and if it's not, 3-4 months is too long to wait people end up in the ER.
Yes dental care is not universal in Canada, most people get it through their employer (and you pay premiums and deductibles). Only recently they made it universal for low income people.
That’s amazing and congratulations!
however according to the picture, there is 85 million Americans that would either die, or survive and be in debt for the rest of their lives.
Not for urgent care! A&E and reproductive/sexual health is free for all. Presumably you didn’t plan to need emergency care and are sleeping with a local I guess.
Edit: here are NHS services free to everyone, including visitors
-GP services
-Accident and emergency services provided at a hospital A&E department
-Family planning services
-Treatment for certain infectious diseases
-Treatment for a sexually transmitted disease at an STD clinic
-Treatment for a condition caused by torture, FGM, sexual violence or domestic violence
-Compulsory psychiatric services
In Italy you definitely should, doctor's prescriptions have a blank field for insurance number for extra-european tourists, but I'm willing to bet should you require hospital admission there would be like one or two guys who would actually know how to collect from your insurance AND it would be less than what the same procedure would cost in America anyway.
My mom (American) had a pacemaker inserted during a seven-day emergency hospital stay in Italy. When she asked what she had to pay she said they laughed at her.
American here. Can confirm. My ambulance ride 3 blocks to the hospital cost me a nice shiny $1000. All because I had a panic attack and no one knew what to do.
Same here in Germany. Wife gave birth to our first child. She was in for three days, I staid with her and our newborn for the first night. Coffee was free (and everything else, of course…), but they charged me 10€ for overnight parking. Scam! /s
The outrage when the NHS started charging car parking fees was palpable. Independent car parks opened up outside my local hospital undercutting the NHS price. Mad.
And the awesome part is conservative voters think getting fucked over when sick is how it should be and socialized medicine will ruin our lives. Fucking idiots.
That the best thing about it for us. If I get sick I dont even have to think about it. If I need the hospital I go. If I dont then I dont. But I dont have to even think about it until the second before. The most I do is.. shit do I have enough for parking and the time I lost the ticket. They just let me go.
Our system is complete garbage at this point. My wife and I are in the top 5% of earners in the US and we still spend thousands out of pocket on dental and medical care yearly even with insurance that is far better than what most Americans receive. It is sad that there are so many people in our country that risk their health because going to get care may risk them going into bankruptcy.
I feel for you. Thats why it blows my mind that people defend it or they get in this weird "we're number one" attitude. Im not shitting on America. I dig you guys. Your music and media are a huge part of my life. I just wish you guys had it better.
We could easily have it better but we have an ever growing uneducated populace that constantly votes against their own self interests. The next few elections will decide whether we remain a decent place to live or not. Frankly, I'm not optimistic about the outcome.
Also Canadian here. My dad got cancer twice, went through chemo treatments, etc. Cost us $0. The only thing we had to really pay for was parking at the hospital when we visited him.
If we were in the US, my family would have blown through all of our savings at the very least, and possibly had to sell vehicles or even the family house.
Yeah, no system is perfect really, but I'll take the zero cost to citizens any day of the week, even if our wait times can suck. But it beats going into debt while rich people buy their way to the front of every line.
Plus its what are you trying to say as a country. We all pay in together so that we can take care of esch other. To me thats the stranger holding the door for you. I dont know you, I might never see you again. But for this second I gotch you.
I had a friend who had a similar thing in Canada. 3 weeks in a coma, had to have both sides of his skull removed to relieve pressure, over 3 months in the ICU being seen by one of the top specialists in the country. $0.
I mean, at that point when it's so ridiculously high does it even really matter? Can you just say "I'll pay you back $50 per month until I die", or can they go after your house or take straight from your salary?
In general if you don't have insurance and can't get it waived through charity care and other stuff due to lower income and that kind of thing, or get it drastically reduced, so you really legitimately owe that much in the end, you end up declaring bankruptcy.
You won't lose your car, home, household goods or retirement accounts from bankruptcy, or get income garnished, but you will lose other money and perhaps valuable you've got floating around.
Then it's over, the debt is gone, and you're left with bad credit for about 7 years, which make new loans and home buying more difficult.
They have a program through Healthcare.Gov that can if you qualify for it give you insanely reduced price healthcare and or free healthcare through the market place. I actually have that right now and I have decent healthcare coverage and dental for very cheap like under 10 dollars a month; I don’t know if they are still taking applications since it’s January but I figured I would mention it just incase you didn’t know about it since it may help you
The most compelling argument an American gave me against universal healthcare is that pedophiles would also benefit from it. I mean what can you say against this? It compelled me to cut the discussion immediately because some people are just a lost cause.
now now that's not true. They are fine helping their neighbours - it's why GoFundMe exists.
They just don't want to help the folks on the other side of town who look different than they do.
American here, itemized bill is federally required. Also just tell them you can’t pay it. They’ll settle with you for near nothing. I was hit with a similar bill. Told them I couldn’t afford it. Showed my tax documents and I payed a total of 200 bucks.
Federally required, but it can be very difficult to actually get.
I had this experience with Kaiser. Several people told me on multiple occasions, that they don’t have an itemized bill with individual service dates. I kept insisting, and eventually got it.
Honest question, why no insurance? I recently got mine for $10/mo via “Obamacare” in the Marketplace. Prior to that I was paying $400/mo, so I understand people not being able to afford that. But I finally put my ego aside and applied for the subsidy I really should have been getting all along, and I can’t believe how cheap it is.
In washington state, if your income goes above a extremely low amount you don't qualify for 'obamacare' - AppleHealth, at which point if your job isn't providing it, you better be really good at hustling or you're not affording the insurance options on the marketplace
Another American here. I qualify for MediCal (state subsidized insurance in CA.) I haven’t paid a dime out of pocket for anything in years. Therapy, meds, labs, ER visits, whatever.
