I’d like to know other non-US citizen’s opinions on your health care system are when you read a story like this. I know there are worse places in the world to receive health care, and better. What runs through your heads when you have a medical emergency?
A little background on my question:
My son was having trouble breathing after having a cold for a couple of days and we needed to stop and take the time to see if our insurance would be accepted at the closest emergency room so we didn’t end up with a huge bill (like 2000$-5000$). This was a pretty involved ~10 minute process of logging into our insurance carrier, and unsuccessfully finding the answer there. Then calling the hospital and having them tell us to look it up by scrolling through some links using the local search tool on their website. This gave me some serious pause, what if it was a real emergency, like the kind where you have no time to call and see if the closest hospital takes your insurance.
The one thing even Americans who have health insurance don’t realize about single payer healthcare systems, is that we don’t worry about it.
We don’t consider it when switching jobs, we don’t think about it when we’re sick, we don’t worry about medical bills… we just go to the doctor/hospital, and worry about getting better or dealing with the work implications of taking time off.
The weight for that piece simply doesn’t rest on our shoulders or minds at all.
You’ve been tricked and brainwashed you into thinking what you have is normal, and it’s disturbing how many of you think it’s a reasonable way to continue.
I’m American and trust me, in no way does it feel normal even after living with it my whole life. Simply hearing what you describe - not thinking about it - feels so deeply right and reasonable that it reminds me just how much weight of “this is not normal” we carry around.
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That’s so fucking crazy sounding. It also sounds wonderful. My parents almost lost our house due to medical expenses, and yes they had insurance (here’s the best part - my dad was a disabled veteran). So support the troops, yay!
Because of that experience, I’ve developed a lifelong almost PTSD about insurance and medical bills - afraid that it will happen again to me now that I’m an adult. I obsess over it. It’s terrible.
I’m so jealous of those who never have to give it a second thought.
That’s so fucking crazy sounding
And there’s the problem
It’s so fucking normal sounding. Your system is the crazy, horrifying human rights abuse 😅
No, you’re absolutely right. I didn’t mean crazy to sound negative - it’s just something I cannot even imagine…to never have to think about this thing that I constantly think about. It’s wild. And I really do wish it could become a reality.
1 in 4 bankruptcies are military due to medical cost. We only support troops with thoughts and prayers
Sadly, the brainwashing has been so effective that those who buy it never noticed that those gaslighting people into believing that no government system (eg, single payer) could ever work are the ones (Republicans) doing their best to ensure that government remains as broken as possible.
More people believe that our system is fucked than those who think this kind of system is normal.
We’re just faced with so many hurdles, gerrymandering, red states that exist only because of minority representation have more power over larger population areas (districts by size and not population, electoral college) … The majority of the country is merely surviving and the apathy sets in. I remind people that voting fascists out is the only way things are going to change and often the response is “Well, I tried that once and it didn’t work.” So they stop showing up to vote. Or they buy into the ‘both sides’ BS and post lame memes on Facebook and Reddit.
A lot of us really are painfully aware of how fucked it is.
We need to do way more than just voting to defeat fascism
This is why I don’t understand why corporations aren’t behind it. It would take an enormous load of my HR dept. It would save them so much.
Retention. You’ll find the threat of lack of healthcare to be fairly coercive.
Corps actually benefit from workers being worried about leaving. It reduces labour costs.
Bingo
You’ve been tricked and brainwashed you into thinking what you have is normal, and it’s disturbing how many of you think it’s a reasonable way to continue.
No, we haven’t… Are you not aware how upset most people are over here about this system?
Yeah, exactly. The most expensive thing about a hospital visit here is the parking.
You pay taxes but get no benefit of them . They are used for subdivise automaker ,wallmart ,meat and dairy lobby and killing ciilvilan in other countries . I don’t understand why american are OK with that .
I pray there comes a time when the people decide what their taxes are spent on. Could be done using a simple form, with a dozen or so broad categories to choose from, submitted with your tax return.
I bet the results would shock the shit out of the politicians.
I’d like to just start with having to send a check every two weeks instead of allowing them to just deduct it.
Make people physically pay their tax, that’s how you get engagement. And they know that, which is why it’s NOT like that.
The only thing that would do is make people hate taxes.
Americans already don’t include taxes on their prices in shops in order to make the consumer mad at politicians because of “how much tax they have to pay”, while it is just a ploy by the corporations to lower the taxes so they can improve their profit.
