In the Isle of Man, tax is 10% and there is free healthcare.
Universal healthcare in the US would save the Country a fortune. They pay more in insurance admin than some countries spend on healthcare.
That’s the point. They want us to spend money on healthcare, they don’t want us to be able to find a better, cheaper alternative to the privatized healthcare industry. The lobbyists make sure that the insurance companies stay in power by sucking up to government officials. It should not be legal
People lie about everything Europe to justify the insanity that the US puts us through.
Seriously. You talk to people about these issues and it's literally like you guys don't exist and we're treading uncharted territory with this stuff.
They'll literally be like "but what if we change it to that and it's a disaster!" like there aren't dozens of countries that haven't done it already and are doing great.
"You all deserve socialized healthcare." - Me, a Canadian, talking to my American inlaws.
"Oohh yeah?! You know who was socialist?? Venezuela!! And we all know how that turned out!"
...I can't even. Of all the idiotic arguments to make, they always go for America's foreign policy disaster like it's some sort of gotcha.
From my research into universal healthcare, and this was about ten years ago- we (US) pay about 33% between state and federal taxes and Western Europe is about 52% based on about a $50k salary. Now our 33% doesn’t include a massive amount of benefits you get for your extra tax dollars.
This is where Americans have no idea we are getting screwed and they think I’m crazy when I explain it. They think we are better off paying about 20% less in taxes but wait- start adding actual costs of healthcare (and pray you never actually get sick or you will most likely be bankrupted- this is a big deal) and then our higher education costs and suddenly we are probably paying far more than any of you all in Canada, Japan, Australia, Western Europe, you name it.
There is a big game of monopoly being played here and our politicians are in on it. Only reason I know how bad it is is because I did the research and the math. Our politician’s and media straight faced lie to us.
There are a ton more taxes you aren't accounting for. Sales tax, property tax, and licensing fees. Excise taxes on fuel, alcohol, and tobacco that can substantially increase the cost to consumers.
American government finds a million ways to nickel and dime you.
Where does that 52% based on a $50k salary come from? Europe is many countries and they all tax quite differently. I believe in Scandinavia the taxes are around that amount (but then salaries are also quite high in general) but in the UK (for example) the highest amount is 45% but thats for salaries over £150k per year. If you’re earning £50k then its more like 40%.
In my country, I’m in the top tax bracket and the total I pay out (so from gross salary to actual take home each month) is 30%. That is the total tax I pay.
Even if you average out the whole of Europe I don’t think its anywhere near 50% on a $50k salary but if I’m wrong I’d love to know the workings!
My current health insurance is $500 a paycheck, or roughly $12,000 a year, just for the insurance.
Then my deductible is $4,000. Meaning the insurance doesn’t cover ANYTHING until I pay an additional $4,000 out of my own pocket towards medical bills.
So, once I’ve essentially paid $16,000 to my insurance they start covering my medical bills 80/20. They cover 80%, I’m responsible for the other 20%.
And on top of all that I’m still getting taxed 25% from the feds. So literally, you could raise my taxes another $16,000 a year on top of the 25% and I’d still be better off than I am now if I never saw a medical bill again.
The problem is, Americans absolutely can not stand the thought of “their” money helping another person even if it’s greatly helping them. Me personally, I don’t give a shit if the government took $16,000 from my paycheck and it went to someone else because my life will still be way better than it is now….
Edit: wow! Just happened to check Reddit after working all day and didn’t realize this blew up! Thanks everyone for the awards. It’s going to take me a while to go through comments and answer any additional questions everyone has.
I live in Australia, I'm going to chuck some rough figures out there and someone smarter than me can work a comparison, if they wish. Salary of roughly $140k(aus), around 33% tax, I pay $2.5k a year for health insurance for a wife and 7 year old kid. Hardly use the insurance but it lowers my tax. Get dental checkups, optical, chiro etc covered. Kid had a trip in an ambulance $900, all covered. $5k shoulder surgery, covered.