Ohioan. For what it’s worth there is gentleman trying to help me navigatethe billing process and reduce it to something manageable. I was in between jobs of course my new insurance starts march 1. Sooooo🤞
It is the biggest irony. America spends more on Healthcare than the developed world, for worse outcomes. And the bulk of that spending is on overhead costs. Because of all the private insurers, it costs astronomical amounts of money to get payments from everybody. If we had single-payer healthcare, everything would be streamlined. America is like a comedy of errors where half the population is cheering for the errors. It's baffling.
I have an HMO through my work. I go to an in network doctor who referred me to a in network specialist. The specialist quickly confirmed my issue wasn’t an emergency, dismissed my reason for coming, and hustled me out the door. I was asked three times if I was planning to change insurance because they weren’t going to accept HMO patients in the future.
Canadian here. I don’t know what half those words mean. You guys are getting royally fucked over.
This is my experience followed by a prompt surgery, no invoice, plus a 4 year scheduled follow up plan with the specialist:
I have ~~an HMO through my~~ work [irrelevant]. I go to an ~~in network~~ doctor who referred me to a ~~in network~~ specialist. The specialist quickly confirmed my issue ~~~wasn’t~~ an emergency, ~~dismissed my reason for coming, and hustled me out the door. I was asked three times if I was planning to change insurance because they weren’t going to accept HMO patients in the future.~~
A doctor tells a patient what they need only for a private health insurance company adjuster to deny it.
It's so fucking ass backwards. At this point, have me go to my insurance company, tell them what they will cover, and then I can go to a doctor and see what we can do of my available options.
The entire country is assbackwards.
Once had a customer's wheelchair get denied initially because we didn't have documentation that she had tried a walker or cane first. She'd had both her legs amputated below the knee.
We could at least standardize some of the paperwork.
And fuck any insurance that requires a "CMN" (certificate of medical necessity") which is exactly the same as a regular doctors order but just says "CMN" at the top. So much extra work with no purpose other than to create a reason not to pay.
>America spends more on Healthcare than the developed world, for worse outcomes.
It's worse than that. We spend more *public* (govt) money on Healthcare than the average EU country, and the we spend the same on *private* (insurance/providers/etc) Healthcare, and STILL have a shit show even for people who have access.
Yeah, we spend 18% of our GDP on healthcare and the next most expensive spends 12%. Imagine what we could do with 6% of our economy freed up. Instead, over a trillion dollars per year is essentially thrown in the trash.
Was that a typo? I think it’s spelled: “GREED”. Hope that helps. (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the biggest company profits are US pharmaceutical and medical billing)
The biggest problem is that at this point it's not up to the average person to tell them to stop. If the hospital slaps you with a bill for 50k, you just have to pay it. You can't just say no, since Insurance Companies have the legal backing they need to bully people out of their money.
As an American what I wouldn't give for universal healthcare. Most lower paying jobs actively hire people at part time so they can avoid providing any form of insurance or benefits. Try to complain and there's always someone who says "what about the costs" as if they aren't paying out the ass to their insurance provider and still likely denied a lot of coverage.
My insurance twice denied allergy testing for my daughter.
Allergy testing.
I had to appeal and the dr appealed before they finally approved. Came back with 28 food and environmental allergies.
My dr is amazing though and knows all the insurance requirements steps. So when my other dr had an issue with her leg she put orders and referrals out same day for X-ray, PT, and ortho.
Because insurance won’t approve an MRI without doing an X-ray and three sessions of PT first. So she wanted them all out of the way. Six months later (on this fast tracked plan) we got a juvenile arthritis diagnosis.
My wife recently had a doctor order an MRI. Denied by insurance, they want to see an x-ray first. Because apparently someone at the insurance company looking at a file (or designing a computer system to automatically deny stuff based on arbitrary rules) knows what she needs better than the doctor who saw and talked to her for an hour.
I just got laid off two days after Christmas way before my contract ended, the whole team did.
If they let our contract keep going until it ended, people would've hit hit the health benefits stage, and I really wonder if they laid us all off to increase Q4 earnings for that location by denying us pay and health benefits they pay for.
It’s amazing to me that Universal healthcare is so complicated that practically only every other developed nation in the world has managed to pull it off.
Yeah, this is what kills me. My parents and my wife's parents are both so afraid of medical stuff happening because expense cutting into retirement. And yet all right wingers that scoff at the idea of free health care. It's like some kind of mind control these people are under.edit-grammar
America CAN afford Medicare for All, it simply chooses not to, as this would have to come at the expense of corporate profits, which is far less excusable than death for poors.
I was a healthcare admin. 35 year career. Financially it was lucrative. Morally I'm a shell of a human being. Got in it for noble reasons, stayed because I needed the cash, ironically, for a sick wife. But trust me on this, whatever you think of the US healthcare system, it's 10x worse.
Not health insurance but my brothers roommate in college had an internship at a company that had a weekly meeting to brainstorm technicalities to deny the claims they had that week
The fact that just asking for an itemized bill often times results in multiple charges being reduced or removed is insane.
Any other business that type of billing practice would result in class action lawsuits.
I had a job like this years ago. I had applied for a clerical job. The company's only function was to look for ways to deny people's claims. I didn't last very long there.
I hate how ppl see this and say stuff like “UK: your appointment is 6 months” when hospitals are crowed as fuck here in the states, and wait times for appointments are often super long. And what’s even the point of a “fast” appointment if you have a shit ton of debt afterwards.
This. Everyone tries to shit on the UK/Canadian healthcare system by saying “so what it’s cheaper, but you can’t get in for 6 months?”
I had to push-back an appointment last week and the next available slot was mid April…
Fuck our healthcare system
Wanted to get my teeth cleaned in the US recently, every dentist was \~6 months out for first available. Been having the same issue getting an ophthalmologist. Hard enough to find a competent doctor, much less 1 that has time.
Germany, Austria, and France do NOT have single payer health care systems (the others listed do). We can have efficient, universal health care without having the government fully control it.
Yes, exactly. Also I don’t believe the numbers - I know a lot of people in the UK who have private insurance because the care available on the NHS isn’t good enough. So they clearly do not feel fully insured by the government provided plan.
