and, overall it would cost about half what we're paying now as a nation for health care.
And that doesn't even count the extra that people are paying for private insurance. How much the government spends per capita (of the whole country) on healthcare is double what other first world countries pay even though in the USA it only covers a third of US citizens.
Won't anyone think of the poor billionaire shareholders??
And insurance companies add nothing to healthcare. They contribute nothing. They streamline nothing. And THEY are the ones who make your health care decisions for you, NOT your doctor.
Got a back problem that could be easily fixed by surgury? Well screw that, insurance isn't paying for that. But they'll be happy to put you on painkillers for the rest of your life so you'll be stuck in a parasitic relationship where you have pay them forever to afford your pain meds.
They only exist to transfer wealth from sick, financially vulnerable people to the billionaire class.
And it's also bad science and bad philosophy.
Insurance works on probabilities. They pick the most likely outcome based on old population studies (not current ones - so they lag behind epidemics). This means that if you have a pet alligator, and it bit off your toe, insurance would disbelieve you and would say the accident was most likely from a vehicle or tool, and then wouldn't treat you for salmonella or other concerns from an alligator bite because that's unlikely to occur in the general population. Even though that's literally what happened here.
So the way they practice medicine is stupid and bad. It should also be illegal, because to practice medicine you're by law suppose to have a doctor patient relationship. I've never met the doctors at my insurance company. So how can they prescribe (including deny) treatment for me?
Further, I have privacy concerns with insurance companies as well. I don't want them to have all my medical information. I don't want them to code my information in a way that benefits their insurance system but isn't accurate to my actual diagnosis.
I want to go into a doctor and actually be treated by that fucking doctor.
Remember when they said socialized healthcare stops you from seeing the doctor you want? Well our current system, in all its justice, let's me see the doctor I want, pay her, and then I can't get the treatments she recommends because they aren't approved by an anonymous third doctor at my insurance I didnt choose and never met. Lol. Fml.
I don’t want them to code my information in a way that benefits their insurance system but isn’t accurate to my actual diagnosis.
My fiancee has been dealing with this for like 2 years. She got a relatively simple bloodwork panel done, and the NP who ordered it fucked up the code/paperwork for it by labeling it as something more expensive than it actually was, which resulted in the insurance not covering it, which resulted in a $1k bill for what should have been a $20 test.
The bill was sent to collections, and they were told that the bill was erroneous because the NP fucked up the paperwork. They're still calling 2 years later. They don't seem to get the hint that my fiancee is disabled, has no wages, and no way to pay it*, and therefore they ain't getting shit.
* Fortunately it is within my means to pay for it for her, but she has no wages for them to garnish, they can't mess with her credit score over it, and so they have no pathway to do any harm for failure to pay. So fuck em.
The succinct way to describe it is that every dollar earned in profit by a health insurance company is a dollar that was spent on health care for which no healthcare was delivered. Their profits are literally just inefficiency in the system, and they're directly incentivized to maximize that inefficiency.
And insurance companies add nothing to healthcare. They contribute nothing.
They give me a pile of paperwork and an illusion of choice. What more could I ask for?
I'm currently fighting a bill because insurance doesn't like who gave the diagnosis. The diagnosis isn't wrong, it's actively being treated, they just think the wrong doctor gave it. Dealing with insurance is a huge pain in the ass for no reason except to enrich the insurance companies. They add no value to society.
This is exactly why Obamacare is absolute trash. It forces you to buy into a failed system or pay monthly penalties. For a healthy individual, it's cheaper to pay put of pocket when necessary, than monthly dues in addition to your "deductable".
I showed this to my mom, and her reply was “but that socialism!” And promptly hung up on me.
Some people are so stupid and stubborn that they would rather be bilked by conmen than to actually get the care they need, affordably.
That’s kind of bullshit we’re dealing with.
Don’t try to explain public roads, bridges, dams, water & sewerage, police, fire brigades or the military to her.. she might just have an aneurysm.
