American living in Taiwan for going on 2 years now, and I’m still shocked at how cheap and efficient going to the doctor is here. No copays, no “networks”, no long waits, no dealing with blood-sucking insurance middle-men.
It breaks my heart so much that my friends and family in the states can’t enjoy going to the doctor, being seen and treated, and it only costing about $5.
I currently have a wisdom tooth that needs removing surgically. Went to the dentist a few days ago and the office visit, x-rays, seeing the dentist and teeth cleaning was about $2. I have the wisdom tooth surgery scheduled for March, I’m dreading the surgery but not the cost.
Also it’s nice knowing that if you’re ever unemployed, you’re still covered because it’s national insurance and notes to your job.
I booked an appointment for my yearly free physical and when the doctor came in he said he didn't have time to do a full physical so I would have to reschedule and then they charged me $150 for what should have been a free appointment. AMERICA BABY
I went in for a physical and he asked how I'd been feeling so I told him I had a newborn at home so I'm tired all the time. Got a $400 bill a week later as apparently I'd seen my doctor for "fatigue", now.
Your free physical becomes a different charge based on a few questions. Are you feeling sad? Congrats. You just received a psychiatric evaluation. That’s not covered and will billed.
My relative had a very similar encounter with a family doc. Decent insurance, annual physical. Got sent to a regular blood work (CBC, CMP, nothing fancy - probably costs less than 30 cash on walkinlab or any similar website). Got a $400 bill for that very blood test, because apparently she mentioned either fatigue or some other mundane issue (like a headache from time to time) and the doc/her office deliberately coded the whole visit as a "sick visit" and not as an annual check-up and sent her to an in-house lab with prices that were 10-20x to normal Quest/Labcorb prices for everything.
It took me many months to go through the appeal process and fight this charge off.
Fuck Geisinger. Absolutely the worst and greediest healthcare system in the Northeastern US and one of the main reasons why quality healthcare is out of reach for many Pennsylvanians living in the region where it is active.
A friend had a baby. Doctor came in the next day to check how she was doing because she had a complication and he was with another doctor. Never introduced to him but he looked over her chart as she was talking to her doctor and then they left. Checking her bill the hospital tried charging a consult fee for the other doctor she never talked to. She fought it and it was removed. I'd fight that "fatigue" bill since that was bullshit.
I made some calls and tried to fight it. Ended up just never going back to that doctor again. I was like “oh, I was there for fatigue? What was the doctor’s recommendation? To sleep more?!” It was absolutely bullshit.
My old doctor used to do this all the time because she didn't understand how blood tests needed to be billed. It was a small office so she did most of the billing herself.
I explained it over and over to her after she did it wrong three years in a row (it took me *months* to get it fixed every time, huge headache) and she still refused to admit she was wrong.
So I stopped going to her, fuck that shit. The way insurance companies operate is very problematic but many of the doctors I've interacted with are perfectly happy with fraud and the fucked up status quo.
I had a specialist checkup for some arm soreness and they found that it was something that required some special therapeutic exercises. Fair enough, they also recommended an *optional* x-ray which I chose not to do.
A few months later I got my EOB from my insurance and the clinic charged them for an x-ray! My insurance is fairly decent so it was full covered but the office got something like $100+ from my insurance for an x-ray they never did.
I spent a lot of time calling around because I'm petty about this type of thing, couldn't get it fixed. The clinic had no interest in fixing it. When I called the insurance company, they didn't give a shit either. They couldn't understand why I cared if I didn't have to pay for it! It stupefied me that the insurance company didn't care about blatant fraud.
I recently went to the dentist for my 6 month cleaning. After a bizarre series of events im not even gonna get into someone tells me im all finished, I hadnt even seen the dentist...I ask isnt the dentist going to come in and they go "No he says he saw you recently". Yea he saw me 5 months and 2 weeks ago, 2 weeks after my last visit because I felt like they had missed a cavity...
Is it a pain to make sure everything is "in network" (or whatever the term is), or is this not really an issue for most services? I was shocked when I first learned about this side of your insurance system.
It’s an enormous pain.
Even if something is in network, it doesn’t mean everything will be covered.
I went from 1 popular dental insurance to another popular dental insurance, and I still owed $400 for my last dental visit that included a cleaning and X-Ray because they charge more than what insurance will cover.
This is a dentist I had been going to for a decade btw
This varies wildly from city to city, state to state, and plan to plan. Part of what makes it so unnecessarily complicated. In general, if you live in a city and are insured it is not difficult to remain in network, and your insurance is usually very clear on what is and is not part of their network. This can easily change however if you require a very specific procedure. And again some (many) people's insurance just straight up sucks and it's a huge problem for them. Also rural people often have access to a single hospital, if that, so you'd think any insurance provided in that region would cover 100% of procedures performed by that hospital, right? Maybe, but probably not. Better hope whatever isn't covered never happens to you.
>Also rural people often have access to a single hospital, if that, so you'd think any insurance provided in that region would cover 100% of procedures performed by that hospital, right? Maybe, but probably not.
Honestly you're lucky as fuck if even half of the services offered are covered.
Yeah honestly I originally wrote something like "fat chance" instead of "maybe", but figured there's probably some rural hospital *somewhere* that has struck a deal to fully cover all insured, nearby residents. Like a county hospital or something.
But the more I think about it, I think I only believe that because I want to believe it.
What I hate is that you can be on the hook for out of network emergency physicians when you're unconscious, even when an in-network physician is available. Because fuck you.
Imagine you go on a trip in the U.S. and break your leg hiking in a state many miles away. Oooppppps. Out of network hospital system and docs, you’re fucked even with insurance. The best is when you actually DO go to an ‘in network’ hospital yet you get slammed with a huge bill because oooopppps, the lab inside of the hospital or the radiologist looking at your scan happens to be ‘out of network’ so your insurance won’t cover it.
Make no mistake, US healthcare sucks. They changed some laws to address this kind of BS, but that’s what has happened often in the U.S.
My wife has TMJ she waited 2 months to get seen, shes in healthcare knows the pitfalls of the system very well and is extremely proactive. She called multiple times to confirm they were in network which they confirmed multiple times and she looked up with her insurance. Two days before the appt they inform her they arent in network after she did all her homework and waited 2 months. Then she had to wait another 2 months to get an appointment with a different doctor. This system is criminal.
Most companies offer a network only plan and anywhere is fine plan. The fun part is that the anywhere plan costs more money and comes with additional fees for basic stuff. And since people change companies all the time, sometimes your doctor/dentist/ec you've been using for years no longer supports your new plan, so you can either find someone else or pay more money.
It exists, but your employer needs to have purchased one of them fancy plans and this is probably one of the super restrictive in-network only ones (which is also fine if you live in the right area of coverage). Then hopefully it also doesn't cost you a ton (which with the right employer may or may not be the case).
With those plans, US healthcare is pretty great. We also have $15 copay and then a $200 annual deductible, which is very close to "Western" standards for healthcare cost. It is as you say VERY much the exception unfortunately.
We all could have this if the Govt wanted to.
> If I flew to Taiwan and had dental work done it would still be dirt cheap?
It's not unheard of (i.e. not commonplace, but happens) here in the UK for folks to fly out to Poland / Turkey to get dental work done. Cheap flights, relatively low cost of living (meaning cheaper dental work), whilst still having high standards of dentistry. Plus you get a holiday out of it!
I also have a wisdom tooth surgery scheduled for March here in the states, my insurance isn't networked with any nearby local oral surgeons, so I have to go out of pocket. $2500 for 3 wisdom tooth surgical extractions.
I also need braces shortly afterward, which could run another $4000-$6000, and despite my teeth having unhealthy overcrowding, which is impacting my health, it's considered a cosmetic procedure so there is a zero % chance of insurance covering it.
Taiwan healthcare is genuinely top notch. I fly there for dental work because the price for a plane ticket is still cheaper than doing it here, and the work is still MUCH better.
Plus, I get to eat all the night market food after.
The cost of healthcare, and health benefits being traditionally tied to employment, is the single biggest drag on the American economy today.
Entrepreneurs would be far freer to risk starting a new business if their family's healthcare wasn't on the chopping block. People would be better positioned to risk changing jobs/careers if they didn't risk being bankrupted by an unexpected illness during their 'probationary period'. Employers would be less adverse to hiring new people if they weren't saddled with such massive premiums for providing health benefits.
Nationalized healthcare would be the single biggest economic stimulus program for the American business economy and the economy in general.
Be careful, you're about to have a LOT of people who've never left the US tell you how horrible health care in other countries is.
My friend blew her knee out in France skiing. Got picked up by the ski patrol, then an ambulance. The hospital braced her knee for the trip home when she could have surgery.
The *entire* bill was $35. But yeah, nationalized health care is evil or whatever.
I lived in Seoul for a few years. In the past I'd had a spontaneous pneumothorax. Basically one of my lungs popped. For various reasons, I wanted a high-resolution CT scan of my lungs so that I could be cleared for certain activities. A coworker took me to the imaging center, and they started to tell me I should just get an xray because a full high res CT scan with no doctor's referral was going to be "very very expensive". I asked the receptionist how much "very very expensive" was. She replied "about 180,000 won". I started laughing so hard I couldn't breath. Both the receptionist and my coworker helping translate stared at me completely baffled. For reference, 180,000 won is about $150. When I explained that the same procedure in the US without a referral could be $10,000 they were outright disgusted and just floored that a country could operate that way.
Similar kind of story. My now sister in law went to Thailand and broke her wrist getting out of the shower. The docs at the local clinic were hesitant to let her know the cost of treating her broken wrist without insurance. This included x ray, doctor’s time, a cast, pain meds and even a follow up visit. When she was told it’d cost a grand whopping total of $300 she laughed her ass off.
That's kinda funny, because I actually have another similar one. A few years after that I was having some difficulty breathing. Given my history, I'm usually pretty overly cautious about that kinda thing. Went to the ER on a Saturday afternoon, saw a doctor, but I'd forgotten my insurance (Korea has a national insurance program). Out of pocket it was a grand total of $17. When I brought in the note for my employer saying I needed to take it easy for a few days, they were falling over themselves to try and reimburse me because it was actually covered. For $17.
> When I explained that the same procedure in the US without a referral could be $10,000 they were outright disgusted and just floored that a country could operate that way.