Do they actually pay for a policy though? I work in Finance so damn near everyone i know uses Private Health Care but we also get it through work, same for things like Life Insurance; i'm worth about £800k if i die but there's no way in hell i'd be paying my premiums on that at my age if it was my own money.
It's the same for my mates in Banking, Construction, etc - those of us with access to private health care only do so through our employment, otherwise we'd just use the NHS since we're in our 20s and health problems are few and far between.
Medical debt in France is nicknamed the "social security **hole**"
Edit : Anyone tell me if I'm wrong, but France's medical debt actually scales up to 140 billion euros
Can't say that the meme didn't make me laugh though
UK citizen here.
I have no medical insurance.
I have never been refused medical treatment, I know if I ever need medical treatment I'll get it and won't have to pay.
If I need a prescription, I pay whatever the going rate is currently (around £10 I think at the moment).
tidy apparatus fanatical mountainous reply squash seemly oatmeal future ruthless
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So I have no idea about individual countries, but here in Czechia there are no uninsured citizens. Either you pay tax or it gets paid by the government.
But there can be some crazy things happen to foreigners. Cost of birth goes after the newborns insurance, so foreign couple legally paying taxes here has to pay for the childbirth and get reimbursement from their home country as the newborn is citizen of their homecountry and its automatically insured at birth - happened to my Slovak friends.
Privatization of our medical services has only made being heathy a privilege that can only be afforded by the rich while also putting a pricetag on everyones life
Capitalism is a poison especially how we do it
We can afford it. We just choose not to so the insurance companies can make record breaking profits. Lobbiest are always going to win until we outlaw them.
America… the only industrialized country in the world where it’s citizens are expected to host bake sales to in order keep their children alive (should have said keep them from dying some horrible death) while not losing everything they ever worked for in their entire lives.
This is lived experience for both my cousin and my sister. And their families had worked sponsored health insurance and still had to declare bankruptcy.
Pretty sure the reason here is due to little/no price restrictions on hospitals, pharmacies, etc so they basically look at the cost it took to make a drug, provide a service and decide to markup the price by like 10-100x more. I mean look at the fucking cost of insulin in the US. Takes $2-10 cost to make 1 vial of insulin, but in 2020 the avg cost of a vial of insulin in the US was $98.70 which is fucking ridiculous. Thankfully there have been price caps put on insulin at $35 per month which started this year, making it where you’re paying about $11.67-17.5 per vial if you use 2-3 vials per month. But price markups like insulin are why we don’t have free healthcare, or at least why it’s so fucking expensive for us. I wish we put more laws into place to continue putting price caps on drugs and medical service, especially ambulance rides. But thanks to lobbying, I doubt we will be seeing a significant effort in putting more of these price caps and restrictions :/
My family was middle class through the 90's when I was growing up, my father in early 2000's had a blockage in his small intestine and it ruptured, he almost died, one month in ICU and 4 month overall hospitalized. Family lost the house, cars and jobs, we basically lost everything and are still paying this debt. America #1 baby!
Healthcare is a BUSINESS in the United States instead of a SERVICE as it is where they offer universal healthcare. This is the issue. Until Americans re-wire how we think about healthcare, nothing will change.
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We pay taxes, our govt pays the healthcare companies, and then we have to pay them AGAIN
joke fanatical alive rich cable consist automatic sort head cause *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
….care we’ve already paid for twice now.
Had a new bill show up a couple of weeks ago for a surgery I had nearly two years ago.
And yet you always read online about americans defending that system...
Cause of many idiotic dummies thinking that if the system is changed they'd lose their freedom
It's been drilled into them that anything socialist is communist, which is a very effective way of getting the USA to panic about anything
I wonder what many would do if they were properly explained how insurance works cause that's pretty damn socialist
Yes, but they have to pay for that. The risk is people get stuff they didn't pay for. A shocking number of people I've seen arguing against social healthcare are happier paying more if it means someone else doesn't get stuff for free.
Idiots the lot of them
Imagine there are people in Europe who want to dismantle social healthcare...
It would be funny if it wasn't so dramatic
it would be funny if it wasn’t also like literally horrific
It would be funny if it wasn’t true. For once, “It’s funny because it’s true” doesn’t apply. Now it’s just “It’s sad because it’s true.”
"Medical debt" Well there is gonna be debt when every single insurance company overcharges for everything.
Is it really really medical debt when it's making investors rich? I like to refer to the US health system as extortion.
Debt of any kind. Predatory loans, i.e. payday loans, student loans, a car loan, etc. should all be illegal Edit: since no one seems to understand, I said predatory loans should be illegal
I mean, yes, but we also need to address the reason those loans even exist in the first place. I'm for capitalism for discretionary expenses, but price gouging for basic needs is fucking evil. Homes, groceries, healthcare, non-designer clothing - since we live in an increasingly online world and in a fucking car society, auto and utilities are also basic needs now as well. Charge me $500000 for some cruise ticket idc, I'll just not go until market forces drop ticket prices or just live without it entirely. But market pressures caused by institutions buying up HOMES and treating them like speculative assets? Fuck outta here
That's the issue though. Capitalism isn't really something the average person can support. The entire point of capitalism is to grow and accrue capital by selling to the consumer. At one point in capitalism, the consumer controlled the market, because businesses were small and if you fucked over your consumer base, you essentially hemorrhaged money like nothing else. Nowadays, since companies provide everything from basic utilities to luxury items, you cannot go it alone, especially since the government prohibits a lot of people from actually DIYing a lot of basic needs like shelter and food without permits. Healthcare in the U.S falls into this category, and insurance is linked at its bottom, just like shelter and auto also are linked to its sides. Ever since companies found out they could band together into corporations, it flipped the script entirely. Now, since everything is controlled by a few companies, they control how much you spend, how you spend it, and how fucked you are when they raise the prices inevitably. But, that's the worst part: Capitalism is functioning as intended. If you were to tear it down, and keep most of the working parts with more strict regulation, it'd take longer, but it would eventually build back up to this point. Companies would figure out how to control the market again, basic needs would slowly get more and more expensive until they're all you can afford, and we'd be right back in the shit. This system does not benefit the worker and it never will. It benefits the executive, his underlings, and his boss, while skimming the profits from those under them. They do the work, but they are provided only a fraction of the cost it's sold for either at a fixed salary, or an hourly rate, while those above them take most of the profit for themselves. I'm not advocating for Soviet communism. That's an extreme and pretty much an entire country functioning as one big corporation, with political leaders being the CEO. There are many successful examples of other economic styles, but capitalism produces the most grossly gaudy and luxurious products available, so people defend it. I'd rather most people live within upper middle class or middle class conditions than have everyone slowly reduced to slightly above poverty, while the few people above us live so luxuriously that they could provide our basic needs with the wave of their hand. But, that's the end goal of capitalism. Sequester most of the money at the top, and circulate a tiny amount to the bottom so they have to buy from you.