"so, mom, you'd rather i die than receive affordable health care?"
She’s rich, so all of that will never affect her. But she sure as shit would rather I die and every other one of “the poors” than to pay even one penny more in taxes.
Insurance IS socialism. By definition. The only difference is who holds the money from the group to pay out claims. In one, it's the government which has an incentive to keep costs low across the board. The other it is a private company trying to make as much profit as possible.
The bullshit part is how many people think socialism is wrong or evil. It's just an approach where the people work together to provide a service where the focus is the service itself rather than anyone getting rich from the service.
Why is socialism something bad for her?
It’s not. She just thinks it is because she’s been told it’s a dirty word.
US healthcare is extortion
Think of the knock off effects of universal health care beyond paying less.
you would not be tied to a shitty job anymore - your ability to quit and move to another company becomes easier
You could quit your job and start your own company since now you don't have to worry about medical bankruptcy
Or maybe you live a minimal enough of a life that you could quit your job that you have only because of the health insurance and go do something that is fulfilling to you?
A huge reason that I took the job I have now is because they let me start my health insurance plan asap. It was supposed to be after 3 months but I just asked nice and they didn't hesitate to agree even without my whole spcheil. I have a wife and a son, at the time my wife was still going through some post pregnancy health issues and my son was going through some stuff that required regular visits. I turned down some cushy jobs solely because they wanted me to wait 3-6 months to be insured, which I get from a business perspective, but what the actual fuck? It took me a while to switch jobs for that reason alone. I guess it's a good indicator of a company that has common sense/common decency.
We would be able to track bad products that give us cancer more easily, could sue companies in a class action easier. As it is, you cant sue for cancer you never had diagnosed because you couldnt afford to go in. And also with lead contamination and other heavy metals, and a million other toxins.
Really USA, how does anyone pretend this is OK?
Really USA, how does anyone pretend this is OK?
We pretend a LOT of things are OK.
- School shootings comes to mind.
- laws around what women can do with their own bodies.
- Sacrifice of the environment for industry, all in the name of "jobs".
- Starvation.
- Politicians and presidents doing obviously illegal stuff and citizens unable to do anything about it.
- American military killing with abandon all over the world.
- Police brutality and systematic violations of our rights, with little to no accountability.
- Our standards for clean food being less than everyone elses.
- Religious supremacy being tolerated, even encouraged. (Fuck your moments of silence, fuck your thoughts and prayers, fuck your pledges of allegience too while we're at it)
- controlled media.
- Book banning.
- the "war" on drugs when other methods would have been much more effective.
- whistleblower protections dismantled.
- violence against protesters, and the existence of "protest zones" which disallows protests entirely in most areas.
- continual threats of violence and domestic terrorism by the political right, never with any accountability.
- oppression of anyone who says they are anti-fascist (antifa).
- a political system complteely captured by bribery and foreign interests, with ~1% correlation to what citizens want. There is no representation in "representitive democracy" here. Its all a big joke. We're barely even a "republic" anymore.
And its not all republicans doing it-- although much more them than the dems-- although the dems are sliding really far rightward pretty quickly and its hard to see how it ever will be allowed to go back left.
Its not OK and we need to nationalize healthcare now. But much of that above graph is also associated with the obesity epedemic and the nutritional collapse (or caloric inflation) of the western diet. Government definitely has a role in that, but its much trickier than obliterating the medical insurance industry (which of course is also tricky).
All but one Western countries are in those normal countries to the left of the graph.
Quick Google suggests healthcare costs for obese people are <50% higher than non-obese and the US has 15-30% more obesity than these countries. So maybe 15% at most of the 100% higher cost per capita of healthcare is obesity related. The killer for me for that hypothesis is that within the set of countries with normal healthcare costs, there's huge variation in obesity (10% in France to 30%in ireland) with limited variation in cost.
Maybe the life expectancy side does have more to do with obesity?