Society needs money in order to exist. Taxes are the best solution to pay for the stuff no ordinary individual would want to spend money on. Like road repair, firefighters, huge healthcare costs, …
I am not against taxation. Tho, I am against taxation when my government doesn’t represent me; and until I see studies, and enacted legislation that show public support influences policy than I will continue my position that our government has been coopted by an unfriendly occupying force. It’s as if at the macro level, we’re quartering the soldiers of our own oppression.
I hate throwing good money after bad, absolutely. And where do you live that spends money on their roads? Firefighters are famously and shamefully volunteer services and health care…that’s an institutionalized shell game to grift your life saving away from you. You didn’t think they’d let you keep that did you? Back to work, prole.
It’s more famously going towards banks, ISP’s, and airlines… Basically all the things we hate the most.
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That system is shit and a danger to the people and to the unity a nation needs.
In Germany we don’t even think about this system when we are ill - we simply go to the doctor whatever it is, and we call an ambulance if it’s necessary. Not a single thought.
Unless you’re a woman though :)
Because?
Maybe Miaou meant the gender gap in medicine. The big difference in studies looking at the medical details (for example of drugs) in female bodies vs in male bodies
Also general conservatism. Is there any western European country where abortions are still illegal besides Germany?
Edit: just checked, Italy and Portugal are not doing well either. But those countries don’t pretend to be progressive so no surprise
You can abort till the 22 week in Germany.
Up until 2 years ago it was illegal for doctors to advertise they performed abortions.
And there’s a difference between abortion being legal, and it being decriminalised (as if the case in Germany)
The only western European country where abortion is illegal is Malta.
Only 2 countries legalised it in the last 34 years (Ireland and Northern Ireland)
Everyone else has had abortion legalised before 1990
Portugal doesn’t pretend to be progressive? They legalized all drugs. They’ve also allowed people of the same gender to marry since 2010.
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Well yeah, but like, that’s just your opinion, man.
- The Dude
\- The Dude
It’s actually pretty American not to believe in society. I’m not saying it’s good. But the right of an individual to march off into the wilderness and be left the fuck alone forever is a long-cherished American ideal (whether or not this ever existed).
Orphan Crushing Machine
Guns are a right, but you can be jailed for getting an abortion. The US is turning into a third world country.
Actually most third world countries don’t have guns as rights. And their laws on abortion vary wildly.
So the US would be worse than third world.
New achievement unlocked: fourth world
Biggest number! U-S-A! U-S-A!
The only way I’d live in the States is if I was making so much money that a 20k medical bill meant nothing to me.
$480.000 cancer treatment enters the chat.
what. Is this real?
Back in my first year of uni there, my classmate broke her femur. Got a nice 145k bill. Thank fuck she had insurance that paid most of it, because the two can negotiate any price they can come up with
You can buy a (rather small) Apartment for that over here. And still have money left for renovation.
I’m not willing to believe that the ACTUAL costs are in any reasonable correlation to the invoice.
Costs for services are basically made up. It’s incredibly complicated but I’ll give an example.
My last doctor appointment was billed at $220. I am in-network (which means my insurer has negotiated specific rates) so the insurance company says “you can only charge our insureds $105 for that service. We’ll pay $80. The patient is responsible for the rest.”
If I didn’t have insurance, I’d be on hook for the full $220. If the doctor was out-of-network, my insurance company would pay what they thought was reasonable and I’d be on the hook for the rest.
The $220 is just whatever the doctor feels like billing. It’s not based on anything other than “I feel like $220 is what my time is worth.”
Sounds fairly accurate. It’s just one privatized industry negotiating with another. Doesn’t necessarily mean that your leg is worth 145k$, however that’s how much they feel they can leech from each other. In the States, this is exactly why you ask for a full itemized bill, any time you get any work done. They will, and do abuse this system for profit
My stepdad had to take a loan out against the house to pay for shoulder reconstruction that his insurance deemed unnecessary.
Yes. The average cost of cancer treatment is around $150,000 USD here and expensive cases can be much more.
Well it’s not that it means nothing to me, but my job in the US pays about $30k more than it would in Germany (I can’t speak to other countries). Lots of Germans come to the US to work in my field for that reason (well they used to before all the layoffs). Also my health insurance is free.
That said, I absolutely still want public healthcare. Not just for the people in my country who desperately need it, but for myself too. Because while my healthcare is “free”, it isn’t really; my salary could be higher otherwise. And I lose coverage if I stop working (actually not really we have programs for that, but still kind of).
It’s a so foreign concept for me. Needing to rationalize about going to ER. I feel sorry. People are dying and people are tricked into believing it’s the better alternative. But There is a better way, and it’s only denied because of greed.