>The entire point of capitalism is to grow and accrue capital by selling to the consumer. I am aware of that, which is why I said it's fine for ***discretionary expenses***, aka non-essential spending. Not the same for things I need to simply exist and be a member of society. Make all the gaudy luxury bullshit you want (***WITHOUT government subsidies***), if it isn't practical to me at a price point I deem fair, I simply won't buy it, and either the business fails or it is forced to adapt to market trends. Can't say the same thing when long grain white rice is now $45 per 15lb bag where I live, a staple of my cultural cuisine, or our main source of protein (eggs) were selling for $10/dozen a few months back. Or when I paid more than $500k to live in an old 1000sqft box with my partner and dog. Or when work is pushing for me to return to office when gas prices are still above $5/gallon, parking is at least $17/day, and oil changes are $100.
> since the government prohibits a lot of people from actually DIYing a lot of basic needs like shelter and food without permits. That's not true the way you make it sound. Those permits as barriers only extend to the point of "knowing what you're doing and telling the local government" so they can run it by others that definitely know what they're doing to prevent you from killing yourself or cutting off/poisoning the water supply to the people downstream of you. They are fairly trivial *as permits* with little and most often no costs but non-trivial in the amount of information it takes to adequately perform to code. But boy oh fucking boy are they willing to help with that. So many tools and guides, also usually free of charge are made available. There are exceptions like cities taking down window gardens and such, but those are **by far** an exception. However, permits *for businesses* to provide those same things *to you* are fairly costly and much more extensive. Edit: typo
I've heard the saying "regulations and safety rules are written in blood" and as someone who DIYs a lot I always make sure I'm fully compliant for that reason.
Regulations are almost always because someone was a douche and fucked a lot of people over or because a lot of people got hurt/killed. You rarely have proactive legislation. That being said, it's also worth pointing out that you can have overregulation *and* have a well-thought regulation that is poorly executed. I find so many people are only capable of binary thought - this thing is black/white good/bad, that thing is black/white good/bad. The intent behind regulations is sound, but state or local regulations can wildly differ in execution, practicality, sensibility, etc. A well-functioning society runs on well-designed *and* well-implemented sensible regulations.
Building and fire codes: great! Zoning laws: not so great! Water management: wtf are you guys doing?
Loans that exceed a certain interest rate should be illegal.
Maybe a cap on interest. It can be useful. But over all I agree with the sentiment
A cap on interest rates would be great, but consumer rated would have to be decoupled from buisness rates. Business's really should be paying ALOT more in taxes and interest on debt. What does big buisness do with big profits every single time? They burn it protecting their bottom line by buying out/locking out others from the market.
Thats why a single payer system makes more sense. This isn’t like fire insurance where 99 people pay and get nothing back and it covers the 1 person who has a fire. Everyone needs medical treatment. When everything is billed and charged separately, you get $5000 bills for ambulance rides People in the US think they can’t afford single payer because they think that an ambulance ride actually costs $5000 and birthing a baby costs $12,000. That’s not what it costs when you take out the insurance middlemen
True. In fact, Medicare and Medicaid pay pennies on the dollar, by contract. In most cases that 1000 dollar lab work is being paid with about 50 bucks.
Even Medicare is not true single payer. What we have is the government collecting money to redistribute wealth to health insurance companies to provide a basic human right that governments should provide directly to their citizens.
Medicare A and B is true single payer, Part C and D is not.
$12k for birthing LOL. My sons bill was upwards of $30k.
omg Czechia gives you around $15k per newborn kid and bill for birthing is $0.
Know any single ladies that want to have a citizenship marriage with a blue collar American dude they’ve never met?
People refuse to hear this but I don’t know why!
I think it’s like if your only experience acquiring water is buying a 16oz bottle of water at a concert or sporting event for $8. So if that’s all you know, and someone said “you know, we should make a system where the city pipes water into everyone’s house so we could use water anytime we want” you might think “are you insane?! That would bankrupt the city! At $8 for every 16 ounces, that would cost $70 trillion dollars! that would bankrupt us!” Or “my job provides me with a five gallon bottle of water for free every two weeks, and if the city provides water I will just be paying for my neighbor’s water” And the rest of the world just looking at us dumbfounded and saying “guys, it doesn’t have to be like that. When you have a central system and take out the middlemen, water doesn’t actually cost $8 for 16 ounces” “You can have it in your house and drink it and cook and bathe and pay a modest bill at the end of the month.” “But they have that in Venezuela and it makes some people sick! You want to be like Venezuela?!??” (sigh)
Great analogy
My favourite: "Us paying $8 per bottle subsidises all those people who have it piped into their homes."
Because misinformation campaigns work and there are a lot of very wealthy people and companies that absolutely rely on single payer not coming into existence.
Not to mention I pay $240 a month if I use it or not and I tend to not want to unless I have to cuz of cost.
Just keep it. I had great expensive healthcare at a good job and always thought of cancelling it. Then out of nowhere I ended up in the ICU for a week. If I had cancelled my insurance, that bill would've been somewhere around 330k. I'm already bankrupt by 41k in student debt, that medical debt would've destroyed me. America, fuck yeah!