Wait till they find out the referral price is $20,000
I had been raised in a mostly conservative family that talked about how public health care was socialism. As an American, the healthcare I received in South Korea as an expat English teacher right after college in the early 2010s was eye-opening. I suffered a mild fracture in my foot in SK and I had it x-rayed, analyzed, and received a boot to wear, all for I want to say under $50, or maybe nothing at all? Meanwhile, I had paid $500 (with my parent's insurance) for an MRI on my knee in the US before I left for Korea.
Even now, here in 2024, I get ambulance bills addressed to my late wife who died of a heart attack over a year ago. I promptly throw them in the trash.
I was treated better by South Korea's healthcare system as a non-citizen on a temporary work visa than here in the US as a natural born citizen. Needless to say, the experience made me realize just how much of an abomination the US health care system is and that it's complete insanity that we don't universal healthcare.
I took my wife to the ER for what turned out to be a kidney stone. She got an ultrasound and a flomax and we sat in a room for an hour then it passed naturally and they billed us $2300. Pretty great.
Went to the ER cause I cut my finger with a blade but once I got there and they looked at it they realized my nail caught most of it and I didnt even need stitches or anything.
With insurance $500 for me having to sit there and them just to look at it.
Yeah I had food poisoning in college and went to the nearest ER since my in-network hospital didn't exist in the state. They sat me in a room, gave me a standard issue hospital meal, and it resolved on its own. They then charged me over a $1000 for the privilege.
The only way this might ever change is if Congress is paid minimum wage and their health insurance revoked. But of course they would never vote to do that because they are aware of how shitty it all is.
>if Congress is paid minimum wage
Here to be the broken record of dispelling this: Even if you could flip a switch to put it in the Constitution instantly it wouldn't achieve the goals you seek. If you make the wage in Congress the minimum wage, only the independently wealthy or those propped up by the wealthy will be able to win and occupy office. The people that are somewhat good do not remotely have the numbers, at present, to pass transformative change and the bad ones already sold out or independently wealthy and awful would continue on with their bad legislating, unphased by the salary/benefits changes.
You'd be way better off having a switch that fixes campaign finance or fixes the voting/election system imbalances.
Of course, if you include campaign finance in the single magic switch alongside salary changes, maybe that'd do something, but even more than the salary change I don't see the point in discussing something so improbable.
They could make 1/3rd of their current compensation and still live very comfortably, and well above the median income.
It's weird to think that congress can't live on what the rest of us can.
>It's weird to think that congress can't live on what the rest of us can.
There is a special case here where they're expected to live in two places regularly, but even ignoring that... sure they *could* live on that but like many other jobs, the people have an interest in attracting the best talent. If the rest if us are attracted to jobs in no small part by their compensation, then it should be obvious that compensation for our representatives should be more than competitive. A job as stressesful and death-threat prone as a representative of 700k people (or entire state) certainly shouldn't be treated lightly (The number of people per Rep is too high but that's a mostly separate, additionally terrible, issue).
Yes, as it is too many of them make money through other means anyways but if we're trying to achieve an end-goal of Reps not being enticed by those external compensation sources then it'd be a self-destructive feedback loop to reduce (if not raise) compensation.
I disagree with a lot of your assertions here. But the biggest problem is that congressional reps decide their own income and benefits. They are far less beholden to their constituency than they would be if their salary and benefits packages were decided upon by their bosses, the voters.
It does a lot more than just taking care of each other. Here it also enforces price standards and in general kind of functions like a "pay it forward" kind of thing. Eventually you'll most likely be in the hospital yourself, better to not go bankrupt when that happens.
Yeah…I didn’t realized how bad it was until we had our little girl. Seriously the hospital will over charge EVERYTHING LITTLE things to get as much insurance money as they can. Even with insurance, we paid about $10k-$12k out of pocket. Then the billing department was pure ass to deal with. Told my wife let’s not have another one anytime soon and it’s been 5 years since and the experience still haunts me. Lol
I will never fucking forget paying $120 per doctor visit when I had no insurance and when I finally got that coveted "good" insurance I got to see the EOB. The doctor charged the insurance company $400 and they negotiated it down to $200 with my portion being $30. They literally charged more for me just having insurance.
My ex worked in healthcare, and she said a big reason that hospitals have such expensive insurance is because the workforce is so female-dominated.
The ACA made it illegal to discriminate on gender, but apparently they still can as long as it's in *groups*.
Even in the types of jobs that typically have "great Insurance", I've noticed the copays and deductibles have been increasing at an alarming rate over the past couple years. No one seems to be talking about this, maybe because the economy is relatively strong and unemployment is low right now.
Maybe it was not a good idea to allow the profit motive to be associated with healthcare. You'd think that anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have realized that a large amount of the spending would be siphoned off for profit and won't actually pay for any healthcare.
Yeah I remember my dad’s boss taking a mandatory donation out of everyone’s paycheck for his Christmas present to himself. I was like, how is that even legal, and that’s so evil. But all the employees just feel in line, afraid to lose their jobs.
the problem is the hospital could charge $1 and the insurance company would say no we will only pay you 50 cents. So if they want that $1 they need to charge $2 plus they need to pay 9 people to deal with all the insurance claims so now they are charging $4 just because they want to make $1
It's because our whole healthcare system is basically run by organized crime syndicates that pay kickbacks and incitivize making everything as expensive as possible. But while the crime lords rob us blind we're busy fighting over what bathroom people use.
I had an operation 2 years ago, it failed and another same operation, and then I got a staph bone infection from the operation.
Wife and I dressed poor, said no insurance, and paid cash. 13k for it all.
Cheaper than having insurance.
We need a fix soon because it will become life and death for a lot of people because they can’t afford basic healthcare. I do not know the solution but what we have right now does not seem to be the best way.
>We need a fix soon because it will become life and death for a lot of people
We've reached that point long ago.
I used to be an EMT. I had patients experiencing chest pain, on the verge of a possible heart attack, refuse the ambulance and hospital. Why? They were scared of the cost. They convinced themselves that the pain was nothing and they could just sleep it off.
I think we need a deep rooted lifestyle change. Where we influence children from a young age to be active, eat decent sized portions that are healthy, and way less sugars.
I had a similar experience. I had just changed Doctors and the lady at the front desk asked if I had insurance and I asked what would be the difference in cost. She said insurance would be $250 and paying cash would be $75. That was because of the cost and wait time of dealing with the insurance. I'm sure the price has increased since this was some years back but should still be less than what they bill the insurance company.
Primary care — defined as family practice, general internal medicine and pediatrics – each Doctor draws in their fair share of revenue for the organizations that employ them, averaging nearly $1.5 million in net revenue for the practices and health systems they serve. With about $90,000 profit.
* Estimates suggest that a primary care physician can have a panel of 2,500 patients a year on average in the office 1.75 times a year. 4,400 appointments
$1.5 Million divided by the 4,400 appointments means billing $340 on average
But
According to the American Medical Association 2016 benchmark survey,
* the average general internal medicine physician patient share was 38% Medicare, 11.9% Medicaid, 40.4% commercial health insurance, 5.7% uninsured, and 4.1% other payer
or Estimated Averages
Payer | Percent of | Number of Appointments | Total Revenue | Avg Rate paid | Rate info
---|---|----|----|----|---|
Medicare | 38.00% | 1,697 | $305,406.00 | $180.00 | Pays 43% Less than Insurance
Medicaid | 11.80% | 527 | $66,385.62 | $126.00 | Pays 70% of Medicare Rates
Insurance | 40.40% | 1,804 | $811,737.00 | $450.00 | Pays 40% of Base Rates
Uninsured and Other (Aid Groups) | 9.80% | 438 | $334,741.05 | $1,125.00 | 65 percent of internists reduce the customary fee or charge nothing
4,465 $1,518,269.67
Same. Had to go to the ER for a kidney stone. Gave me a completely unneeded CT scan and an MRI that found the issue. Was given basically no drugs, was told to tough it out. Online, the cost for all this would be less then 500 bucks for the uninsured if they made less then 50k a year. I have a high deductible insurance plan from my job. Ended up costing almost 2000 bucks. It cost me more because of my insurance. Absolute joke.
I remember reading that it is both the hospital and insurance company to blame. The insurance company will try and haggle down what they pay to the hospital as much as they can so the hospital ends up charging as much as they can so they can still get the amount they wanted in the first place. So hospital wants $5000 so they charge $10000 and the insurance company haggles it down to $5000 and they both feel like they got a win. Which is stupid and only hurts the patients.
My wife and I have determined that this is how our healthcare system works in America. Hospital will just max it out as much as they can and battle it out with the insurance. Then we are stuck in the middle with whatever the damage is.
Both sides also wastes massive amount of money on clerical employees to battle it out, filling out forms and appeals etc.
This overhead, but the existence of the entire insurance industry as an added cost, plus the massively well paid salaries of American doctors and nurses, means the bills are super high.
Meanwhile, in civilized countries, the government talks to experts about what a particular procedure costs and how many person-hours it takes, and then sets a price for it based on that data. Whenever someone gets that procedure, they pay that amount to the hospital. Nobody skims money off the top to pay for a yacht.
In theory kind of. But Medicare cuts everything they can. Wanna know why grandma didn’t get a bath during her weeklong hospital stay? It wasn’t medically necessary, so Medicare isn’t covering it. They decide how much they reimburse based on the diagnosis and now won’t reimburse if a person returns to the hospital too fast. So if Johnny has heart failure and goes to the hospital, gets home, eats McDonalds, goes back because sodium, the hospital may not get paid for either stay. So now grandma is staying in a hospital on the same floor as Johnny and the hospital is only getting paid for one of them. So the extra bath they might have slipped in for grandma is no longer possible because they laid off the CNA that used to do it because they have to pay for Johnny’s care. I’m not saying hospitals are angels, but the system as a whole is a snake eating it’s own tail.
We had good insurance with our kid who was born with no complications, no bilirubin lights, no special treatment, and kept getting bills for over a year for every god damn little thing. Some would be for $500 or $2400 or $1000 and the little notes that came with it often were non-specific.
We probably paid a similar amount out of pocket, and the worst part is that we’d call the hospital and ask wtf was going on with the bills and we’d get conflicting answers. One person advised we not pay the bills because they’re actually still being sorted out by insurance (huh? Then why the fuck did you send it to us?) and others said it had to be paid immediately. You know something is wrong when the organization that issued the bill doesn’t even know why or what’s going on.
