For a nation with half of all citizens owning guns, it’s amazing that there isn’t more pressure on politicians to implement a universal healthcare scheme.
Lone wolves tend to target schools and workplaces.
It will always remain baffling to me that no rogue widows or widowers, by consequence of the system, don’t bring their grievances to those in charge of healthcare policy.
It will always remain baffling to me that no rogue widows or widowers, by consequence of the system, don’t bring their grievances to those in charge of healthcare policy.
I think last year someone did. And like the heroes from the old Western movies, (s)he vanished into the sunset, never to be seen again.
I mean as cool as this is, it’s exactly the story the right uses to oppose it.
Non tax paying, non citizens getting subsidized healthcare. A conservative horror story for the ages
Conservatives are bad people and they should be prohibited from making policy decisions.
I have a similar story that works much better:
When I lived in Japan, I cracked a rib. Went to the doctor, got an x-ray, and a follow up appointment. Total cost to me, with insurance, ~$50. Cost without insurance (e.g. a tourist) would have been ~$160
I have a friend who is a doctor and technically speaking Americans should get charged for medical treatment and then their insurance should pay for it, after all they are not citizens and don’t pay taxes. But no one seems all that clear on how to actually bill them so it almost always never happens.
The American system is so batshit crazy that no one else from any other country knows how to interface with it.
No one from the US knows how to interface with it either. It’s a giant unnavigable mess.
American here.
We were taught in grade school that Europeans lived longer because of the Mediterranean diet they ate. They could eat good bread and drink red wine and out live us Americans.
Turns out it was universal healthcare. We’ll never get it here, and we’ll die earlier and poorer because of it.
Well, both are true. Apart of the traditional diet, European food regulations are solid and put consumers health above corporate benefits.
American food is almost as awful as American healthcare.
Only people who live in the Mediterranean eat the Mediterranean diet. Frankly just because it’s better for you doesn’t mean it’s going to make you live longer necessarily it just won’t make you live shorter. And maybe they won’t have to make a special spherical coffin when you do die.
Glad you completely missed my point. I hope you enjoy dying earlier than anyone that has universal healthcare.
What are you on about?
The mediterranean and athlantic diets also help. But to have them you also need better quality foods, which are also worse in the US with all the derregulation.
Excuse me while I eat my super processed pringles, and wash it down with a super sugary drink.
And walking
with all the derregulation
yeah it’s a part deregulation but also the fact that US produces food in giga-farms in technical processes (like corn syrup and petroleum cheese) while in europe you have a whole lot more smaller regional farms which drives up the quality dramatically i believe. like, i think you probably won’t find something as good as french mold cheese in the US, simply because there’s not really any producers there. correct me if i’m wrong btw.
oh and also the fact that you need patience to really enjoy the food. if you’re always in a hustle (grindset), you won’t enjoy food anyways so there’s no point for food producers to produce better quality food if nobody appreciates it…
Not to mention they don’t live their lives in morbid anxiety over getting sick or injured. So that’s years more of life just by not being stressed and being able to think clearly.
We were taught in grade school that Europeans lived longer because of the Mediterranean diet they ate.
I mean i’m pretty sure that plays a major role too. Italian diet is just on a whole other level
I mean, is it true that you eat cheese that is literally made of petroleum?
And don’t get me started on the cornflakes and sugary drinks.
It wasn’t universal healthcare, it was a combination of poor records restoration by the US Army after WW2 and rampant pension fraud.
what?
Insurance is just a scam to keep people enslaved to jobs for their premiums and coverage. If only quality care wasn’t tied to employers’ insurance we might actually have competition back in the market. Have better products and a livable state of life. As someone on Medicare I can’t afford a 400% increase to my premium after tax credits are slashed in the coming years. Socialism is at least a band aid to our monolithic oppressive capitalist economy.
Its just privatized socialism, where the rich get subsidized by the poors who have it but cant afford the minimum and co pays to actually use it.
My daughter was in Ireland and had a problem that would have cost her a minimum of four thousand in the US with insurance. Her cost was 75 euros. They apologized for it not being complexly free.
BuT bUt BuT tHe TaXeS!!