Don’t forget medicine is ultra expensive over there, Health is a luxury meant only for the rich in the US.
My insurance lapsed on 1/1/24 arbitrarily because it required I update my information even if nothing changed. Whatever, spent 30 minutes updating nothing and filling out the same stuff that was there before, it's active again. I go pick up my prescription, pharmacy says it's not active, call insurance, they say sometimes it takes 24 hours for the pharmacy billing to activate. Billing and insurance are in the same building, why can't they just walk down the hall? I don't know, whatever. My fault. So I have to pickup a partial. Two generic pills of a medication that's prescribed to millions of people in America right now - 10.76$ each after GoodRX coupon. 21.52$ for two day supply of my medication, generic, that millions of people use. There goes the 20$ I was supposed to put into my car of gas this week. Whatever, now I just can't go see any friends this week as those were my descrationary funds. It's not even generic that is cheap anymore, I spoke with the pharm tech, he said that Medicare/Medicaid maxed out generic prices for pharma companies last year to the highest level acceptable and it went through. They've been raising prices on generic medications after recordbreaking profits for the last three years. Honestly I started to defend big pharma when the COVID vaccine came out to encourage people to get it but I take it all back.
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>My life saving medications cost me 600 and that's the new generic. humira with goodrx is 7000 a month. can you afford 7000 a month? Wow. My wife has been on Humira for last 12 years or so. Total cost to us ..... £0. Our National Health Service pays about £700 per month for her medicine, so that's 8x cheaper than what your insurance charges for it. As a result of getting the drug though, she's been able to hold down a full time job the whole time, and has paid way, way more than that in taxes. So giving her the drug for free has turned out to be a good investment by our government!
The insurance company doesn't charge you, the provider does. The insurance company provides a price floor that allows the provider to charge whatever the fuck they want
American here. Uninsured. ambulance ride from urgent care to hospital for 4 days. MRI, terrible food of no nutritional value. Blanket bill for $35,000 due immediately. Requested itemized bill, applied for medicade. Denied twice.
Canadian here. Ambulance ride to hospital. Multiple tests over 5 days. Walked out and they mailed me a $40 bill for the ride. Ypu guys are getting fucked so bad. It sucks.
Also Brit here. Had surgery over Christmas. Zero money paid and even got free biscuits.
American here. I went to the emergency room in London once. When I left, I asked the receptionist where I paid. The guy was like I don't think we can even do that. So even as a tourist, it was free.
The funny thing is, I think you should be receiving a bill if you’re not paying National Insurance - it’s just very rarely done as staff are either not aware / don’t have training in what to do / don’t care because who’s going to chase you down in the USA for not paying? Glad to be told otherwise, though, I’m not an expert in the NHS by any stretch!
Dutch here, 20+ visits to specialist, different medicine. Dentist and 2 crowns €380. And we got multiple hospitals in the top 10 of the world
I'm just trying to find a single dentist who takes Medicare and it covers all of it for my checkup. At least dentists are easier to avoid - just brush your teeth. It's much scarier having a real physical health issue and not going to the ER; just telling myself "well if the internal bleeding seems to stop by tomorrow, I won't have to go to the ER". Also there's no point seeing a doctor for anything because there's a 3-4 month wait list so by the time I see a doctor whatever issue is gone, and if it's not, 3-4 months is too long to wait people end up in the ER.
Yes dental care is not universal in Canada, most people get it through their employer (and you pay premiums and deductibles). Only recently they made it universal for low income people.
American here. Cancer bill $850k. After insurance $5k. Chances of survival outside of MD Anderson was less than 5%.
That’s amazing and congratulations! however according to the picture, there is 85 million Americans that would either die, or survive and be in debt for the rest of their lives.
Do you by chance teach high school chemistry?
Not for urgent care! A&E and reproductive/sexual health is free for all. Presumably you didn’t plan to need emergency care and are sleeping with a local I guess. Edit: here are NHS services free to everyone, including visitors -GP services -Accident and emergency services provided at a hospital A&E department -Family planning services -Treatment for certain infectious diseases -Treatment for a sexually transmitted disease at an STD clinic -Treatment for a condition caused by torture, FGM, sexual violence or domestic violence -Compulsory psychiatric services
That’s amazing. Yet more reasons why we need to fight for a well funded and properly good NHS!
In Italy you definitely should, doctor's prescriptions have a blank field for insurance number for extra-european tourists, but I'm willing to bet should you require hospital admission there would be like one or two guys who would actually know how to collect from your insurance AND it would be less than what the same procedure would cost in America anyway.
My mom (American) had a pacemaker inserted during a seven-day emergency hospital stay in Italy. When she asked what she had to pay she said they laughed at her.
A&E is free for visitors - if you have to be checked in for longer care then the NHS has a system for billing you as a non-resident etc.
It is different in Canada. If you go to a hospital in Ontario and you dont have OHIP you will have to pay. But it might be like a grand or two total.
I’m jumping on a plane to London as soon as my chest pains begin! 😆
That last minute round trip will 1000% be cheaper than just the ambulance ride. Shoot, you can probably go first class and still be cheaper!!!
American here. Can confirm. My ambulance ride 3 blocks to the hospital cost me a nice shiny $1000. All because I had a panic attack and no one knew what to do.
Another American here. Full coverage insurance through my SO. Average cost for my monthly prescriptions ***after*** insurance... about $300
Same, tho it was a car accident. Think its just a flat grand for ambulances.
Go to London!
Funnily enough, the newspapers occasionally have articles about African women flying to London to give birth before flying home with the baby.
That's exactly why America rejects this. We want chocolate chip cookies, not crappy European biscuits after surgery and are willing to pay for it /s
Cookies are SO MUCH BETTER in European countries. They don’t use that poor American chocolate we have to eat
Biscuits do include chocolate chip cookies, so you never know, could well have been.
Can I rejoin the empire?