The institutionalization runs deep.
The first time I moved out of the US I lived in a socialized medicine country & I just never went to the doctor. My then girlfriend casually went because she wasnt feeling well (a cold), then would go to the pharmacy for a birth control shot (no prescription needed), and finally when I had a fever and a doc came to the house at 2am (we just had to pay the taxi). I had a lengthy stay in the hospital, and a month of rehab, my employer’s nurse would stop by the house and give me an injection on his way home. And our son was born in a hospital with private rooms- all i had to pay for was my meals and overnight stay (there was a bed for me), plus the room had a mini bar…no shit.
We moved back to the US to raise the kids and then out again i to another socialized medicine country and I STILL HESITATE to go to the doctors.
Yeah… The Trumpers and other idiots are the ones defending this system. We’re talking about something like a third of our population, but it fluctuates.
People outside the US always overestimate these people’s opinions for some reason. I think the propaganda machine that is our media works better on foreigners than it does on US citizens. Obviously it works far better than it should on our own people, though…
I stopped having sympathy during the Obama administration. When half of the country will willingly and intentionally fuck themselves over to prove a point, when a political party will reverse course on a life saving piece of legislation because the other side agreed to it, and those same people continue to get elected, it’s not worth my emotional energy to give a fuck anymore.
Y’all deserve what you have. It’s not good but it’s what you want.
In our defense, the Republican “half” of the country aren’t actually half the country. They’re the smallest of the 3 major political affiliations among votin-age Americans: “None”, “Democrat”, and then “Republican”. In that order.
“None” is the largest single political affiliation in America, and that has been a kind of negative feedback loop in our politics. People are disenfranchised and feel disconnected from the governance of our country, so they don’t (or can’t) vote, and because they don’t vote, they’re not represented in government and are easier to disenfranchise. This, and rampent legalized bribery, have created a great deal of our problems.
Not to say voters are the source of the feedback loop, it’s being actively driven by autocratic politicians and moneyed interest.
Tell that in respect to (ha) Southern Ontario and Montreal to a British Columbian, Albertan, Saskatchewanian, Manitoban, Yukonite, any First Nations Canadian or any resident of Atlantic Canada or the Northwest Territory, and see if they think differently about Ontario-Quebec than most Americans think about the Republican party.
Oh, did you know 90% of Canadians are well-to-do or upper-middle class residents of Southern Ontario or Montreal who produce less than 10% of Canada’s GDP and vote for anything that lets them continue to take advantage of the rest of the country? Yeah, our population density is horrifyingly low AND yet we have a profit-off-of-artificial-scarcity-induced housing shortage? Fuck you for supporting tyranny by majority, it’s still possible for the majority to all be in with the rich pricks, whether the minority is 49% or <10%.
You sound jealous that you don’t matter. Must suck feeling that way.
When half of the country will
Y’all deserve
Wow that was a quick progression from “half” to “all.” I deserve this because Republicants are insane fucks? Gee thanks. Not that I care whether you care, particularly.
You care enough to comment LoL. If your fee fees are hurt…tell someone who cares.
In Europe the US healthcare system is seen as a joke and medieval. Same for most social services I’m the US. Like somebody else said I stopped feeling sympathy a while ago.
Shaking my head and glad I’m not living in the US.
A country can decide how to treat people, how to shape the future. I get that nothing is perfect and everything is complicated. But I completely don’t get why the US doesn’t want to tackle some of the problems. Mainly school shootings, healthcare, social security and a democratic system by today’s standards. Maybe the latter is the answer why… And watching documentaries about the rural areas, it seems like the USA is mostly a third world country, except for in the cities.
The funny thing is that the US actually spends about twice as much on healthcare per capita as other developed countries. The reason that outcomes are so much worse there isn’t lack of money.
Oh wow, I didn’t know that. Google says $13.493 per person in 2022. And in Germany it’s a bit more than $7.000…
Also things like maternal mortality are WAY worse…
I mean the USA is bigger and maybe things don’t translate exactly from a somewhat densely populated central european country to the vast emptiness of rural Wyoming. I guess an hospital is also something that is subject to economy of scale… But even most northern european countries where doctors come in with helicopters, don’t exceed the ~$7.000.
It is really off for the USA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
(If that is correct, you could spend half the money on healthcare and also live 3 years longer, on average…)
Life expectancy is going down cuz suicide rates are shooting up. Like suburban boys with shopping malls, their classrooms and/or heroin/fent
Fuuuuck. Nailed it, I’m fucking kiiiiiiiiilling it today. Ziiiing!