… I can almost guarantee the taxes are still less than the lost direct compensation from employers that instead goes to your insurance “benefit.” :/
Last I checked the US spent more than any comparable country on healthcare/capita, roughly twice the OECD average.
And, they have to deal with medical bankruptcies, using Uber instead of ambulances, insulin rationing, and whatnotIt’s the least effective system, but at least it’s not
communismsocialisma system where tax money is used to cover human rightsyup. Last time i checked, america was paying about $14K per capita, and the rest of the developed world was paying $3K-6K
But who would innovate if America didn’t fleece its patients?
but what about the shareholders?!?
exactly. Fuck the people, just as long as shareholders get that extra 1c per share.
yeah but why would I pay for healthcare if I’m healthy(now)!!??
Plus hundreds of thousands of lawyers and lawsuits.
I was doing the math on the new benefits package my company is rolling out and we’re getting close to the point it’d be cheaper in nearly every instance to simply not have health insurance. I’m literally only keeping it for that slim chance one of us becomes extremely ill and needs major medical intervention.
This industry is like a balloon waiting to pop.
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Healthcare is not cheap. I pay over a thousand euros per month. But it covers my whole family including me so its worth it.
I live in the Netherlands. If I visit the hospital I have to pay my yearly deductible of €350 first. This person paid zero dollars because her travel insurance paid for it.
The Netherlands has the same system as Obamacare. Privatized insurance with government subsidies for low income. Only difference is that the government sorta acts like a single payer, they negotiate with big pharma over medicine prices and the government with the insurers make a price list for healthcare providers on what they can charge.
Of course a healthcare provider can decide to charge whatever they want but then insurance won’t cover that business.
Only recently did the United States start treading into monopsony territory when it comes to healthcare funding. Specifically the cost of a certain small list of medicines.
Of course, those gains have been reversed by the shift in political winds, but there is a potential for this policy to expand in the future.
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The Netherlands is something like the 2nd most costly medical care in the world, far behind the US but still way more expensive than necessary. We had a “center right” party in power for ages, with their religious belief that the only way to do anything is for someone to make profit. 😑
Edit:
I just checked and we’re actually below Switzerland, Norway, and Germany. I’m shocked!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
The number for Germany seems to also include Lohnfortzahlung and Krankengeld (employer only pays part of a sick employee’s salary, rest is paid by health insurance) maybe that’s why. Germany is also a world champion of unnecessary surgeries.
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By about 50% more according to the bar chart in that link
My deductible is something like $2,500 per person, $13,000 for the family deductible. Once we reach our deductibles we have the joy of coinsurance kicking in where insurance will pay for 50% and we pay the rest. I took a trip to the ER earlier this year for chest pains. They took a chest xray and had me on an EKG for an hour. I got a separate bill for each little thing they did from like 5 different companies (???) Totaling ~$4,000.
I also live here and I can see a consultation with my GP cost 20 eur per visit. So you have to pay 350 first only if its very expensive care.
A GP visit is fully covered by insurance, a visit to a specialist, like in an hospital, needs to be paid by the deductible first even for a mere consultation with a specialist. Doesn’t matter if it was expensive or not.
And if you visit a specialist without a referral from your GP or dentist then usually insurance won’t cover anything. Except for visits to the emergency room.
Yep
And they’ve been lied to not only about healthcare
They’ve also been lied to about work)life balance, about taxes for the rich, about cars and bicycles, about…
The US has become w cesspool over the past 5 decades basically because everyone there has been lying their asses off and nobody cared to force people to be truthful about anything
A good press could have stopped this tide but that’s gone since long ago too
No shit, our president has a horrible aversion to the truth and shit rolls downhill.
Did you guys think we were just all collectively lying to you about this shit?
Hey, Grammy’s cancer bill just came in and it’s 1 million euros, tell the Americans it was free though.
I’m financially destroyed but at least I can make fun of Americans
Pointing out that “free” healthcare is actually paid for by somebody is seen as a killer gotcha in the conservative world. They assume that as soon as somebody learns that they are paying money into taxes that benefit other people, they will also flip out and fight tooth and nail to stop it.
Keep pushing and they might hit you with another zinger, like how the US is not a democracy, it’s a republic! 🤯
Here’s a fun fact, though…people in the US pay more in taxes towards healthcare than we do here in the UK. And then they have to pay on top of that.