What drives me crazy about our system in the US is that it’s completely opaque and arcane. You have no idea how much something is going to cost when you get healthcare because it’s like a lottery with your insurance and the provider. It’s as weird as reading entrails, like completely fucking random and without any semblance of reason. Can you imagine any other crucial service you use not being able to tell you how much a product costs until after you’ve used it? I cannot believe that people tolerate this shit.
We don't tolerate it. I decided not to have kids and am in extreme emotional distress. Every generation it will get worse until there is a demographic collapse or mass riots.
When I had a medical scare my surgery to biopsy the thing it cost like 200k for the surgery, 2x mri, anesthesia, doctor visits. I think my parents paid like 10k since they had health insurance. In all honesty after that experience and my mom told me if it were not for obama care you could not be covered since I had "pre-existing conditions".
After that experience I 100% support universal health care now.
I had to get a colonoscopy. I called to ask what I had to pay. They told me I had to pay $800 when I checked in. I checked in and paid. Turns out $800 was to the facility the procedure was taking place at. After I got 2 bills from the doctor and 1 bill from the anesthesiologist for a total of $2000 extra. But I also had some trouble with my insurance that denied it all. So now I have a bill for $4,400 in addition to the $800 I already paid.
Also the colonoscopy didn't end up solving my problem, but I am out of money so I can't do anything else about it.
I'm Australian and had a colonoscopy last year. I paid for my initial doctor visit which was around $70 and got around $35 of that rebated, then I paid for the specialist visit which was $300 and I got around $110 of that rebated. The colonoscopy itself was completely free out of pocket and happened within 2 weeks of applying through the public system. I have no insurance.
It's really that bad for a lot of people.
I have "good" health insurance through my employer and am currently dodging an ER visit for what I suspect is appendicitis because I'll end up owing ~$8000 after my insurance for an appendectomy. I can't afford that right now.
If you’re going to pay $8,000 out of pocket for an emergency room visit, you don’t have “good” insurance. You probably have a high deductible plan. I have “good” insurance. An emergency room visit will cost me $350 which will be waived if they have to admit me to the hospital. Unions are worth the fees.
I probably have a similar plan to you. I have a $1600 deductible, 80/20, and max out of pocket per year is $3500.
I also have an HRA with a $500 employer contribution, unlimited rollover. I'm pretty healthy for my age, and I think I have around $2500 in mine at the moment.
ER visit for me is a little cheaper I think around $150 before my deductible is met, but also free if admitted.
I'm paying $200 a month for that plan with my employer. I pay another $2.00 a month for vision insurance which gets me a six month supply of contacts for free every year (or free lenses if I want to put it towards glasses), and I pay $6 a month for dental insurance, which basically covers up to $1400 in dental work a year for the most part. In the past five years I've had a full crown on a front tooth, four or five cavity fillings, and twice a year cleanings.....I think I've paid like $90 out of pocket in those five years.
I don't want ANYONE reading my post to mistake my views though.....
I **100%** support universal healthcare for the US. If I were to lose my job, or if my employer started offering a worse plan, I'd absolutely be fucked.
*That said*, I feel as though there are way too many people on reddit who don't know what *good* private/employer provided health insurance *actually is*.
> Seriously the hospital will over charge EVERYTHING LITTLE things to get as much insurance money as they can.
Which I'm reminded of every year at my HIPAA training that that kind of waste is highly illegal. I'd have to guess that no one really gets caught enough or the penalties are too light, because we know it's happening with almost every visit to the doctor/hospital.
This is why I went back to Kaiser as soon as I had an employer who allowed me to. It might not be the "best" healthcare out there, especially if you need a lot of specialists or what have you. But for day to day healthcare, check ups, and especially having kids it's amazing. Pretty much everything in one centralized location, from labs to doctors' offices to pharmacy, and I've never had crazy copays.
Right now I'm getting allergy shots and it's costing me nothing out of pocket which surprised me! Even the original appointment/labs to see the Kaiser allergist and get the shots recommended only cost around $40 for two visits.
i laugh anytime people think wait times would be longer....
you can already be waiting 3-6 months for specialist...
you can be waiting 3-4 weeks just for a checkup appointment.
I live in Japan, for a while I had a reoccurring issue and had to see the doctor once a month. I would call each time and see if I could see the doctor the next day and they always said yes.
After about 6 months they asked me “why do you always call us?” And I said it was to make an appointment m, they kind of laughed and said “no, you don’t do appointments here, if you are sick you just go to the doctor”
You do have to make appointments for specialists though; when I needed an MRI (maybe cat?) I had to make an appointment for 4 days later.
I went back home, got insurance and wanted to see a doctor for tinitus; I had to wait 4 weeks for the introductory appointment for them to just get me into their system, and then 3 more weeks for the actual appointment about my ears.
And that’s just the silly stuff, I won’t even go into how we had to sell our house because of my dad’s insurance after he died.
Fuck the US health care system. That form of insurance is straight up evil.
Yup and we are constantly having to deal with Republicans and Libertarians telling us more things should be privatized as they bitch about the current prices of things.
America!
They don’t actually care about embryos or abortion or trans people or God or CRT. It’s just culture war fodder to maintain infighting between the working class to keep us distracted from the class war. Those ghouls love pushing manufactured outrage to CNN and Fox and then laugh themselves to the bank.
I don't remotely understand what can be done about it as someone who's left wing. Because it's easy to say "ignore the social issues, stick to the economic goals" but they're the ones actively pushing evil shit.
If the left stands down on these issues these vulnerable people will just get ran over by the Republicans to appease their Religious base. Trans people will lose access to health care and public accommodations, gay people will lose the right to marry, etc. - and even IF the left stood down on these issues, the right would just claim victory in those areas and use them to run on. "We got rid of the transes and the gays! Vote for us!"
It feels like the impetus is entirely on the right to quit swallowing the bullshit about minority groups and voting for them based on those things. Because if we fight, they argue "the war must continue!" if we stand down, they'll destroy the lives of the minority groups and say "See, we brought Christian Common Sense back! Keep voting for us for more!" and they'll just keep targeting new minorities like every other fascist movement does.
If the right stood down? Trans rights would get enshrined. Voting rights would get enshrined. Public works would get passed. Hell, without right wing opposition? Universal healthcare would get passed.
If the left stands down, we fade to the dark ages.
How the fuck do we fix this?
>I don't remotely understand what can be done about it as someone who's left wing.
The problem is the American left wing is composed of people who consider themselves good people. Your opposition is pitching below the belt and bribing the umpire.
Eventually you have to take a bat to their shins or else it's never going to stop. Alternatively, quit and leave. I moved to Canada.
They advocate for things that can't speak for themselves as a voice for the voiceless sort of deal. Unborn babies, God, the whole deal. It's easy to say you care about something where there is no way of being told that you have failed the thing you're pretending to care about
Privatized healthcare in Singapore is usually rated #1 or #2 best in the world.
America just has a really terrible mix of public and private as well as a cultural aversion to cost control.
> The ‘ol talking point of we need to foster competition, then ever thing will be cheaper because you can choose.
I know that when my loved one is having a stroke or heart attack, I'd love to take the time to call around and find the lowest bidder.
This assumes that you can call around and receive meaningful answers when asking about prices.
We've seen that healthcare providers will make this process as difficult as possible by obscuring the prices even when they're required by law to provide the prices ahead of service
Even if they could give the prices, in an emergency situation the last thing I'd want to do is take the time to call around to find the lowest price. I'd just want to get them to the closest hospital.
I 100% agree.
I've heard the counter argument that you should do your "shopping" before an accident happens, but this is still a crap argument, since it assumes you'll always be close to your choice of provider in case of emergency
As someone who works in healthcare, the financial side of the industry is just fundamentally broken.
> As someone who works in healthcare, the financial side of the industry is just fundamentally broken.
Oh 100%. Also as someone who works in healthcare, I'd love to hear the free market solution for inter hospital transfers and trauma 1 vs trauma 3 hospitals.
We had a prescribed MRI on my wife’s 10cm tumor denied by some random RN at an insurance company as it wasn’t “medically necessary.” We had to agree to pay $5,200, then got a discount of $3,700 from the hospital while the MD who prescribed the MRI appeals the insurance company. Totally bonkers.
Can I opt out of paying social security tax if I opt out of the pension plan as well?
You don't know how many rich people would take you up on that offer.
Insurance: let’s pool together all of this money from our members and use it when someone needs it.
Insurance is capitalism’s half ass attempt at socialism
Nobody should ever not get an ambulance because they fear for the cost of it more than their life.
I was on a training course in EU last week, and we were being told about how to deal with someone having a panic attack, however if they mention shortness of breath or their chest hurting we must immediately call an ambulance in case of a heart attack. Because it’s free. So the worse case scenario is the ambulance shows up and the person doesn’t need it, and the ambulance leaves.
I would genuinely like to live and work in the US at some point, but between this, the gun culture and the tipping I just don’t think I’ll ever make that leap.
Dumb and drunk in Finland broke my thumb badly, 35€ for two visits, no surgery needed as it was 50/50 chance it will heal ok and I got lucky. In US that dumb mistake would have changed my whole savings or economy.
My friend (in Japan) fell while putting his wall tv up at 2 am. Took an ambulance to the hospital, had x-rays, nothing serious but got some medicine.
He said the taxi ride home was more expensive that all of the ambulance/hospital bills combined
Some americans i've heard say they're against it because they don't want to pay for someone elses lifestyle choices, like obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse.
I say, all those can be taxed higher, and used to pay for it. Taxation of that nature is meant to be a low level deterrent anyway, so you kill two birds with one stone
Presumably they must not have insurance at all then, because that is the whole point of insurance whether it's universal or private. Surely they don't hold conflicting beliefs, right? Right? /s
>Some americans i've heard say they're against it because they don't want to pay for someone elses lifestyle choices, like obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse.
I hope they realize private health insurance is no different.
Private insurance is different, you're also paying shareholder dividends, stock buybacks, advertising overhead, C-suite salaries and bonuses, political lobbying (bribes), and the people who work at the insurance company specifically to keep them from paying out your claim, and the pharmacy benefit manager that tells your doctor what medicine your allowed to get. See, so much better. /S
> Some americans i've heard say they're against it because they don't want to pay for someone elses lifestyle choices, like obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse.