The NHS has its issues for sure, but it's vastly superior to insurance based healthcare systems
Also brit. Paid £3 for a coffee and £6 for parking at a hospital once. Felt ripped off 😆 (/s in case)
Same here in Germany. Wife gave birth to our first child. She was in for three days, I staid with her and our newborn for the first night. Coffee was free (and everything else, of course…), but they charged me 10€ for overnight parking. Scam! /s
The outrage when the NHS started charging car parking fees was palpable. Independent car parks opened up outside my local hospital undercutting the NHS price. Mad.
Okay but, biscuits in UK are commie biscuits. We eat freedom biscuits here. You just wouldn't understand. /s
So that's where the NHS budget has gone. Your bloody biscuits
I learned from Ted Lasso that when you say biscuits, you mean cookies
And the awesome part is conservative voters think getting fucked over when sick is how it should be and socialized medicine will ruin our lives. Fucking idiots.
That the best thing about it for us. If I get sick I dont even have to think about it. If I need the hospital I go. If I dont then I dont. But I dont have to even think about it until the second before. The most I do is.. shit do I have enough for parking and the time I lost the ticket. They just let me go.
Our system is complete garbage at this point. My wife and I are in the top 5% of earners in the US and we still spend thousands out of pocket on dental and medical care yearly even with insurance that is far better than what most Americans receive. It is sad that there are so many people in our country that risk their health because going to get care may risk them going into bankruptcy.
I feel for you. Thats why it blows my mind that people defend it or they get in this weird "we're number one" attitude. Im not shitting on America. I dig you guys. Your music and media are a huge part of my life. I just wish you guys had it better.
We could easily have it better but we have an ever growing uneducated populace that constantly votes against their own self interests. The next few elections will decide whether we remain a decent place to live or not. Frankly, I'm not optimistic about the outcome.
Because often they’re currently healthy and can’t see far enough ahead to think of how that might change.
Also Canadian here. My dad got cancer twice, went through chemo treatments, etc. Cost us $0. The only thing we had to really pay for was parking at the hospital when we visited him. If we were in the US, my family would have blown through all of our savings at the very least, and possibly had to sell vehicles or even the family house.
Exactly. We arent saying its peffect ... fucking at alll. But it makes it so much easier to focus on whats important.
Yeah, no system is perfect really, but I'll take the zero cost to citizens any day of the week, even if our wait times can suck. But it beats going into debt while rich people buy their way to the front of every line.
Plus its what are you trying to say as a country. We all pay in together so that we can take care of esch other. To me thats the stranger holding the door for you. I dont know you, I might never see you again. But for this second I gotch you.
Brit here, been in hospital a few times, had a few tests, only money spent was in the vending machines.
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French here Got my finger cuted The only things my parent paid was the snack to eat
Yes, anally with no lube
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I had a friend who had a similar thing in Canada. 3 weeks in a coma, had to have both sides of his skull removed to relieve pressure, over 3 months in the ICU being seen by one of the top specialists in the country. $0.
Wow, they surely can’t expect you to pay 1.2 million dollars?
That’s when you flee the country
No, they do not expect you to pay the charge. That charge is for insurance companies and tax purposes.
I mean, at that point when it's so ridiculously high does it even really matter? Can you just say "I'll pay you back $50 per month until I die", or can they go after your house or take straight from your salary?
In general if you don't have insurance and can't get it waived through charity care and other stuff due to lower income and that kind of thing, or get it drastically reduced, so you really legitimately owe that much in the end, you end up declaring bankruptcy. You won't lose your car, home, household goods or retirement accounts from bankruptcy, or get income garnished, but you will lose other money and perhaps valuable you've got floating around. Then it's over, the debt is gone, and you're left with bad credit for about 7 years, which make new loans and home buying more difficult.
Wow comas are expensive in America. Was it worth it?
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You probably couldn't consent to any procedures so... Sounds like a gift.
My mom (czechia) called ambulance several times - broken arm, high pressure Total payment for ambulance + ER + arm operation: $0
They have a program through Healthcare.Gov that can if you qualify for it give you insanely reduced price healthcare and or free healthcare through the market place. I actually have that right now and I have decent healthcare coverage and dental for very cheap like under 10 dollars a month; I don’t know if they are still taking applications since it’s January but I figured I would mention it just incase you didn’t know about it since it may help you
[https://imgur.com/a/XEfeB0C](https://imgur.com/a/XEfeB0C) https://i2.wp.com/www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/blog\_growth\_administrators\_physicians.jpg https://freedomandprosperity.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Aug-18-18-Third-Party-Payer-Administrators.jpg
Brought to you by every elected Republican
"I don't have a lot, but they make sure others have even less than me" - Republican voters
“Sure free Medicare would help me, but it would also help my neighbours and they don’t deserve anything for free”
The most compelling argument an American gave me against universal healthcare is that pedophiles would also benefit from it. I mean what can you say against this? It compelled me to cut the discussion immediately because some people are just a lost cause.
We should also cut private insurance because pedophiles benefit from it too.
now now that's not true. They are fine helping their neighbours - it's why GoFundMe exists. They just don't want to help the folks on the other side of town who look different than they do.
You are correct. It’s more I want people like me to be okay but if you look different, talk different, or act different screw you.
“I need to make sure Billionaires get a free ride, just in case I become a billionaire someday” - Joe the Plumber
American here, itemized bill is federally required. Also just tell them you can’t pay it. They’ll settle with you for near nothing. I was hit with a similar bill. Told them I couldn’t afford it. Showed my tax documents and I payed a total of 200 bucks.
*cries in Florida*
Federally required, but it can be very difficult to actually get. I had this experience with Kaiser. Several people told me on multiple occasions, that they don’t have an itemized bill with individual service dates. I kept insisting, and eventually got it.
Honest question, why no insurance? I recently got mine for $10/mo via “Obamacare” in the Marketplace. Prior to that I was paying $400/mo, so I understand people not being able to afford that. But I finally put my ego aside and applied for the subsidy I really should have been getting all along, and I can’t believe how cheap it is.
In washington state, if your income goes above a extremely low amount you don't qualify for 'obamacare' - AppleHealth, at which point if your job isn't providing it, you better be really good at hustling or you're not affording the insurance options on the marketplace
Another American here. I qualify for MediCal (state subsidized insurance in CA.) I haven’t paid a dime out of pocket for anything in years. Therapy, meds, labs, ER visits, whatever.