Freedom isn’t free 😤😤😤
When I was in grad school, I went to a conference in Portugal. One of the other American grad students slipped on a paving stone and bust his leg. It wasn't that bad, but he was freaking out because he had no idea how European insurance worked and he was afraid he'd be in serious debt. Everyone at the hospital thought that was hilarious. Why would getting hurt put you in debt? They patched him up for no charge. In theory he could have gone to some office and made a modest payment, but nobody was going to actually make him do that.
It's got to end soon, or we're well screwed.
My insurance payment + my jobs contribution (can't say whether or not they lie on the form about their share) is over a thousand per month. And I still have co-pays and shit that isn't covered. I've had a couple of X-rays and and a sling this year. I'm probably out another $2k on top of my insurance. It would be much cheaper for me to pay out of pocket and save the difference for a rainy day.
Fuck the entire insurance industry.
And the concept of tying it to employment is not only idiotic and nonsensical, but actually pretty devious.
I live in Sweden, had a surgery for a back problem. From first consultation to surgery 5 weeks. Total cost: $50, that includes surgery, prescribed meds, food while admitted.
May I ask what the money paid for exactly? Here in Spain it's only meds that we would pay for (and not even if you're low income and entitled to government money), everything else is 100 % free
The US Healthcare system is meant to police disability, because we live in a giant work camp. That's its whole function.
Accurate portrayal of Joe Lieberman in that pic. Didn’t feel bad when that dude died. The cherry on top would have been if he’d had tons of medical debt when he went, but I’m sure he still had million in the bank from all that lobby loot.
No copays is not necessarily true.
Back in Australia it was a flat $35 for a PCP visit. A $35 office visit copay with 100% coverage and no deductible is functionally the same.
Our healthcare here in the US is a brutal costly joke. It instantly disproves any claims that our leaders make to care about the welfare of US citizens.
TL;DR: AU isn’t a good model to base change off. Expensive and scammy.
Not sure what a PCP is, but before I left AU earlier this year, my GP visits were ~AU$100 with a $40 rebate. Private healthcare cannot cover the $60 gap by law, along with a host of other specialists and scans. It felt like a massive scam to have private health. Yes there are free clinics you can go to (“Bulk Billing”), but in my experience because they were always overworked and understaffed, the standard of care wasn’t as good. Plus it was hard to see the same doctor regularly, so you waste more of everyone’s time going over your medical history.
Compare that to Germany, I decided to go with public health here, which comes directly out of my paycheque. It’s expensive, but I don’t see that money and I can go to basically any (English speaking) doctor here, pay nothing for the appointment, and prescriptions are 5 or 10€ (only had one so far, can’t remember the exact cost). Standard of care feels much more in line with the private care of AU. I know there are some scans and blood tests I may need to pay for, but nothing feels scammy so far.
Japan is also 30% due at time of service, though prices are nothing like the US (that 30% also drops in retirement age). People can and often do get some kind of private insurance, usually bundled with their life insurance, to cover certain life-altering events. I imagine there's some sort of private health insurance like US folks would think of, but I don't know anyone who carries it. One can do certain procedures off insurance and pay (still cheaper than US prices) here as well if they want.
In most of the world it was decide that being healthy was a human right
Only in America has it been declared a luxury.
If you can't afford it, you shouldn't have it
Fuckingcapitalists
It's also a way to make sure people don't leave crappy jobs or, even worse, start their own businesses that might compete against the already established ones.
This could probably be paid in full by lowering military budget by a tiny fraction.
We would save about 45% of what we pay now. We could increase the military budget. Universal healthcare literally pays for itself.
The billionaires in the health industry don't see it that way and guess who gets to legally bribe our politicians to keep it that way.
What's worse...I can bet most people employee contribution to their healthcare is higher than 5% of their paycheck. It's obscene we don't have universal healthcare yet.
Not having to formulate all those packages with their arcane coverage percentages, exclusions and deductibles would eliminate a lot of cost, not to mention all the marketing the companies do to make their plans sound better than the others.