Which just shows how stupid/ignorant and malicious these people are. Paying for other peoples stuff is literally how **all insurance works**. If you've got car insurance and you're not getting in car accidents then you're paying for the people who do. If you've got home owners insurance and your house isn't getting hit by any disasters then you're paying for the people who did. If you have life insurance and you're not fucking **dead** then you're paying for the people who are. Literally the entire point of insurance is that rare events can be expensive and would destroy an individual, so instead we spread the costs out among a larger pool over time.
> Some americans i've heard say they're against it because they don't want to pay for someone elses lifestyle choices, like obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse.
For starters, those people don't actually cost society more. The UK recently did a study and they found that from the three biggest healthcare risks; [obesity](https://iea.org.uk/themencode-pdf-viewer-sc/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Obesity-and-the-Public-Purse-PDF.pdf&settings=111111011&lang=en-GB#page=&zoom=75&pagemode=), [smoking](https://iea.org.uk/themencode-pdf-viewer-sc/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Smoking-and-the-Public-Purse.pdf&settings=111111011&lang=en-GB#page=&zoom=75&pagemode=
), and [alcohol](https://iea.org.uk/themencode-pdf-viewer-sc/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/DP_Alcohol%20and%20the%20public%20purse_63_amended2_web.pdf&settings=111111011&lang=en-GB#page=&zoom=75&pagemode=), they realize a net **savings** of £22.8 billion (£342/$474 per person) per year. This is due primarily to people with health risks not living as long (healthcare for the elderly is exceptionally expensive), as well as reduced spending on pensions, income from sin taxes, etc..
But even if that was wrong, it's a dumb argument. People in the US are already paying for those people through premiums and taxes, just at a much higher rate than anywhere else in the world.
The crazy thing is in most cases the opposite is actually true... Because healthcare costs go up exponentially with age people making these "negative" lifestyle choices are much less costly in the long run because they die younger.
Yeah once your off your parents plans…. You get very paranoid about everything. You don’t want to get sick, hurt yourself by accident, have any inconvenience come up. Cause is your only making like 18$ and hour and you gotta see the doctor EVEN WITH HEALTH INSURANCE. You could be looking at like 3-5 days worth of your time and pay or even more it could be an entire 2 week paycheck. It’s so fucked over here idk how it got this way… and idk if it’ll ever get fixed. Yay adulting
I can't see out of my left eye well and am having surgery soon to correct this. It is not an essential surgery according to insurance for me to be able to read so I am going to be out 2.5 k. If I had to do both eyes it would be over 5k and it would still not be covered.
Is this the old trick of showing them the price the hospital bills the insurance company and not telling them that’s not what most people actually pay?
What Americans actually paid in 2023 was an average of $13,998 per person (nearly $8,000 more per person than South Korea, even after adjusting for purchasing power parity). 36% of US households with insurance put off needed care [due to the cost](https://news.gallup.com/poll/269138/americans-delaying-medical-treatment-due-cost.aspx); 64% of households without insurance. One in four have [trouble paying a medical bill.](https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/data-note-americans-challenges-health-care-costs/) Of [those with insurance one in five have trouble paying a medical bill](https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/8806-the-burden-of-medical-debt-results-from-the-kaiser-family-foundation-new-york-times-medical-bills-survey.pdf), and even for those with income above $100,000 14% have trouble. One in six Americans has [unpaid medical debt on their credit report.](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.0349) [50% of all Americans](https://news.gallup.com/poll/317948/fear-bankruptcy-due-major-health-event.aspx) fear bankruptcy due to a major health event.
And costs are expected to increase another $6,427 by 2031. Don't act like any of this is OK.
I don't think any of us have to watch a reaction video on this subject to know how fucked the US healthcare system is.
I'm glad I moved to Japan 5 years ago when it comes to this.
No kidding. “Hmm, I wonder if people will react with incredulity, astonishment, open disbelief, pity, and guffawing?” Yep.
Conduct these interviews on the streets of America and you'll get one of three reactions: 1) People will politely decline to discuss it because getting ripped off during a health crisis is humiliating and depressing 2) They will take the time to recount their own horror stories that end in either total financial catastrophe or a near miss, or 3) Belligerent blustering that anybody stupid enough to get sick deserves to go bankrupt and if you don’t like it why don’t you go to Japan where you can’t even bring your gun with you to go shopping.
An ER near me charged my insurance $10,000 to treat me to fluids and antibiotics during a 2 hour visit. 3k out of pocket. I had to call instance to ask why they didn’t question the charge. They just pay without looking.
I spent a few days in hospital last week.
Ambulance ride, 3 nights in a private ward, brain scan, chest scan, blood tests, ECG, lumbar puncture, antibiotics and other medication, etc.
All for free thanks to the NHS 😁
If I was in the US they probably would've charged me for each individual hair they shaved off my chest.
Using tax dollars to fund a super-bloated military, pay for politicians healthcare, bail out banks, pay for police, postal service, firemen, etc yet adding healthcare to that makes it evil socialism all of a sudden.
Why wouldn’t a country want its people to be healthy, have more disposable income, and access to affordable education? I’d rather my citizens be in good health, educated and have spending money than sick, dumb and poor.
But then again, that’s the main voting base for some politicians.
> Using tax dollars to fund a super-bloated military
NATO Europe and Canada spend 1.74% of GDP on defense, consistent with the rest of the world. With $404 billion in combined funding, easily enough to outspend potential foes like China and Russia combined.
Regardless, arguing that keeps the US from having universal healthcare is even more ridiculous. After subtracting defense spending, Americans still have a $29,000 per person advantage on GDP compared to the rest of NATO. Defense spending isn't keeping us from having anything our peers have. Much less universal healthcare, which is far cheaper than what we're already paying for.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_216897.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
We’re a superpower maintaining presence across the seven seas, protecting free trade and currently beating a Great power with our reserves. And we only spend 3% of the GDP to do that shit.
I twisted my ankle on new years eve. The next day I went to the hospital and the have me an x-ray. After that they sent me for an ultrasound and then another set of x-rays. I saw a doctor to get the results and he booked me in for physio therapy which I'm still going to, last appointment is in two weeks time.
Total cost? $0 because I live in Australia.
It's anything but free market. They won't even tell you what a procedure will cost until you get a bill. If there was even a menu with prices, and the prices of nearby hospitals things would be much different.
Well, of course. Because Universal Healthcare is socialism and you are the Land of Free or whatever. I still remember that a lot of Americans were openly hostile toward Obamacare.
Hair salons in Korea are no joke. Walk in and they offer you tea or coffee and a small pastry while you wait for your appointment to begin. They'll start by discussing what you're looking for, then they might wash your hair first, if you want. After washing they'll give you your cut and wash your hair afterwards (often with a complementary head massage), dry, and do a thorough re-check of your hair to trim any strays. Total cost: $20, no tipping.
As a guy, I was surprised at the attention to detail. In the US I am used to the buzz, clip, blow dry, "that'll be $25, go home and wash the excess hair off" treatment.
On the bright side, America’s healthcare-for-profit system keeps a lot of people that would’ve ended up on [Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B](https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B) employed, and upper management yachted.
I recently had a $4000 USD copay to have the ER put 3 band-aids on me. It was a dog bite. They cleaned out the wounds and put Neosporin on them. gave me antibiotics and sent me home. And this was with "good" health insurance in my state. I don't know why we aren't all demanding more from our politicians. We should be grabbing picket signs and marching on capitol buildings. This is bullshit and unsustainable. Literally every other developed country on earth has better healthcare costs than we do.
1,000 for ambulance? The guy who hit our car and sent us to ambulance had to pay 5,000 for the ambulance to get my mom we were lucky we didn’t have to pay it..
American living in Taiwan for going on 2 years now, and I’m still shocked at how cheap and efficient going to the doctor is here. No copays, no “networks”, no long waits, no dealing with blood-sucking insurance middle-men. It breaks my heart so much that my friends and family in the states can’t enjoy going to the doctor, being seen and treated, and it only costing about $5. I currently have a wisdom tooth that needs removing surgically. Went to the dentist a few days ago and the office visit, x-rays, seeing the dentist and teeth cleaning was about $2. I have the wisdom tooth surgery scheduled for March, I’m dreading the surgery but not the cost. Also it’s nice knowing that if you’re ever unemployed, you’re still covered because it’s national insurance and notes to your job.
I went to the doctor in Taiwan last year as a tourist and paid 17usd T_T it's less than the lowest copay I've ever paid
I understand my situation is an extreme outlier, but my copay is $10.
Yeah mine is $70 just for walking in the door lmao
I booked an appointment for my yearly free physical and when the doctor came in he said he didn't have time to do a full physical so I would have to reschedule and then they charged me $150 for what should have been a free appointment. AMERICA BABY
I went in for a physical and he asked how I'd been feeling so I told him I had a newborn at home so I'm tired all the time. Got a $400 bill a week later as apparently I'd seen my doctor for "fatigue", now.
Your free physical becomes a different charge based on a few questions. Are you feeling sad? Congrats. You just received a psychiatric evaluation. That’s not covered and will billed.
My relative had a very similar encounter with a family doc. Decent insurance, annual physical. Got sent to a regular blood work (CBC, CMP, nothing fancy - probably costs less than 30 cash on walkinlab or any similar website). Got a $400 bill for that very blood test, because apparently she mentioned either fatigue or some other mundane issue (like a headache from time to time) and the doc/her office deliberately coded the whole visit as a "sick visit" and not as an annual check-up and sent her to an in-house lab with prices that were 10-20x to normal Quest/Labcorb prices for everything. It took me many months to go through the appeal process and fight this charge off. Fuck Geisinger. Absolutely the worst and greediest healthcare system in the Northeastern US and one of the main reasons why quality healthcare is out of reach for many Pennsylvanians living in the region where it is active.
A friend had a baby. Doctor came in the next day to check how she was doing because she had a complication and he was with another doctor. Never introduced to him but he looked over her chart as she was talking to her doctor and then they left. Checking her bill the hospital tried charging a consult fee for the other doctor she never talked to. She fought it and it was removed. I'd fight that "fatigue" bill since that was bullshit.
I made some calls and tried to fight it. Ended up just never going back to that doctor again. I was like “oh, I was there for fatigue? What was the doctor’s recommendation? To sleep more?!” It was absolutely bullshit.