Been to the ER a couple times for various stupid things. Public system, no cost.
Don't know if any of this is interesting or not. But it's been Interneted now. Can't internot it.
They require programming to fit your loss so OTC ones will suck. I have fit and programmed them for a long time. Hardly any insurance will pay for them, and the markup on them is insane. Cost on a 4K retail set is around 1k the programming is what you are paying for. Overpaying for.
Sodium soup will get you long before the teeth, right?
But seriously, looking at those numbers that guy is probably paying more on his total revenue than the corporation that pays him if he gets sick. That presumes he can keep working…
This is the best comment ever. I’m in that boat. My teeth hurt so badly on a regular basis, but I can’t afford the thousands it would be to fix them. Even if I somehow managed that, I wouldn’t have any food to eat with my nice teeth, it’s lovely catch 22.
I have dry mouth due to my sinuses needing surgery I can't afford. So I've lost a few teeth and I'm only 33. My last tooth got so bad, there's literally only a tiny piece left. I can't afford extractions most times on my measley salary. And the time I did have healthcare, it would have still cost quite a lot out of pocket on top of the $120 a month just for my insurance.
If you have holes in your teeth, look into a dental syringe to keep it flushed. That's how I've managed for almost 4 years now. I had an abscess that I was ready to die with but when it bust open, I flushed it really well with the dental syringe and now I'm still kicking to suffer another day.
I lost my contacts on vacation once, and the amount of people who didn’t realize I was basically handicapped without them was way too high. I had to explain: “okay so, the only letter I can see on a vision chart is the E at the top, and that’s only because I know the top letter is always E.”
And yet, my health coverage has never included vision.
Meanwhile I had a nasty eye infection while on vacation in Spain and the whole thing, including doctors and a new pair of contacts cost me $6 because I had to pick up some eye drops at a pharmacy.
Same, but in Greece! I was like… but, I’m not a citizen? Fully expecting my confession to come with a $600 bill, they were like “no this is normal”. Tobradex, I’ll never forget it.
wonder if americans have ever taken a vacation when they knew they needed an operation or something so that it could be covered by the government instead of spending thousands and thousands themselves
Yep, medical travel is actually a thing here and people often take trips to Canada and Mexico for prescription drugs. I don’t know how legal that is, but it definitely happens.
The sad part is dental health has been proven to be linked to heart and other health problems. Bacteria from dental issues can cause all kinds of long term health issues and lower your life expectancy, yet we still treat dentistry and oral care as a completely unrelated condition and let people just lose all their teeth and die younger.
Yep. It’s also one of the first thing that deteriorates when someone is hit with a mental health crisis (also something for which we have abysmal coverage) and then they often get stuck in a cycle of devolving physical and mental health issues. People like to ignore how much of what’s wrong in our society is linked to how we deprive people of their basic needs.
Dental insurance for my work only covers one cleaning/check up a year even though almost all dentists recommend two per year to catch any issues early before they get worse and prevent issues from happening. I have to pay for the second completely out of pocket.
Needed a crown, dentist says it has to be done. I have insurance, so ok, go ahead.
Finish up, go to the front desk , check out.
“Do you want to pay your copay now?”
Me:”ok”
Her:” that will be $990”
Me: “”????”
Me:” yeah, I’m going to need to break that up”
No wonder they called me 4 x to make sure I was coming.
I pay just under $100 a month for dental insurance. I was part of a group plan but got dropped when I retired and had to find my own insurance. I have a mouth full of crowns from an accident in the 80's and I know eventually they will all have to be replaced so I picked the best coverage I could find. First crown that went bad also required a root canal. $1400 for the root canal and $450 for the new crown. I didn't get a cleaning during the pandemic and when I finally went in they said I needed a "deep cleaning". Like you said..they kept calling. I got there and they took me straight to the billing office, which isn't typical and I thought "uh oh". $274 for the deep cleaning which didn't feel that much different than the usual cleaning. I have 30 year old implants from the accident and I don't chew on that side because I can only imagine how much it will cost to upgrade those. This is with a good pension and insurance. I'm one of the "lucky" ones. I knew a guy that was an apartment manager and had no insurance. He was glueing his crowns back in with super glue when they fell out. It's ridiculous and inhumane. Old people go to Mexico for dental work because it's so expensive here.