It’s almost as if having an entire for-profit industry acting as middle-men doesn’t lead to the best value for money.
Despite less than half of the USA’s total healthcare expenditure coming from government expenditure or compulsory insurance schemes, it still spends more per person on these financing schemes than the UK- £3,111 in the USA in 2014, compared with £2,210 in the UK.
Fun fact, not just the UK but in fact every single nation on planet earth.
That is correct, as a portion of GDP Americans pay a higher portion of tax into healthcare than any nation on planet earth by a significant margin, before anyone ever pays a cent privately.
America is also the only industrialised nation on earth, the only member of the G20 who does not provide some form of cradle to grave medical coverage for all citizens
Yep, like many things with this country, when you keep digging instead of finding the inevitable reasonable explanation you find that it just gets stupider.
Oh your think your firemen are FREE do you?? Hmmmm gotcha lib
they do, with a shit load of propaganda.
mostly they focus on diminishing the value of public healthcare, and compare it with the best theoretical private service you could get.
look at those dirty europoors with dirt cheap healthcare and endless waiting times (both lies), and compare it with what a CEO can afford in there states. you see? US private system is better.
unless you’re poor or middle class who can’t afford to live, in which case, fuck you.
Wtf? Do Americans not buy travel insurance when they leave the country?
it’s too expensive.
you forget, for Americans to leave the USA they are often spending $1000s on plane tickets. a ticket to my friends in Toronto is usually $300 for a cheap flight, average cost is closer to $500. Hotel for a 3-5 nights is another grand almost. Travel insurance is another 10% on top of all of that, or more.
Thousands?? I didn’t realize it was that expensive for you to go to Europe. Is it like some kind of export tax you guys are charging yourselves because I had always assumed you guys can fly for cheaper due to the sheer volume of flights.
Even from Vancouver to London, it looks like it’s less than $600US. I live in Japan right now and I’m headed to Germany next week, which is costing me $1000 ish per family member and I think I have to pay for insurance to be able to stay in the Schengen area.
If you ever find a cheap flight to Okinawa, hit me up and I’ll treat you to a beer!
yeah, but that’s socialism. I’d rather have socialism with a middleman and pay 30 times more!
Only 30x? Pfft, don’t you want to be endebted for life??
Americans are so afraid of communism that they forgot the good things that it can bring. Capitalism on the other hand…
It’s not communism it’s just social responsibility. The medical services aren’t free they are paid for by society.
It’s just that your value to society is not prejudiced by some corporate overlord before you’re allowed to get your medical treatment.
Americans are so afraid of communism that they jump at shadows. It’s almost impossible to forward a progressive idea without being accused of being some evil communist. It’s kind of amazing the country has managed to get to 250 years without imploding
I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard someone use the term communism or socialism correctly.
He was murdered by communism
Communism didn’t bring this. Capitalism brought this. Trail blazed by the NHS, in the UK, the country that took capitalism global.
A bit confused arent you? Capitalism brought the opposite. Die next to me, while I’m finishing my cocktail.
True or false: The Netherlands, where Amsterdam is, is a capitalist country?
I naively expected that all of Europe had health care figured out. The bullshit $450 USD bill I got in Sweden for existing in the same room with a doctor for 15 minutes taught me otherwise.
Your experience is more realistic than the one in the post. EU citizens in EU countries “don’t pay” for healthcare services because it’s already paid through taxes, foreigners are supposed to be billed because they don’t pay taxes in the EU. (it doesn’t always happen tho, you know, administrative error, oops)
Not necessarily true for all foreigners. Australia has reciprocal healthcare agreements with many EU countries. That means if an Aussie visits those countries, healthcare is covered and the opposite is true as well. Whereas that wouldn’t apply for a USian.
Well you don’t pay for it but your country’s mutual assistance fund does that for you. That’s the same arrangement intra-EU.
As far as I’m aware, it’s just a “we cover your citizens if you cover our citizens” sort of arrangement.
You know how in many poor countries, they’ll charge you higher prices because they (rightly) think that you’re a westerner and can thus pay much higher prices than the locals? I heavily suspect that was basically that. Swedes aren’t paying $450 USD for 15 minutes doctor time.