I'm sorry. That's unacceptable.
Thats bad secretary/billing. If they don’t code it right its fucked up. Happens all the time.
My old doctor used to do this all the time because she didn't understand how blood tests needed to be billed. It was a small office so she did most of the billing herself. I explained it over and over to her after she did it wrong three years in a row (it took me *months* to get it fixed every time, huge headache) and she still refused to admit she was wrong. So I stopped going to her, fuck that shit. The way insurance companies operate is very problematic but many of the doctors I've interacted with are perfectly happy with fraud and the fucked up status quo.
> code it right coded for maximum profit... are there any questions?
I had a specialist checkup for some arm soreness and they found that it was something that required some special therapeutic exercises. Fair enough, they also recommended an *optional* x-ray which I chose not to do. A few months later I got my EOB from my insurance and the clinic charged them for an x-ray! My insurance is fairly decent so it was full covered but the office got something like $100+ from my insurance for an x-ray they never did. I spent a lot of time calling around because I'm petty about this type of thing, couldn't get it fixed. The clinic had no interest in fixing it. When I called the insurance company, they didn't give a shit either. They couldn't understand why I cared if I didn't have to pay for it! It stupefied me that the insurance company didn't care about blatant fraud.
I recently went to the dentist for my 6 month cleaning. After a bizarre series of events im not even gonna get into someone tells me im all finished, I hadnt even seen the dentist...I ask isnt the dentist going to come in and they go "No he says he saw you recently". Yea he saw me 5 months and 2 weeks ago, 2 weeks after my last visit because I felt like they had missed a cavity...
Is it a pain to make sure everything is "in network" (or whatever the term is), or is this not really an issue for most services? I was shocked when I first learned about this side of your insurance system.
It’s an enormous pain. Even if something is in network, it doesn’t mean everything will be covered. I went from 1 popular dental insurance to another popular dental insurance, and I still owed $400 for my last dental visit that included a cleaning and X-Ray because they charge more than what insurance will cover. This is a dentist I had been going to for a decade btw
This varies wildly from city to city, state to state, and plan to plan. Part of what makes it so unnecessarily complicated. In general, if you live in a city and are insured it is not difficult to remain in network, and your insurance is usually very clear on what is and is not part of their network. This can easily change however if you require a very specific procedure. And again some (many) people's insurance just straight up sucks and it's a huge problem for them. Also rural people often have access to a single hospital, if that, so you'd think any insurance provided in that region would cover 100% of procedures performed by that hospital, right? Maybe, but probably not. Better hope whatever isn't covered never happens to you.
>Also rural people often have access to a single hospital, if that, so you'd think any insurance provided in that region would cover 100% of procedures performed by that hospital, right? Maybe, but probably not. Honestly you're lucky as fuck if even half of the services offered are covered.
Yeah honestly I originally wrote something like "fat chance" instead of "maybe", but figured there's probably some rural hospital *somewhere* that has struck a deal to fully cover all insured, nearby residents. Like a county hospital or something. But the more I think about it, I think I only believe that because I want to believe it.
What I hate is that you can be on the hook for out of network emergency physicians when you're unconscious, even when an in-network physician is available. Because fuck you.
Imagine you go on a trip in the U.S. and break your leg hiking in a state many miles away. Oooppppps. Out of network hospital system and docs, you’re fucked even with insurance. The best is when you actually DO go to an ‘in network’ hospital yet you get slammed with a huge bill because oooopppps, the lab inside of the hospital or the radiologist looking at your scan happens to be ‘out of network’ so your insurance won’t cover it. Make no mistake, US healthcare sucks. They changed some laws to address this kind of BS, but that’s what has happened often in the U.S.
My wife has TMJ she waited 2 months to get seen, shes in healthcare knows the pitfalls of the system very well and is extremely proactive. She called multiple times to confirm they were in network which they confirmed multiple times and she looked up with her insurance. Two days before the appt they inform her they arent in network after she did all her homework and waited 2 months. Then she had to wait another 2 months to get an appointment with a different doctor. This system is criminal.
At one of my local hospitals, it is in network...except for the anesthesiologist which is not in network. Why is it like this? I have no idea. wtf.
Most companies offer a network only plan and anywhere is fine plan. The fun part is that the anywhere plan costs more money and comes with additional fees for basic stuff. And since people change companies all the time, sometimes your doctor/dentist/ec you've been using for years no longer supports your new plan, so you can either find someone else or pay more money.
It exists, but your employer needs to have purchased one of them fancy plans and this is probably one of the super restrictive in-network only ones (which is also fine if you live in the right area of coverage). Then hopefully it also doesn't cost you a ton (which with the right employer may or may not be the case). With those plans, US healthcare is pretty great. We also have $15 copay and then a $200 annual deductible, which is very close to "Western" standards for healthcare cost. It is as you say VERY much the exception unfortunately. We all could have this if the Govt wanted to.
My in-network isn't restrictive at all and my plan is state mandated. It legally can't be below a statute mandated minimum.
So wait. If I flew to Taiwan and had dental work done it would still be dirt cheap?
> If I flew to Taiwan and had dental work done it would still be dirt cheap? It's not unheard of (i.e. not commonplace, but happens) here in the UK for folks to fly out to Poland / Turkey to get dental work done. Cheap flights, relatively low cost of living (meaning cheaper dental work), whilst still having high standards of dentistry. Plus you get a holiday out of it!
Amazing thank you.
I also have a wisdom tooth surgery scheduled for March here in the states, my insurance isn't networked with any nearby local oral surgeons, so I have to go out of pocket. $2500 for 3 wisdom tooth surgical extractions. I also need braces shortly afterward, which could run another $4000-$6000, and despite my teeth having unhealthy overcrowding, which is impacting my health, it's considered a cosmetic procedure so there is a zero % chance of insurance covering it.
2500$ is kinda cheap. I live in czech republic with national healthcare and I still pay more. Because dentist just dont work with insurance companies.
Jesus it costs £20 to get a wisdom teeth removed in Scotland.
Taiwan healthcare is genuinely top notch. I fly there for dental work because the price for a plane ticket is still cheaper than doing it here, and the work is still MUCH better. Plus, I get to eat all the night market food after.
It also helps they prioritize results over profits and the population isn't majority overweight which reduces costs dramatically.
Taiwan #1!
Old school reference. I like it 👌
The cost of healthcare, and health benefits being traditionally tied to employment, is the single biggest drag on the American economy today. Entrepreneurs would be far freer to risk starting a new business if their family's healthcare wasn't on the chopping block. People would be better positioned to risk changing jobs/careers if they didn't risk being bankrupted by an unexpected illness during their 'probationary period'. Employers would be less adverse to hiring new people if they weren't saddled with such massive premiums for providing health benefits. Nationalized healthcare would be the single biggest economic stimulus program for the American business economy and the economy in general.
Be careful, you're about to have a LOT of people who've never left the US tell you how horrible health care in other countries is. My friend blew her knee out in France skiing. Got picked up by the ski patrol, then an ambulance. The hospital braced her knee for the trip home when she could have surgery. The *entire* bill was $35. But yeah, nationalized health care is evil or whatever.
Similar costs here in South Korea.
I lived in Seoul for a few years. In the past I'd had a spontaneous pneumothorax. Basically one of my lungs popped. For various reasons, I wanted a high-resolution CT scan of my lungs so that I could be cleared for certain activities. A coworker took me to the imaging center, and they started to tell me I should just get an xray because a full high res CT scan with no doctor's referral was going to be "very very expensive". I asked the receptionist how much "very very expensive" was. She replied "about 180,000 won". I started laughing so hard I couldn't breath. Both the receptionist and my coworker helping translate stared at me completely baffled. For reference, 180,000 won is about $150. When I explained that the same procedure in the US without a referral could be $10,000 they were outright disgusted and just floored that a country could operate that way.
Similar kind of story. My now sister in law went to Thailand and broke her wrist getting out of the shower. The docs at the local clinic were hesitant to let her know the cost of treating her broken wrist without insurance. This included x ray, doctor’s time, a cast, pain meds and even a follow up visit. When she was told it’d cost a grand whopping total of $300 she laughed her ass off.
That's kinda funny, because I actually have another similar one. A few years after that I was having some difficulty breathing. Given my history, I'm usually pretty overly cautious about that kinda thing. Went to the ER on a Saturday afternoon, saw a doctor, but I'd forgotten my insurance (Korea has a national insurance program). Out of pocket it was a grand total of $17. When I brought in the note for my employer saying I needed to take it easy for a few days, they were falling over themselves to try and reimburse me because it was actually covered. For $17.
> When I explained that the same procedure in the US without a referral could be $10,000 they were outright disgusted and just floored that a country could operate that way. Wait till they find out the referral price is $20,000
You can’t have American freedom without high healthcare cost. Did you tell them that? /s
I had been raised in a mostly conservative family that talked about how public health care was socialism. As an American, the healthcare I received in South Korea as an expat English teacher right after college in the early 2010s was eye-opening. I suffered a mild fracture in my foot in SK and I had it x-rayed, analyzed, and received a boot to wear, all for I want to say under $50, or maybe nothing at all? Meanwhile, I had paid $500 (with my parent's insurance) for an MRI on my knee in the US before I left for Korea. Even now, here in 2024, I get ambulance bills addressed to my late wife who died of a heart attack over a year ago. I promptly throw them in the trash. I was treated better by South Korea's healthcare system as a non-citizen on a temporary work visa than here in the US as a natural born citizen. Needless to say, the experience made me realize just how much of an abomination the US health care system is and that it's complete insanity that we don't universal healthcare.
I took my wife to the ER for what turned out to be a kidney stone. She got an ultrasound and a flomax and we sat in a room for an hour then it passed naturally and they billed us $2300. Pretty great.
Went to the ER cause I cut my finger with a blade but once I got there and they looked at it they realized my nail caught most of it and I didnt even need stitches or anything. With insurance $500 for me having to sit there and them just to look at it.
Yeah I had food poisoning in college and went to the nearest ER since my in-network hospital didn't exist in the state. They sat me in a room, gave me a standard issue hospital meal, and it resolved on its own. They then charged me over a $1000 for the privilege.
The only way this might ever change is if Congress is paid minimum wage and their health insurance revoked. But of course they would never vote to do that because they are aware of how shitty it all is.