It's just another industry. It's only to make money for the people at the top.
everybody wants to be civil but we're literally in a self defense situation.
Who is paying 20% to just health care?
A little over 20% includes taxes as well out of my pay.
People who aren't FTEs. It's the trendy thing to do in tech, fire all your employees and hire them back as contractors. You save 20-50k per employee by doing that.
Covering my family at my last job was $1,200 a month. That was about 30% of my wage.
Holy shit. How big was your family…
I think mine is ~$800, and that’s pretty decent insurance.
I have really good insurance at my work, and the PPO plan is about 10% of my paycheck for my family. And that's with my work paying 2-3x that amount.
As usual with those sorts of memes, the numbers are completely wrong. European nations spend around 11-12% of GDP on healthcare vs about 17% for the US. So you'd likely pay significantly less (about 30% less) with a similar public healthcare system, but far more than this pic pretends.
Remember kids, don't believe everything you see on the internet.
US GDP is much higher than most (all?) European nations. California, on its own, is the fifth (at least the last time I looked) largest GDP in the world when compared to nations.
The US also has a massive population, which means a much larger insurance pool, which means the risk is spread out over a much larger swathe of people (and ethnicities, lifestyles, etc.).
So I'm not going to say this pic is accurate, as I have no actual numbers on this... But I also don't think it's fair to assume that it will cost the same % of GDP as nations that are a fraction of our size (and are often nearly homogeneous population-wise).
US GDP is much higher than most (all?) European nations.
And as you accurately pointed out, US population is also higher, and have different costs of living. Which is why we compare countries in % of GDP and not in raw dollars spent nationwide, which would make no sense at all.
The US also has a massive population, which means a much larger insurance pool, which means the risk is spread out over a much larger swathe of people (and ethnicities, lifestyles, etc.).
Doesn't make any difference when you go over a few million people (or possibly much less)
So I’m not going to say this pic is accurate, as I have no actual numbers on this
Well I do, and this pic is clearly bullshit.
Just because you like the message doesn't mean you aren't allowed to point out obvious lies.
Well yeah but percentage of GDP is just the total spent. The point is that the USA relies primarily on employers paying for the insurance (through a pay cut) whereas in the EU it is generally subsidised with taxes. Which, if you tax fairly, means that the cost of healthcare is better for the average worker (e.g more based on how much any individual earns)
Plus it also means that the government has an actual incentive to keep the insurance companies honest
The point is that the USA relies primarily on employers paying for the insurance (through a pay cut) whereas in the EU it is generally subsidised with taxes.
This is a huge misconception. In the EU it's also funded by the employers, the difference is that it's usually mandatory (a tax taken out of the paycheck at the employer level) and also typically goes into a governement-run insurance system (ie the British NHS or the French sécu).
Ultimately it's always people who pay for health care, because companies are just legal entities. The difference is how it's organized and how much it cost.
"30% less" 😂 US GDP (it said % of pay, but let's play your game) per capita is 1.5x or more European countries, so try at least 50% less. It's a meme, it's not meant to be accurate, but if you're going to be a pedant at least be right.
Not to mention the lower cost is like 3rd on the list of reasons why public health care is amazing. Why you our here shilling for big business pal?
It’s a meme, it’s not meant to be accurate
That's what every boomer on FB propagating fake news about immigrants eating pets also say. Just because it's a picture means outright lying is okay. (and if it was lying in the other political direction, you'd likely be the first calling bullshit)
Why you our here shilling for big business pal?
Ah yes because everyone who isn't into lying is "shilling for big business"? Life must be simple in your head. Maybe some people think the truth matters more then coddling their feeling?
Government can't manage anything. Look at social security, it's always on the verge of running out of money. Why would people think they can manage healthcare? Medicare and medicaid are terribly expensive parts of the annual budget, and they only cover some of the population.