I figured as much, but it was jarring to receive worse care and for way more money than I would have paid at home (even uninsured).
Yeah, as a German, the quality of care isn’t necessarily that great (though I never experience the US healthcare system to compare). Many European countries have been heavily cutting corners in the last 1-2 decades. I’ve been to several doctors who, after waiting like 3 months for an appointment, have been practically useless. “I tried nothing and I’m all out of ideas” kind of shit, and for several different issues. They’re fine with simple/obvious stuff, but once it’s slightly difficult to figure out or any kind of mental health issue you’re pretty much just going there to be able to tell your employer that you’re trying, and maybe get lucky with medication.
I’m sure there’s levels of competency, but it seems a large part of the failure of the US healthcare itself is when doctors have to try and convince the insurance corporation that they do have education and experience and the procedure or medication they recommended to help someone is valid. As if the insurance company knows better and is trying to protect the patient… right.
Prior Authorizations as an idea, are just the insurance company playing doctor. They should be illegal, the company doesn’t have a medical license.
The insurance companies do have doctors on staff though. They’re just incentivised to deny everything lest they get fired.
Are you American?
I’m pretty sure most developed countries have reciprocal agreements with other developed countries that cover emergencies. If an Australian breaks an arm while in Norway, I don’t think they’re going to get a bill.
But, of course, the US is different. Countries can’t have reciprocal agreements with the US, because the US has a for-profit system. If a Swede has to go to the hospital in the US, they better hope they have travel insurance. So, if an American goes to Sweden, they’re also going to get billed. And if you think $450 is an expensive medical bill for someone without insurance in the US, you’re dreaming.
Yes.
if you think $450 is an expensive medical bill for someone without insurance in the US, you’re dreaming.
I said it was possible to get a bare bones GP visit without insurance in the US for less than $450. I’m fully aware the system is broken and a car accident or serious injury will almost certainly bankrupt individuals without insurance.
But apples-to-apples comparison, the care in Sweden was worse for more money.
It’s at the high end of what you might expect in the US, but it’s not far outside the range. This page estimates that a typical visit costs between $150 and $450. But, the cost of an ER visit without insurance is in the multiple thousands.
What you did if you went to see a random doctor in Sweden is probably more similar to an ER visit, not because it’s an emergency, but because it it’s not the easy case of someone just visiting their family doctor. A doctor in the US is probably used to seeing uninsured patients and has a standard way of billing them. But, a doctor in Sweden is probably not used to dealing with patients who aren’t covered under the Swedish system (or under an EU country’s system that has a reciprocal agreement with Sweden). If you lived there long-term, you’d be integrated into their system. So, I assume you weren’t seeing your regular doctor, you were seeing a doctor who had to handle a special case of an American without travel insurance. So, they have to figure out how to do all the required paperwork, and pay all the people who need to get paid when a doctor sees a patient, but without the standard procedures. So, you pay extra to deal with that one-off paperwork.
So, the expense isn’t because healthcare in Sweden is expensive in general. It’s expensive for you because dealing with uninsured Americans is not something they normally do, and it’s a pain in the ass, so it has a high price.
Is that for tourists or citizens?
I don’t know about Sweden, but in Canada there is a sign with the prices for non-Canadians next to the check in desk in the Emergency. I’m willing to bet that even though it was expensive, it’s still cheaper than the US.
Which is why many Americans cross the border for healthcare.
For what it’s worth, the language barrier was pretty significant from a written signs perspective. I showed up at what I guessed was the right spot, went inside, gave them my passport, and they returned it with a bill for $450 (it was expressed in kr, but this is what it converted to). I eventually went in and spoke to a doctor who took no vitals, did no tests, and gave me no medicine. And that was the visit.
I’ve seen a doctor as an American with no insurance a number of times. For a basic GP visit, it’s probably half that price and that’s with basic vitals included.
Not sure for Sweden but usually it’s for citizens or permanent residents. Populations tend to not appreciate their taxes going toward foreign entities. That said, the drug prices etc. are at their actual value, so an example of a trip to a GP and getting prescription pain relief, it would be about $40-60 USD depending on circumstances.