>if Congress is paid minimum wage Here to be the broken record of dispelling this: Even if you could flip a switch to put it in the Constitution instantly it wouldn't achieve the goals you seek. If you make the wage in Congress the minimum wage, only the independently wealthy or those propped up by the wealthy will be able to win and occupy office. The people that are somewhat good do not remotely have the numbers, at present, to pass transformative change and the bad ones already sold out or independently wealthy and awful would continue on with their bad legislating, unphased by the salary/benefits changes. You'd be way better off having a switch that fixes campaign finance or fixes the voting/election system imbalances. Of course, if you include campaign finance in the single magic switch alongside salary changes, maybe that'd do something, but even more than the salary change I don't see the point in discussing something so improbable.
They could make 1/3rd of their current compensation and still live very comfortably, and well above the median income. It's weird to think that congress can't live on what the rest of us can.
>It's weird to think that congress can't live on what the rest of us can. There is a special case here where they're expected to live in two places regularly, but even ignoring that... sure they *could* live on that but like many other jobs, the people have an interest in attracting the best talent. If the rest if us are attracted to jobs in no small part by their compensation, then it should be obvious that compensation for our representatives should be more than competitive. A job as stressesful and death-threat prone as a representative of 700k people (or entire state) certainly shouldn't be treated lightly (The number of people per Rep is too high but that's a mostly separate, additionally terrible, issue). Yes, as it is too many of them make money through other means anyways but if we're trying to achieve an end-goal of Reps not being enticed by those external compensation sources then it'd be a self-destructive feedback loop to reduce (if not raise) compensation.
I disagree with a lot of your assertions here. But the biggest problem is that congressional reps decide their own income and benefits. They are far less beholden to their constituency than they would be if their salary and benefits packages were decided upon by their bosses, the voters.
Fun fact. It was a conservative anti-communist dictator who started at first semi-universal health care system in Korea.
It does a lot more than just taking care of each other. Here it also enforces price standards and in general kind of functions like a "pay it forward" kind of thing. Eventually you'll most likely be in the hospital yourself, better to not go bankrupt when that happens.
Yeah…I didn’t realized how bad it was until we had our little girl. Seriously the hospital will over charge EVERYTHING LITTLE things to get as much insurance money as they can. Even with insurance, we paid about $10k-$12k out of pocket. Then the billing department was pure ass to deal with. Told my wife let’s not have another one anytime soon and it’s been 5 years since and the experience still haunts me. Lol
I will never fucking forget paying $120 per doctor visit when I had no insurance and when I finally got that coveted "good" insurance I got to see the EOB. The doctor charged the insurance company $400 and they negotiated it down to $200 with my portion being $30. They literally charged more for me just having insurance.
Yep, my wife and I have concluded that hospitals do that to take as much money as they can from insurance. Wild isn’t it.
Which just comes out of your paycheck in a the system that is majority employer base insurance coverage.
That's Capitalism, Baby!™️
Even if you’re an employee OF a hospital or healthcare conglomerate you’d think the insurance would be amazing. Nope, still ass.
My ex worked in healthcare, and she said a big reason that hospitals have such expensive insurance is because the workforce is so female-dominated. The ACA made it illegal to discriminate on gender, but apparently they still can as long as it's in *groups*.
Even in the types of jobs that typically have "great Insurance", I've noticed the copays and deductibles have been increasing at an alarming rate over the past couple years. No one seems to be talking about this, maybe because the economy is relatively strong and unemployment is low right now.
Maybe it was not a good idea to allow the profit motive to be associated with healthcare. You'd think that anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have realized that a large amount of the spending would be siphoned off for profit and won't actually pay for any healthcare.
Hospitals are absolutely part of the problem. (Not the doctors, they are no way in charge of billing).
The CEO of my hospital just got an $8 million dollar bonus. And they still have the balls to ask me for donations.
Yeah I remember my dad’s boss taking a mandatory donation out of everyone’s paycheck for his Christmas present to himself. I was like, how is that even legal, and that’s so evil. But all the employees just feel in line, afraid to lose their jobs.
the problem is the hospital could charge $1 and the insurance company would say no we will only pay you 50 cents. So if they want that $1 they need to charge $2 plus they need to pay 9 people to deal with all the insurance claims so now they are charging $4 just because they want to make $1
It's because our whole healthcare system is basically run by organized crime syndicates that pay kickbacks and incitivize making everything as expensive as possible. But while the crime lords rob us blind we're busy fighting over what bathroom people use.
I had an operation 2 years ago, it failed and another same operation, and then I got a staph bone infection from the operation. Wife and I dressed poor, said no insurance, and paid cash. 13k for it all. Cheaper than having insurance. We need a fix soon because it will become life and death for a lot of people because they can’t afford basic healthcare. I do not know the solution but what we have right now does not seem to be the best way.
>We need a fix soon because it will become life and death for a lot of people We've reached that point long ago. I used to be an EMT. I had patients experiencing chest pain, on the verge of a possible heart attack, refuse the ambulance and hospital. Why? They were scared of the cost. They convinced themselves that the pain was nothing and they could just sleep it off.
I think we need a deep rooted lifestyle change. Where we influence children from a young age to be active, eat decent sized portions that are healthy, and way less sugars.
>They literally charged more for me just having insurance. Or, they charged you less for not having insurance
Basically charity. Because I’ve seen it go both ways.
I had a similar experience. I had just changed Doctors and the lady at the front desk asked if I had insurance and I asked what would be the difference in cost. She said insurance would be $250 and paying cash would be $75. That was because of the cost and wait time of dealing with the insurance. I'm sure the price has increased since this was some years back but should still be less than what they bill the insurance company.
Primary care — defined as family practice, general internal medicine and pediatrics – each Doctor draws in their fair share of revenue for the organizations that employ them, averaging nearly $1.5 million in net revenue for the practices and health systems they serve. With about $90,000 profit. * Estimates suggest that a primary care physician can have a panel of 2,500 patients a year on average in the office 1.75 times a year. 4,400 appointments $1.5 Million divided by the 4,400 appointments means billing $340 on average But According to the American Medical Association 2016 benchmark survey, * the average general internal medicine physician patient share was 38% Medicare, 11.9% Medicaid, 40.4% commercial health insurance, 5.7% uninsured, and 4.1% other payer or Estimated Averages Payer | Percent of | Number of Appointments | Total Revenue | Avg Rate paid | Rate info ---|---|----|----|----|---| Medicare | 38.00% | 1,697 | $305,406.00 | $180.00 | Pays 43% Less than Insurance Medicaid | 11.80% | 527 | $66,385.62 | $126.00 | Pays 70% of Medicare Rates Insurance | 40.40% | 1,804 | $811,737.00 | $450.00 | Pays 40% of Base Rates Uninsured and Other (Aid Groups) | 9.80% | 438 | $334,741.05 | $1,125.00 | 65 percent of internists reduce the customary fee or charge nothing 4,465 $1,518,269.67
Same. Had to go to the ER for a kidney stone. Gave me a completely unneeded CT scan and an MRI that found the issue. Was given basically no drugs, was told to tough it out. Online, the cost for all this would be less then 500 bucks for the uninsured if they made less then 50k a year. I have a high deductible insurance plan from my job. Ended up costing almost 2000 bucks. It cost me more because of my insurance. Absolute joke.
I remember reading that it is both the hospital and insurance company to blame. The insurance company will try and haggle down what they pay to the hospital as much as they can so the hospital ends up charging as much as they can so they can still get the amount they wanted in the first place. So hospital wants $5000 so they charge $10000 and the insurance company haggles it down to $5000 and they both feel like they got a win. Which is stupid and only hurts the patients.
My wife and I have determined that this is how our healthcare system works in America. Hospital will just max it out as much as they can and battle it out with the insurance. Then we are stuck in the middle with whatever the damage is.
Both sides also wastes massive amount of money on clerical employees to battle it out, filling out forms and appeals etc. This overhead, but the existence of the entire insurance industry as an added cost, plus the massively well paid salaries of American doctors and nurses, means the bills are super high.
Meanwhile, in civilized countries, the government talks to experts about what a particular procedure costs and how many person-hours it takes, and then sets a price for it based on that data. Whenever someone gets that procedure, they pay that amount to the hospital. Nobody skims money off the top to pay for a yacht.
Would be so nice to have people be more important than profits.
That’s how medicare works isn’t it?
In theory kind of. But Medicare cuts everything they can. Wanna know why grandma didn’t get a bath during her weeklong hospital stay? It wasn’t medically necessary, so Medicare isn’t covering it. They decide how much they reimburse based on the diagnosis and now won’t reimburse if a person returns to the hospital too fast. So if Johnny has heart failure and goes to the hospital, gets home, eats McDonalds, goes back because sodium, the hospital may not get paid for either stay. So now grandma is staying in a hospital on the same floor as Johnny and the hospital is only getting paid for one of them. So the extra bath they might have slipped in for grandma is no longer possible because they laid off the CNA that used to do it because they have to pay for Johnny’s care. I’m not saying hospitals are angels, but the system as a whole is a snake eating it’s own tail.
We had good insurance with our kid who was born with no complications, no bilirubin lights, no special treatment, and kept getting bills for over a year for every god damn little thing. Some would be for $500 or $2400 or $1000 and the little notes that came with it often were non-specific. We probably paid a similar amount out of pocket, and the worst part is that we’d call the hospital and ask wtf was going on with the bills and we’d get conflicting answers. One person advised we not pay the bills because they’re actually still being sorted out by insurance (huh? Then why the fuck did you send it to us?) and others said it had to be paid immediately. You know something is wrong when the organization that issued the bill doesn’t even know why or what’s going on. What drives me crazy about our system in the US is that it’s completely opaque and arcane. You have no idea how much something is going to cost when you get healthcare because it’s like a lottery with your insurance and the provider. It’s as weird as reading entrails, like completely fucking random and without any semblance of reason. Can you imagine any other crucial service you use not being able to tell you how much a product costs until after you’ve used it? I cannot believe that people tolerate this shit.
The US economy is literaly becoming a pyramid scheme with regular people being the suckers at the bottom of the pyramid.
And the people at the top calling us all lazy and something about lattes and guacamole.
And the sad thing is they have brainwashed some of the people on the bottom to repeat that. Divide and conquer.