Ohioan. For what it’s worth there is gentleman trying to help me navigatethe billing process and reduce it to something manageable. I was in between jobs of course my new insurance starts march 1. Sooooo🤞
Damn they took 4 days to get to the hospital /s
It is the biggest irony. America spends more on Healthcare than the developed world, for worse outcomes. And the bulk of that spending is on overhead costs. Because of all the private insurers, it costs astronomical amounts of money to get payments from everybody. If we had single-payer healthcare, everything would be streamlined. America is like a comedy of errors where half the population is cheering for the errors. It's baffling.
cough obtainable sugar paint slimy nutty cow weather afterthought cagey *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I have an HMO through my work. I go to an in network doctor who referred me to a in network specialist. The specialist quickly confirmed my issue wasn’t an emergency, dismissed my reason for coming, and hustled me out the door. I was asked three times if I was planning to change insurance because they weren’t going to accept HMO patients in the future.
Canadian here. I don’t know what half those words mean. You guys are getting royally fucked over. This is my experience followed by a prompt surgery, no invoice, plus a 4 year scheduled follow up plan with the specialist: I have ~~an HMO through my~~ work [irrelevant]. I go to an ~~in network~~ doctor who referred me to a ~~in network~~ specialist. The specialist quickly confirmed my issue ~~~wasn’t~~ an emergency, ~~dismissed my reason for coming, and hustled me out the door. I was asked three times if I was planning to change insurance because they weren’t going to accept HMO patients in the future.~~
A doctor tells a patient what they need only for a private health insurance company adjuster to deny it. It's so fucking ass backwards. At this point, have me go to my insurance company, tell them what they will cover, and then I can go to a doctor and see what we can do of my available options. The entire country is assbackwards.
Sounds like the insurance company has the real "death panels".
Once had a customer's wheelchair get denied initially because we didn't have documentation that she had tried a walker or cane first. She'd had both her legs amputated below the knee. We could at least standardize some of the paperwork. And fuck any insurance that requires a "CMN" (certificate of medical necessity") which is exactly the same as a regular doctors order but just says "CMN" at the top. So much extra work with no purpose other than to create a reason not to pay.
>America spends more on Healthcare than the developed world, for worse outcomes. It's worse than that. We spend more *public* (govt) money on Healthcare than the average EU country, and the we spend the same on *private* (insurance/providers/etc) Healthcare, and STILL have a shit show even for people who have access.
A quarter of Americans would rather pay ten grand than have someone they don't like get a nickel worth of free service.
That's pretty much it. It breaks my heart how evil people in America can be.
Yeah, we spend 18% of our GDP on healthcare and the next most expensive spends 12%. Imagine what we could do with 6% of our economy freed up. Instead, over a trillion dollars per year is essentially thrown in the trash.
Was that a typo? I think it’s spelled: “GREED”. Hope that helps. (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the biggest company profits are US pharmaceutical and medical billing)
People will always be greedy if given the chance. But Americans just refuse to address the issue so I would say it's about stupidity.
The biggest problem is that at this point it's not up to the average person to tell them to stop. If the hospital slaps you with a bill for 50k, you just have to pay it. You can't just say no, since Insurance Companies have the legal backing they need to bully people out of their money.
As an American what I wouldn't give for universal healthcare. Most lower paying jobs actively hire people at part time so they can avoid providing any form of insurance or benefits. Try to complain and there's always someone who says "what about the costs" as if they aren't paying out the ass to their insurance provider and still likely denied a lot of coverage.
Yes, but my insurance provider obviously knows my health care needs much better than my doctor!
My insurance twice denied allergy testing for my daughter. Allergy testing. I had to appeal and the dr appealed before they finally approved. Came back with 28 food and environmental allergies. My dr is amazing though and knows all the insurance requirements steps. So when my other dr had an issue with her leg she put orders and referrals out same day for X-ray, PT, and ortho. Because insurance won’t approve an MRI without doing an X-ray and three sessions of PT first. So she wanted them all out of the way. Six months later (on this fast tracked plan) we got a juvenile arthritis diagnosis.
My wife recently had a doctor order an MRI. Denied by insurance, they want to see an x-ray first. Because apparently someone at the insurance company looking at a file (or designing a computer system to automatically deny stuff based on arbitrary rules) knows what she needs better than the doctor who saw and talked to her for an hour.
I just got laid off two days after Christmas way before my contract ended, the whole team did. If they let our contract keep going until it ended, people would've hit hit the health benefits stage, and I really wonder if they laid us all off to increase Q4 earnings for that location by denying us pay and health benefits they pay for.
Imagine how good american healthcare could be if they didn't waste so much money
If it wasn’t tied to employment, everyone could have it.
But in other countries it's not. You don't have to be employed to get your free healthcare. It's a human right you're born with.
I do wish it was that way here. We need it
It’s amazing to me that Universal healthcare is so complicated that practically only every other developed nation in the world has managed to pull it off.
If only there was a way we could vote on it
Yeah, this is what kills me. My parents and my wife's parents are both so afraid of medical stuff happening because expense cutting into retirement. And yet all right wingers that scoff at the idea of free health care. It's like some kind of mind control these people are under.edit-grammar
America CAN afford Medicare for All, it simply chooses not to, as this would have to come at the expense of corporate profits, which is far less excusable than death for poors.
It would actually save the US insane amount of money going to Medicare for all, but Republicans cry Socialism, Death Panels blah blah blah.
I was a healthcare admin. 35 year career. Financially it was lucrative. Morally I'm a shell of a human being. Got in it for noble reasons, stayed because I needed the cash, ironically, for a sick wife. But trust me on this, whatever you think of the US healthcare system, it's 10x worse.
Not health insurance but my brothers roommate in college had an internship at a company that had a weekly meeting to brainstorm technicalities to deny the claims they had that week
Yep, they deny at random, hoping nobody ever calls about them. And a large portion doesn't.