Hmmh, but that’s only the thing on top. Contrary to other countries, life expectancy seems to be actually going down since 2014… But there is already something seriously wrong since ~1980…
Reagan, Thatcher
And seems it never has gotten better than that, regarding this apect. Even worse 😮💨
Yeah, it’s not a healthcare system. It’s a jobs system and wealth transfer scheme. Insurance companies have the government in their pocket and get employer money, government money, and employee money and transfer it to the already outrageously rich, and all that in between cost (salespeople, billing specialists, HR benefits specialists) is somebody’s paycheck.
That’s without consideration of actual fraud, which moves money from the government to the rich without even providing services at all, and is easier to hide in such an outrageously complicated and expensive system.
Our entire nation exists to funnel money to the rich. Whenever someone wonders, “why is x this way in the USA?” The answer is always it puts more money in a rich person’s pocket. The healthcare system is the emperor’s new clothes. Bask in it, if you can see how great it is.
It’s just THAT expensive. An ambulance is 2-3k minimum. Just for showing up. Going to an ER, talking to reception and then giving up and leaving? That’ll be a $1200 bill, to NOT see a doctor.
I don’t even know the line where I would voluntarily to go the hospital, knowing it’s sacrificing the next 10-20 years of all my extra income. Would it be when I put my thumb thru a grinding disc on my angle grinder, cutting it clean in two right thru the entire nail?
Naw, hell no. I would have cut my thumb tip off with a chef’s knife and cauterized It if I thought it wouldn’t heal on its own, rather than spend an app $15,000 I don’t have. Took about 10 weeks to heal.
I know how to fight off an abscess tooth without antibiotics. It takes about 8 days, of constant stabbing, arching your back pain. Ive broken knuckles just to have a different pain to focus on. No one should know how to do this in 2024. Abscess teeth kill. Kennewick Man, y’know, the Popsicle? That’s what killed him. My story isn’t unique, America is a third world country with iPhones. Don’t visit. I wish the world would boycott every American company until we learn how to have a civil society.
We WANT too. Gun control, Medicare for all, and SS all have majority support for reform, across the parties. Broad support. Multiple studies have shown that public opinion has ZERO effect on legislation getting passed. Our oligarchy doesn’t give three shits to the wind about actual Americans. I’ve never met a group of people who, clearly, hate almost everyone they see. At the end of the balance sheet, actions speak louder, and the group most responsible for pain, suffering and loss of quality American years lived are the 1%. Their renumeration of revolutionary inequality is simultaneously equal amounts astonishing and disgusting.
If I wrote out a synopsis of the economy today and somehow got it back to my WW2/Korea vet grandfather he would’ve thought the USSR won the cold war.
His last words to me, i had asked him about WW2, and said I wanted to join the military like him - I liked my grandad better than my parents - and he told me “you don’t join the military. I fought so you and your siblings don’t have too” and then he made me promise that I’d go to college instead.
I did as he asked tho looking around now, I feel like no matter what I do, war is gonna find me.
Which if we’re being brutally honest, would be a return to the norm. Historically war touches everyone’s life. We’re blessed to live under the Pax Americana, but greed has rotted out the essence at its core and when the last leg falls…ever seen that movie Miracle Mile? You should watch it.
Thanks for the suggestion. Of course Netflix doesn’t have this 1988 movie… Let me see if I can pirate it… And thanks for teaching me the term “Pax Americana”.
The USA is somewhat far away from the wars it is or has been engaged with. I think the situation is a bit different than for other countries. That is also a thing I don’t quite get about the USA. Back in the cold war enormous sums of money were invested to fight the USSR. And nowadays Putin wants to revive that and the USA really struggles to represent their interests. I mean the USA isn’t tied as closely to eastern europe as for example a central european country where I live is. But there are some economic interests at play and the USA also benefits from a stable eastern europe and Russia/China not wreaking havoc in the world. This time it’s not even American soldiers who have to die in that battle. And the USA could advertise for their arms industry and make some profit, too. But all of that is overshadowed by national politics and it seems to cripple politics and working towards mid-term and long-term interests.
GOP steps into the chat.
I think third world country.
I think that’s unfair on third world countries
That would imply not taking a side in WW2.
No, the US is a developing nation. Still has plenty of ways to go in order to stomp out corruption and the oligarchy running it, and also lower the divide between rich and poor. Only then will they be able to look after their own people the way a real developed nation would.
But as long as people in the US need a gun in order to feel safe walking around, it will stay a shithole.
I think people in the US use a gun in wrong way.