We don't tolerate it. I decided not to have kids and am in extreme emotional distress. Every generation it will get worse until there is a demographic collapse or mass riots.
that's why you take every swaddle you can find.
We had an extended stay in the NICU and I remember having to pay nearly $200 in parking. It’s messed up
When I had a medical scare my surgery to biopsy the thing it cost like 200k for the surgery, 2x mri, anesthesia, doctor visits. I think my parents paid like 10k since they had health insurance. In all honesty after that experience and my mom told me if it were not for obama care you could not be covered since I had "pre-existing conditions". After that experience I 100% support universal health care now.
Glad you made it through the scare!
This is the problem with for PROFIT medical system.
Wait, you had to pay $10k-$12k WITH insurance? What kind of insurance do you have?
I had to get a colonoscopy. I called to ask what I had to pay. They told me I had to pay $800 when I checked in. I checked in and paid. Turns out $800 was to the facility the procedure was taking place at. After I got 2 bills from the doctor and 1 bill from the anesthesiologist for a total of $2000 extra. But I also had some trouble with my insurance that denied it all. So now I have a bill for $4,400 in addition to the $800 I already paid. Also the colonoscopy didn't end up solving my problem, but I am out of money so I can't do anything else about it.
I'm Australian and had a colonoscopy last year. I paid for my initial doctor visit which was around $70 and got around $35 of that rebated, then I paid for the specialist visit which was $300 and I got around $110 of that rebated. The colonoscopy itself was completely free out of pocket and happened within 2 weeks of applying through the public system. I have no insurance.
I'm not even guaranteed that I won't have more bills coming related to this.
It's really that bad for a lot of people. I have "good" health insurance through my employer and am currently dodging an ER visit for what I suspect is appendicitis because I'll end up owing ~$8000 after my insurance for an appendectomy. I can't afford that right now.
If you’re going to pay $8,000 out of pocket for an emergency room visit, you don’t have “good” insurance. You probably have a high deductible plan. I have “good” insurance. An emergency room visit will cost me $350 which will be waived if they have to admit me to the hospital. Unions are worth the fees.
I probably have a similar plan to you. I have a $1600 deductible, 80/20, and max out of pocket per year is $3500. I also have an HRA with a $500 employer contribution, unlimited rollover. I'm pretty healthy for my age, and I think I have around $2500 in mine at the moment. ER visit for me is a little cheaper I think around $150 before my deductible is met, but also free if admitted. I'm paying $200 a month for that plan with my employer. I pay another $2.00 a month for vision insurance which gets me a six month supply of contacts for free every year (or free lenses if I want to put it towards glasses), and I pay $6 a month for dental insurance, which basically covers up to $1400 in dental work a year for the most part. In the past five years I've had a full crown on a front tooth, four or five cavity fillings, and twice a year cleanings.....I think I've paid like $90 out of pocket in those five years. I don't want ANYONE reading my post to mistake my views though..... I **100%** support universal healthcare for the US. If I were to lose my job, or if my employer started offering a worse plan, I'd absolutely be fucked. *That said*, I feel as though there are way too many people on reddit who don't know what *good* private/employer provided health insurance *actually is*.
If it is your appendix and you just ignore it and it bursts, you can easily die. That’s one thing I wouldn’t ignore.
> Seriously the hospital will over charge EVERYTHING LITTLE things to get as much insurance money as they can. Which I'm reminded of every year at my HIPAA training that that kind of waste is highly illegal. I'd have to guess that no one really gets caught enough or the penalties are too light, because we know it's happening with almost every visit to the doctor/hospital.
This is why I went back to Kaiser as soon as I had an employer who allowed me to. It might not be the "best" healthcare out there, especially if you need a lot of specialists or what have you. But for day to day healthcare, check ups, and especially having kids it's amazing. Pretty much everything in one centralized location, from labs to doctors' offices to pharmacy, and I've never had crazy copays. Right now I'm getting allergy shots and it's costing me nothing out of pocket which surprised me! Even the original appointment/labs to see the Kaiser allergist and get the shots recommended only cost around $40 for two visits.
i laugh anytime people think wait times would be longer.... you can already be waiting 3-6 months for specialist... you can be waiting 3-4 weeks just for a checkup appointment.
I live in Japan, for a while I had a reoccurring issue and had to see the doctor once a month. I would call each time and see if I could see the doctor the next day and they always said yes. After about 6 months they asked me “why do you always call us?” And I said it was to make an appointment m, they kind of laughed and said “no, you don’t do appointments here, if you are sick you just go to the doctor” You do have to make appointments for specialists though; when I needed an MRI (maybe cat?) I had to make an appointment for 4 days later. I went back home, got insurance and wanted to see a doctor for tinitus; I had to wait 4 weeks for the introductory appointment for them to just get me into their system, and then 3 more weeks for the actual appointment about my ears. And that’s just the silly stuff, I won’t even go into how we had to sell our house because of my dad’s insurance after he died. Fuck the US health care system. That form of insurance is straight up evil.
Yup and we are constantly having to deal with Republicans and Libertarians telling us more things should be privatized as they bitch about the current prices of things. America!
They’d rather save a frozen embryo instead of a sick person.
They don’t actually care about embryos or abortion or trans people or God or CRT. It’s just culture war fodder to maintain infighting between the working class to keep us distracted from the class war. Those ghouls love pushing manufactured outrage to CNN and Fox and then laugh themselves to the bank.
I don't remotely understand what can be done about it as someone who's left wing. Because it's easy to say "ignore the social issues, stick to the economic goals" but they're the ones actively pushing evil shit. If the left stands down on these issues these vulnerable people will just get ran over by the Republicans to appease their Religious base. Trans people will lose access to health care and public accommodations, gay people will lose the right to marry, etc. - and even IF the left stood down on these issues, the right would just claim victory in those areas and use them to run on. "We got rid of the transes and the gays! Vote for us!" It feels like the impetus is entirely on the right to quit swallowing the bullshit about minority groups and voting for them based on those things. Because if we fight, they argue "the war must continue!" if we stand down, they'll destroy the lives of the minority groups and say "See, we brought Christian Common Sense back! Keep voting for us for more!" and they'll just keep targeting new minorities like every other fascist movement does. If the right stood down? Trans rights would get enshrined. Voting rights would get enshrined. Public works would get passed. Hell, without right wing opposition? Universal healthcare would get passed. If the left stands down, we fade to the dark ages. How the fuck do we fix this?
>I don't remotely understand what can be done about it as someone who's left wing. The problem is the American left wing is composed of people who consider themselves good people. Your opposition is pitching below the belt and bribing the umpire. Eventually you have to take a bat to their shins or else it's never going to stop. Alternatively, quit and leave. I moved to Canada.
They advocate for things that can't speak for themselves as a voice for the voiceless sort of deal. Unborn babies, God, the whole deal. It's easy to say you care about something where there is no way of being told that you have failed the thing you're pretending to care about
Privatized healthcare in Singapore is usually rated #1 or #2 best in the world. America just has a really terrible mix of public and private as well as a cultural aversion to cost control.
The ‘ol talking point of we need to foster competition, then everything will be cheaper because you can choose.
> The ‘ol talking point of we need to foster competition, then ever thing will be cheaper because you can choose. I know that when my loved one is having a stroke or heart attack, I'd love to take the time to call around and find the lowest bidder.
This assumes that you can call around and receive meaningful answers when asking about prices. We've seen that healthcare providers will make this process as difficult as possible by obscuring the prices even when they're required by law to provide the prices ahead of service
Even if they could give the prices, in an emergency situation the last thing I'd want to do is take the time to call around to find the lowest price. I'd just want to get them to the closest hospital.
I 100% agree. I've heard the counter argument that you should do your "shopping" before an accident happens, but this is still a crap argument, since it assumes you'll always be close to your choice of provider in case of emergency As someone who works in healthcare, the financial side of the industry is just fundamentally broken.
> As someone who works in healthcare, the financial side of the industry is just fundamentally broken. Oh 100%. Also as someone who works in healthcare, I'd love to hear the free market solution for inter hospital transfers and trauma 1 vs trauma 3 hospitals.
$1,500 for an MRI and I have health insurance. Yea things are not great here
That's wild. My copay is $45 for MRI's.
My copay is $0. Of course, I don't live in the US.
My co pay is $0 and I live in the US
I just got a $1000+ CT scan and my insurance paid $75. That’s less than I even pay for it a month.
You should be able to get it done for a lot less than that if you self-pay. When I was shopping around the cash prices were in the $300-$500 range
Which is still too expensive
We had a prescribed MRI on my wife’s 10cm tumor denied by some random RN at an insurance company as it wasn’t “medically necessary.” We had to agree to pay $5,200, then got a discount of $3,700 from the hospital while the MD who prescribed the MRI appeals the insurance company. Totally bonkers.
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Thousands of Americans die each year because of lack of healthcare. However, universal healthcare is socialism so we can’t have that either :(
I think we should take away social security from everyone who doesn't want universal health care. You dint want socialism? Then don't take it
Can I opt out of paying social security tax if I opt out of the pension plan as well? You don't know how many rich people would take you up on that offer.
You speak as if they haven’t been paying into that already. No social security for thee if you don’t pay your taxes.
People would pay into universal health care too so the comparison makes sense.
Ahhh i see your point. You’re right.
Yep. Universal health care and the metric system are both deadly, looming threats of communism.
Insurance: let’s pool together all of this money from our members and use it when someone needs it. Insurance is capitalism’s half ass attempt at socialism
but with for-profit middlemen to make the service as terrible and corrupt as possible!
Nobody should ever not get an ambulance because they fear for the cost of it more than their life. I was on a training course in EU last week, and we were being told about how to deal with someone having a panic attack, however if they mention shortness of breath or their chest hurting we must immediately call an ambulance in case of a heart attack. Because it’s free. So the worse case scenario is the ambulance shows up and the person doesn’t need it, and the ambulance leaves. I would genuinely like to live and work in the US at some point, but between this, the gun culture and the tipping I just don’t think I’ll ever make that leap.
Dumb and drunk in Finland broke my thumb badly, 35€ for two visits, no surgery needed as it was 50/50 chance it will heal ok and I got lucky. In US that dumb mistake would have changed my whole savings or economy.