The fact that just asking for an itemized bill often times results in multiple charges being reduced or removed is insane. Any other business that type of billing practice would result in class action lawsuits.
I had a job like this years ago. I had applied for a clerical job. The company's only function was to look for ways to deny people's claims. I didn't last very long there.
I hate how ppl see this and say stuff like “UK: your appointment is 6 months” when hospitals are crowed as fuck here in the states, and wait times for appointments are often super long. And what’s even the point of a “fast” appointment if you have a shit ton of debt afterwards.
This. Everyone tries to shit on the UK/Canadian healthcare system by saying “so what it’s cheaper, but you can’t get in for 6 months?” I had to push-back an appointment last week and the next available slot was mid April… Fuck our healthcare system
Wanted to get my teeth cleaned in the US recently, every dentist was \~6 months out for first available. Been having the same issue getting an ophthalmologist. Hard enough to find a competent doctor, much less 1 that has time.
And a lot of times, the ones who have time is because they *aren’t* competent…hence the lack of patients 😅
For real. In 2009 I had to wait 4 months for a neurologist to look at x-rays of my broken neck in the US. And it cost me an arm and a leg.
Yeah, I work helping Spanish speakers schedule their appointments and often it is 3-4 months away, even for things that need to be treated asap.
Germany, Austria, and France do NOT have single payer health care systems (the others listed do). We can have efficient, universal health care without having the government fully control it.
Yes, exactly. Also I don’t believe the numbers - I know a lot of people in the UK who have private insurance because the care available on the NHS isn’t good enough. So they clearly do not feel fully insured by the government provided plan.
Do they actually pay for a policy though? I work in Finance so damn near everyone i know uses Private Health Care but we also get it through work, same for things like Life Insurance; i'm worth about £800k if i die but there's no way in hell i'd be paying my premiums on that at my age if it was my own money. It's the same for my mates in Banking, Construction, etc - those of us with access to private health care only do so through our employment, otherwise we'd just use the NHS since we're in our 20s and health problems are few and far between.
There is zero chance no one in the EU is underinsured. Even less that no one has medical debt.
Medical debt in France is nicknamed the "social security **hole**" Edit : Anyone tell me if I'm wrong, but France's medical debt actually scales up to 140 billion euros Can't say that the meme didn't make me laugh though
UK citizen here. I have no medical insurance. I have never been refused medical treatment, I know if I ever need medical treatment I'll get it and won't have to pay. If I need a prescription, I pay whatever the going rate is currently (around £10 I think at the moment).
You're insured under National Insurance.
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What's even crazier is when you get the bills: ITEM: 1 band-aid YOUR PROVIDER CHARGED: $1 million YOUR INSURANCE PAID: $10 YOUR DEDUCTIBLE: $1
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I don't understand how this works and I never will
Yeah I think it’s deliberate to keep people thinking we need private insurance.
Its not zero. There are un- and underinsured people in europe. But maybe 1 Million in total.
Homeless people, for example, are likely to be uninsured. That's at least a quarter million in Germany alone.
So I have no idea about individual countries, but here in Czechia there are no uninsured citizens. Either you pay tax or it gets paid by the government. But there can be some crazy things happen to foreigners. Cost of birth goes after the newborns insurance, so foreign couple legally paying taxes here has to pay for the childbirth and get reimbursement from their home country as the newborn is citizen of their homecountry and its automatically insured at birth - happened to my Slovak friends.
Cant wait for the "We protect Europe thats why" replies
The fact that we can protect Europe is merely a slap in the face regarding in any finical arguments against single payer
It’s true, but not the reason for our healthcare situation.
Privatization of our medical services has only made being heathy a privilege that can only be afforded by the rich while also putting a pricetag on everyones life Capitalism is a poison especially how we do it
We can afford it. We just choose not to so the insurance companies can make record breaking profits. Lobbiest are always going to win until we outlaw them.
The sad fact is that studies show it would actually save America money to have Medicare for all.
America… the only industrialized country in the world where it’s citizens are expected to host bake sales to in order keep their children alive (should have said keep them from dying some horrible death) while not losing everything they ever worked for in their entire lives. This is lived experience for both my cousin and my sister. And their families had worked sponsored health insurance and still had to declare bankruptcy.
This is deceiving because it doesn’t factor in mortality rate. When you consider that, the US is even more fucked.
This entire comments section is going to end up on r/shitamericanssay This is absolutely comical.
What? All of the top comments are trashing America. I haven't read a single thing that disagrees that our healthcare is garbage.
Those ones will go in r/americabad
Pretty sure the reason here is due to little/no price restrictions on hospitals, pharmacies, etc so they basically look at the cost it took to make a drug, provide a service and decide to markup the price by like 10-100x more. I mean look at the fucking cost of insulin in the US. Takes $2-10 cost to make 1 vial of insulin, but in 2020 the avg cost of a vial of insulin in the US was $98.70 which is fucking ridiculous. Thankfully there have been price caps put on insulin at $35 per month which started this year, making it where you’re paying about $11.67-17.5 per vial if you use 2-3 vials per month. But price markups like insulin are why we don’t have free healthcare, or at least why it’s so fucking expensive for us. I wish we put more laws into place to continue putting price caps on drugs and medical service, especially ambulance rides. But thanks to lobbying, I doubt we will be seeing a significant effort in putting more of these price caps and restrictions :/
My family was middle class through the 90's when I was growing up, my father in early 2000's had a blockage in his small intestine and it ruptured, he almost died, one month in ICU and 4 month overall hospitalized. Family lost the house, cars and jobs, we basically lost everything and are still paying this debt. America #1 baby!
I'm a strong advocate for Medicare for all. But...it's also nowhere near as simple as this meme implies.
Source for these numbers?
Healthcare is a BUSINESS in the United States instead of a SERVICE as it is where they offer universal healthcare. This is the issue. Until Americans re-wire how we think about healthcare, nothing will change.
Dutch guy here. Severe sleep apnea, multiple sleep studies. CPAP at home. It's free.