That's not what Universal health care is. And you can thank Reagan and the GOP for SS running out of money because they fucking stole it. I'm guessing you voted for them on that platform.
Attributing the failures of social security to Reagan and the GOP shows how uninformed you are on the issue. Reagans actions were in response to social security ALREADY being almost out of money. His plan obviously didn't work. My point is that social security's failure was (and still is) inevitable since governments, as an organization, simply can't run programs like that on this scale due to: bureaucratic inefficiency, lack of knowledge (see central planning), political motivations outweighing the objectives of the program in decision making, lack of accountability, lack of flexibility and responsiveness to changes, and unstable funding.
I had national health insurance in Japan. They have plenty of problems, some of which will / do affect their insurance, but in general while I was there, it was great. Why? Because the government does NOT try to manage it. They just pay the bills. We chose our own doctors and our own dentists. We paid a small fee for each visit, and they sent the bill to the government. (Or, however it worked - i didn't look into all the details, just know that we didn't have to pay nearly as much as is typical in the USA.) Of course, they did take about 10% out of my paycheck each month, iirc.
Just saying that the British national system, which I hear is (poorly) managed by the government and has some serious problems, is not the only system we could use for inspiration.
Water systems in blue states seem to be doing quite well. Privatization is asking the fox to guard the henhouse, asking a profit-motivated organization to do anything but focus on doing the job in front of them.
You seem limited in imagination, knowledge, and understanding. Glad to not be your friend.
Man, you guys should really vote for a candidate who advocates for universal health care. Currently, the only candidate who is doing anything in that direction is Jill Stein. Vote Stein!
That'll just lose us more rights when Trump gets elected.
So no worries then lol, cuz he won't.
That's a very short term view to take. All buying into the "vote blue no matter who" stance does is show the dems they're accountable to no one but their corporate donors, since there's no line they can cross that can make you not vote for them (they're currently committing an actual honest to God genocide right now, and you're actually considering voting for them). What you end up with is a democratic party which moves ever further right every cycle. The border wall used to be abhorrent and immoral, now the dems are gleefully building it. Kids in cages at the border used to be terrible, and now there's more kids in cages than there were under Trump. We used to laugh and deride "drill baby drill", and now Harris is essentially a pro-fracking candidate (watch her recent town hall). This is not a recent phenomenon; you can trace this back to Bill Clinton at least.
Every cycle they get more and more right wing, and the cause is precisely people who only know voting against something rather than for something. Look at Stein's positions, and you'll agree with them. Take a long term stance for a change, try and make use of your rights, and try and vote for something rather than against. Otherwise you'll end up with even more of a one-party system than you already have.
For reference, in Belgium state mandated health care (RSZ) is about 40% of your income (1).
There is copay on things like glasses, hospitalization costs, ... With additional (optional) insurance for those.
I feel like there's a lot of misinformation spread around EU health insurance.
Readers added the following context:
Untrue.
It's 13%.
It covers both heath care and social care (old people's homes and help for elderly or disabled).
You're referring to
The employee's share of social security taxes is 13.07% of the total gross compensation, with no cap.
From source (1), I assume.
It's true that the other 27% is taken from your wages by your employer, before it reaches you. But what's the difference? Is it not still your take home pay that gets reduced by 40% for the purposes of health insurance?
Maybe I'm blind, but I don't see any mention of healthcare costs on the source you gave.
Per the OECD website, per capita healthcare spending in the US is the worst amongst the entire OECD, and Belgium is comparable to France and Sweden. Not the best, but far from the worst (and not accounting for better healthcare outcomes).
I don't have sources on hand, but the US in general rates the worst for healthcare outcomes too.
that's because they cite incorrect data.
"social security" is not health care fund; and 40% is employer and employee combined (employee only is ~ 13%) contribution. social security is pensions, survivor benefits, unemployment, sickness and maternity leave, etc.
employee share of contribution to public health insurance fund is (iirc) only 3.55%