Honestly, I am so glad my parents didn’t move to the USA and moved to the UK instead. Me and my sister had several health issues including asthma, food allergies, broken bones playing sports, and as a result several hospital and doctor visits. Considering my parents were self employed shop keepers, I don’t know if we’d be alive, let alone what sort of life we would have had. Then also having to pay for college would’ve been tricky. Having so few work holidays also completely sucks!
We are now both professionals with great jobs, paying lots of taxes and volunteer a lot to try to give back. Would that be possible in the USA - I honestly have no idea! Would we move to the USA - absolutely no way! We’d both actually earn lots more money in the USA in the same role but factoring in health and happiness, it’s not worth it.
When you hear “greatest country on earth” and “the American dream”, I think anybody in Western countries really roll their eyes. It’s not a utopia here in the UK but nobody claims it to be, and stories like this just prove we are better off here.
However, we know the people themselves are great and don’t deserve this position. We feel sorry for you and wish part of your population would travel and see things for themselves to push for changes back home.
In the UK, we are terrified that we will end up in the same position as our out of touch political elite and ultra wealthy would love to copy this.
I’m from the US, and I moved to Canada for 4 years for work. As a young adults, my partner and I had revolving medical debt. Not a ton, but enough to make it annoying. A couple thousand here and there. It felt like I was always had a hospital bill that we were trying to pay off. When we moved to Canada it was weird for us because, just as another person in here stated, you just didn’t have to think about going to the doctor. I had major stomach surgery, we had a kid, we got monetary support for our other kid who’s on the spectrum to take them to therapy… We got gtube supplies, meds for infections… Anything we needed was covered. Not once did I think oh man, this is going to wreck us. Well, that’s not true, I thought that the first time I took my oldest to the doctor to get an xray because we thought they might have broken a bone, but that was just a thought and it didn’t actually cost us a penny.
Every time we went to our PCP, a specialist, or emergency, the only thing we had to pay for was parking and maybe a few bucks for pain meds. But each time we had to get pills it was less than $5 to fill the prescription. One of the kids fell and hit their head? Straight to the doctor. A cold that’s been taking too long to go away on its own? To the doctor!
Now we are back in the US, and I just paid off another medical bill because my insurance only covered a small amount of an ECG, because they wanted to check make sure my kids heart was strong enough to put her on medication, and that the meds wouldn’t kill her.
We should move to a single payer medical system.
I regularly fear for the Americans I have connected to since the days of covid stretched my group of friends more into online spaces.
One got beaten to shit by a bad boss when he tried to retrieve his tips. All at once he had injuries that kept him out of work, mental trauma and legitimate fear for his safety that meant he couldn’t return to his job but also because work and insurance are tied down there he was in an immediate precarity. He couldn’t return to work, the cops showed active disinterest in helping him press charges and his hospital bills blew through his savings… And because he had technically quit there was no EI safety net either.
I was struck so hard by the dystopian nature of it all. There is so much under the Canadian system which is just never a factor. I didn’t realize how free I actually was because I had never tied my considerations of my health to what job I chose or whether I was unemployed. I was used to my medical services bill just being this tiny expense I had set to autopay that was so small I didn’t even have to think about. They don’t even charge that any more.
All I ever had to do to get help was ask and it was freely given. I had no cause to ever question exactly how much of a blessing… How much of a privilege… that actually was.
Living in Europe, it’s easy to forget how much is covered by the national health insurance. I just had one tooth fixed, another pulled a few months ago, and getting a dental X-ray done in a few weeks. All 100% covered. My whole family got their COVID vaccines for free. My grandmother has issues with mobility, so the hospital sent a car to our house with her vaccines for free. I can just take a bike to the doctor and get a diagnosis or papers for further examination for free.
This is why I’m happy to pay taxes. I know that crooked politicians take their unfair share, but it also funds public services like healthcare.
The US healthcare system has provided me with lots of entertainment value via John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. I like it for that
For real though, despite being a software engineer who could find a very lucrative job in the US in a heartbeat, there’s no way in hell I’ll ever even remotely consider it, and the healthcare system is one of the reasons.
As a software engineer, you’d likely get a well paying job that included better health insurance than most people get. Also you’d be more likely to be able to afford the gaps that would still exist. You would not be affected by half these horror stories
Not OP, but living in the system is supporting the system so I prefer to just live somewhere else. Going to the States for vacation is plenty to experience the cool things
That’s a pretty good take. US has good healthcare coverage for those who can afford it, but those who can are very profitable
If this person doesn’t have white skin, isn’t christian or gender conforming there’s a whole host of other horror stories that apply tho.