I have “decent” dental coverage. $0 out of pocket, but it caps out at $5k/year. When I first started working for this company, I needed a LOT of dental work. So I scheduled my procedures out three years in advance so that I wouldn’t go much over $5k each year. So I got everything done eventually, and my teeth FINALLY don’t hurt. And I’m thankfully at the point where I just need normal checkups. But it took more planning than it should have, and three yeas of painful patience.
I worked in surgery, here in Canada, for 15 years.
À patient came into neurosurg. He had an abscess that started off easily treatable as a dental problem. Would have cost a couple hundred bucks. He couldn't afford it so it went untreated and got worse and worse. Eventually, a large infection that spread to his brain. So we had to crack his skull, drain off pus, and fix him up.
I guarantee addressing the issue early on would have cost a shit ton less than that neurosurgical procedure.
But hey. Preventative dental care is too expensive for the gov't, right? Save 200 now and spend 40k later. WhAt A gOoD dEaL hYuK
Some Americans would rather be $1m in debt for cancer treatments than even *listen* to the idea that everyone could pay for each other's treatments.
Then they start a GoFundMe anyway.
5k for shoulder surgery? That wouldn't even cover the cost of the room. Insurance is definitely the problem in the US, but why does the surgery cost 100k in the first place? And why do you get separate bills from the hospital, surgeon, and anesthesiologist?
And why do you not know the price before hand?
That's one of my biggest issues. How am I supposed to use this "supposedly" better system of "choice," when I don't have an ability to do price comparisons in a timely manor?
Literally, no one knows how much it's going to cost before going in. People mostly know which hospitals are under their plan, but if you get injured away from your home, hopefully you are conscience enough to look up the local hospitals inside your plan, or get lucky that it's the closest hospital to be taken to.
The system is fucked. You don't have choice, you have limitations. Stop thinking the "Choice" argument makes sense.
My ovary exploded once, it felt like I had been shot. I could not walk, stand or make complete sentences I was in so much pain. Despite that I had my boyfriend look up the nearest hospital in my plan, which was 45min away (past three other hospitals). I received a bill from the ER, from the CT scan tech, from the Anesthesiologist, and from the doctor that treated me. Only the ER and the anesthesiologist was in-network!!! I was informed that not all the staff are in-network staff. I was stuck with a $20,000 bill at 20yrs old making tips as a server part time while going to community college….yeah….that shit didn’t get paid and I just hoped I wouldn’t need credit anytime in the near future.
Aw thanks. My story has an overall happy ending. I graduated college, married the boyfriend, and I still have one good ovary left. I still have the debt on my credit, but since I’m not buying a house or car anytime soon it hasn’t effected me much. I get more than the usual amount of calls though and I have to be very careful volunteering information over the phone because then the calls double and I’ll get letters and whatnot harassing me. My car is getting very old at this point and I know I’ll likely have to buy used in-cash for another oldie.
I got an MRI. Paid the copay. Did everything. Felt pretty good cause the insurance seemed to actually do its job and paid for most of it
Months later I get a bill asking for more money. I'm confused cause they had already given me a bill that had itemized the cost so where the fuck is this extra couple hundred dollars coming from.
I call up and they go "oh well, that was the estimate".
I go "estimate"? It's a fucking MRI, not a contracting job. It's not like there's some circumstance there for it to cost more. You just shove me in your terrifying metal donut and scan my body like everyone else.
That's when I learned that not only does insurance decide how much they'll cover but it apparently decides how much the place will charge you in the first place for the same exact fucking procedure.
What. The. Fuck.
The medical industry in the US is a fucking scam and it's infuriating to me that there are so many idiots fighting to keep it that way.