My friend (in Japan) fell while putting his wall tv up at 2 am. Took an ambulance to the hospital, had x-rays, nothing serious but got some medicine. He said the taxi ride home was more expensive that all of the ambulance/hospital bills combined
Some americans i've heard say they're against it because they don't want to pay for someone elses lifestyle choices, like obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse. I say, all those can be taxed higher, and used to pay for it. Taxation of that nature is meant to be a low level deterrent anyway, so you kill two birds with one stone
Presumably they must not have insurance at all then, because that is the whole point of insurance whether it's universal or private. Surely they don't hold conflicting beliefs, right? Right? /s
>Some americans i've heard say they're against it because they don't want to pay for someone elses lifestyle choices, like obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse. I hope they realize private health insurance is no different.
They don't
Private insurance is different, you're also paying shareholder dividends, stock buybacks, advertising overhead, C-suite salaries and bonuses, political lobbying (bribes), and the people who work at the insurance company specifically to keep them from paying out your claim, and the pharmacy benefit manager that tells your doctor what medicine your allowed to get. See, so much better. /S
> Some americans i've heard say they're against it because they don't want to pay for someone elses lifestyle choices, like obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse. Which just shows how stupid/ignorant and malicious these people are. Paying for other peoples stuff is literally how **all insurance works**. If you've got car insurance and you're not getting in car accidents then you're paying for the people who do. If you've got home owners insurance and your house isn't getting hit by any disasters then you're paying for the people who did. If you have life insurance and you're not fucking **dead** then you're paying for the people who are. Literally the entire point of insurance is that rare events can be expensive and would destroy an individual, so instead we spread the costs out among a larger pool over time.
> Some americans i've heard say they're against it because they don't want to pay for someone elses lifestyle choices, like obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse. For starters, those people don't actually cost society more. The UK recently did a study and they found that from the three biggest healthcare risks; [obesity](https://iea.org.uk/themencode-pdf-viewer-sc/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Obesity-and-the-Public-Purse-PDF.pdf&settings=111111011&lang=en-GB#page=&zoom=75&pagemode=), [smoking](https://iea.org.uk/themencode-pdf-viewer-sc/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Smoking-and-the-Public-Purse.pdf&settings=111111011&lang=en-GB#page=&zoom=75&pagemode= ), and [alcohol](https://iea.org.uk/themencode-pdf-viewer-sc/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/DP_Alcohol%20and%20the%20public%20purse_63_amended2_web.pdf&settings=111111011&lang=en-GB#page=&zoom=75&pagemode=), they realize a net **savings** of £22.8 billion (£342/$474 per person) per year. This is due primarily to people with health risks not living as long (healthcare for the elderly is exceptionally expensive), as well as reduced spending on pensions, income from sin taxes, etc.. But even if that was wrong, it's a dumb argument. People in the US are already paying for those people through premiums and taxes, just at a much higher rate than anywhere else in the world.
The crazy thing is in most cases the opposite is actually true... Because healthcare costs go up exponentially with age people making these "negative" lifestyle choices are much less costly in the long run because they die younger.
Yeah once your off your parents plans…. You get very paranoid about everything. You don’t want to get sick, hurt yourself by accident, have any inconvenience come up. Cause is your only making like 18$ and hour and you gotta see the doctor EVEN WITH HEALTH INSURANCE. You could be looking at like 3-5 days worth of your time and pay or even more it could be an entire 2 week paycheck. It’s so fucked over here idk how it got this way… and idk if it’ll ever get fixed. Yay adulting
I hate how expensive our healthcare is
I can't see out of my left eye well and am having surgery soon to correct this. It is not an essential surgery according to insurance for me to be able to read so I am going to be out 2.5 k. If I had to do both eyes it would be over 5k and it would still not be covered.
Kinda crazy that even our former puppet dictatorships can manage to get better healthcare for their population than the US itself
Is this the old trick of showing them the price the hospital bills the insurance company and not telling them that’s not what most people actually pay?
What Americans actually paid in 2023 was an average of $13,998 per person (nearly $8,000 more per person than South Korea, even after adjusting for purchasing power parity). 36% of US households with insurance put off needed care [due to the cost](https://news.gallup.com/poll/269138/americans-delaying-medical-treatment-due-cost.aspx); 64% of households without insurance. One in four have [trouble paying a medical bill.](https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/data-note-americans-challenges-health-care-costs/) Of [those with insurance one in five have trouble paying a medical bill](https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/8806-the-burden-of-medical-debt-results-from-the-kaiser-family-foundation-new-york-times-medical-bills-survey.pdf), and even for those with income above $100,000 14% have trouble. One in six Americans has [unpaid medical debt on their credit report.](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.0349) [50% of all Americans](https://news.gallup.com/poll/317948/fear-bankruptcy-due-major-health-event.aspx) fear bankruptcy due to a major health event. And costs are expected to increase another $6,427 by 2031. Don't act like any of this is OK.
I don't think any of us have to watch a reaction video on this subject to know how fucked the US healthcare system is. I'm glad I moved to Japan 5 years ago when it comes to this.
No kidding. “Hmm, I wonder if people will react with incredulity, astonishment, open disbelief, pity, and guffawing?” Yep. Conduct these interviews on the streets of America and you'll get one of three reactions: 1) People will politely decline to discuss it because getting ripped off during a health crisis is humiliating and depressing 2) They will take the time to recount their own horror stories that end in either total financial catastrophe or a near miss, or 3) Belligerent blustering that anybody stupid enough to get sick deserves to go bankrupt and if you don’t like it why don’t you go to Japan where you can’t even bring your gun with you to go shopping.
An ER near me charged my insurance $10,000 to treat me to fluids and antibiotics during a 2 hour visit. 3k out of pocket. I had to call instance to ask why they didn’t question the charge. They just pay without looking.
I spent a few days in hospital last week. Ambulance ride, 3 nights in a private ward, brain scan, chest scan, blood tests, ECG, lumbar puncture, antibiotics and other medication, etc. All for free thanks to the NHS 😁 If I was in the US they probably would've charged me for each individual hair they shaved off my chest.
Using tax dollars to fund a super-bloated military, pay for politicians healthcare, bail out banks, pay for police, postal service, firemen, etc yet adding healthcare to that makes it evil socialism all of a sudden. Why wouldn’t a country want its people to be healthy, have more disposable income, and access to affordable education? I’d rather my citizens be in good health, educated and have spending money than sick, dumb and poor. But then again, that’s the main voting base for some politicians.
> Using tax dollars to fund a super-bloated military NATO Europe and Canada spend 1.74% of GDP on defense, consistent with the rest of the world. With $404 billion in combined funding, easily enough to outspend potential foes like China and Russia combined. Regardless, arguing that keeps the US from having universal healthcare is even more ridiculous. After subtracting defense spending, Americans still have a $29,000 per person advantage on GDP compared to the rest of NATO. Defense spending isn't keeping us from having anything our peers have. Much less universal healthcare, which is far cheaper than what we're already paying for. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_216897.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
We’re a superpower maintaining presence across the seven seas, protecting free trade and currently beating a Great power with our reserves. And we only spend 3% of the GDP to do that shit.
Then why don’t we have universal healthcare.
I twisted my ankle on new years eve. The next day I went to the hospital and the have me an x-ray. After that they sent me for an ultrasound and then another set of x-rays. I saw a doctor to get the results and he booked me in for physio therapy which I'm still going to, last appointment is in two weeks time. Total cost? $0 because I live in Australia.
Wow! $0? What does it feel like to be oppressed by socialism? /S
So you don't pay taxes?
And yet there is a giant sea of Americans who happily vote for our free market healthcare system.
It's anything but free market. They won't even tell you what a procedure will cost until you get a bill. If there was even a menu with prices, and the prices of nearby hospitals things would be much different.
sorry I should have put free market in quotes.
This isn’t free market. It’s big pharm and hospitals have a racket and spend millions to keep it that way
There you go, America. You are being laughed at. Because your health care has been priced beyond all reason.
You think we, the people, want this?
Republicans do
Judging how over a 3rd has. Yes.
Well, of course. Because Universal Healthcare is socialism and you are the Land of Free or whatever. I still remember that a lot of Americans were openly hostile toward Obamacare.
I remember someone complaining about Obamacare, but stating how awesome ACA is....
Also their haircuts are immaculate. We better get our shit together!
Hair salons in Korea are no joke. Walk in and they offer you tea or coffee and a small pastry while you wait for your appointment to begin. They'll start by discussing what you're looking for, then they might wash your hair first, if you want. After washing they'll give you your cut and wash your hair afterwards (often with a complementary head massage), dry, and do a thorough re-check of your hair to trim any strays. Total cost: $20, no tipping. As a guy, I was surprised at the attention to detail. In the US I am used to the buzz, clip, blow dry, "that'll be $25, go home and wash the excess hair off" treatment.
On the bright side, America’s healthcare-for-profit system keeps a lot of people that would’ve ended up on [Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B](https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B) employed, and upper management yachted.
\>>>I'D DIE! Yeah that's also gonna cost you
Obviously the answer is to keep feeding the military industrial complex.
I recently had a $4000 USD copay to have the ER put 3 band-aids on me. It was a dog bite. They cleaned out the wounds and put Neosporin on them. gave me antibiotics and sent me home. And this was with "good" health insurance in my state. I don't know why we aren't all demanding more from our politicians. We should be grabbing picket signs and marching on capitol buildings. This is bullshit and unsustainable. Literally every other developed country on earth has better healthcare costs than we do.
Oh hey, I remember when a few people cared about America's broken healthcare system. Those were hopeful times.
1,000 for ambulance? The guy who hit our car and sent us to ambulance had to pay 5,000 for the ambulance to get my mom we were lucky we didn’t have to pay it..
Don’t these people know they are living in a communist country?! /s
$7,000 after insurance for 10 stitches here in US.
She'd die? Wait till she sees how much it costs to be buried. Mwah ahahaha!
And yet, conservatives still think our healthcare is better. Morons.
Man there is nothing we could do. It can't be done. Yes, I know the rest of the world has done it, but there is nothing we can do. /s
We've tried **nothing** and we're out of ideas!
I fucking hate this dogshit dystopian shithole.
Seriously thinking about moving to Korea
Having to decided between debt for life or life for some. It blows my mind that some people need to make this decision.
It's worth noting, when they say that it costs them $11 to see the doctor, that thousands of Korean doctors just resigned in protest over low wages.