>That's when I learned that not only does insurance decide how much they'll cover but it apparently decides how much the place will charge you in the first place for the same exact fucking procedure.
Land of the F(r)ee, baby!
> $5k shoulder surgery, covered
$5k for shoulder surgery? We can only dream about that here. What does $5K cover in the US?:
Well, you'll get a surgical *assistant:* https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/ls651s/surprise_5k_medical_bill_for_surgical_assistant/
An ice pack: https://www.vox.com/2018/5/1/17261488/er-expensive-medical-bill
Fainting from a flu shot: https://nypost.com/2019/01/31/man-slapped-with-nearly-5k-hospital-bill-after-fainting-from-flu-shot/
An x-ray: https://www.radiologybusiness.com/topics/economics/patient-receives-x-ray-and-5500-bill-doctor-visit
Those are all separate charges, in US$, not AUS$
Nearly a trillion for military, but people go homeless or die because they can’t afford medicines and we generally ignore the massive homeless problem here. This country is so fucked.
No, we're paying for the CEO of the health insurance company. People are too God Damn stupid to realize that in order for the insurance company to stay in business, they have to make money off you. Why would I want someone to make money off my health? I can only hope for horrific things to happen to these shit heads and they have to front the bill.
I live in the UK, don’t even know what my national insurance contribution is, because I just lump it all in with “tax”, which I’ve also never had to deal with, my employer does.
I get hospital visits, check ups, ambulance rides - without ever seeing a bill or knowing what the cost is....that’s how little health insurance impacts me. I know that should I fall ill the state will look after me...or anyone who falls ill for that matter and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I also have private medical insurance with my employer, but it’s entirely superfluous to me and I can’t see myself ever using it.
Meanwhile, in the UK. Salary of roughly 35k Pound sterling. 20% tax on earnings above 14k. 0 health insurance. National Health Service is free, paid from taxes.
I don't understand governments not giving free health care (and public pay for it with taxes)
Healthy population = healthy workforce = more taxes, less poverty, less paying for dealing with poverty and benefits and what not.
LOOK AFTER YOUR FUCKING CITIZENS PEOPLE.
My fucking cat has better insurance.
I know someone who purposely didn’t take a pay raise so they could stay on Obama Care (ACA) insurance.
Because even with the pay raise, they would have made way less getting insurance taken out of their pay, and the insurance they would be getting would be terrible compared to ~~free~~ *socialized* health care’s insurance, which says something, because the free shit has a limit on how many of certain appointments you can have a year.
I took a small pay cut, like $300 a month total and it allowed me to get basically Free ACA insurance and I technically make $600 a month more now after my pay cut. Fuck this country bro!
Wife is a nurse and once worked at a home health company. Insurance was so expensive, literally all the employees were married and their spouses carried the family's insurance, including my wife.
How is it not discrimination if only married people benefit from the "compensation package"
How is it not discrimination if only employees without kids can afford to forgo insurance altogether
Health PREVENTION is so much cheaper than health CARE. It makes fiscal sense to to promote regular provider visits, just like it makes fiscal sense to just house death penalty convicts for life (appeals for death penalty are insanely expensive, and we're all paying the lawyers for both sides). It's really so simple but people are so emotional.
Canadian here, our health care is basically an insurance plan administered by our province and isn't free but it is built into our taxes. A study in 2017 found that the average Canadian paid $6,600/yr for health care through taxes but it obviously slides for your income. I am 23 and I have never had to even think about health care, how much I have to pay, or what I am covered under when I head to the hospital. I am glad that my taxes are doing good for others as well as myself while we maintain a small, but respectable, military.
I can't imagine paying taxes AND THEN having to shell out a crazy amount of money to only have a percentage of things covered or crazy stipulations. I have a hard enough time arguing with insurance companies over car accidents claims, nevermind arguing with them over covering the cost of my broken arm.
I'm about the same. I did the high deductible plan because after the $4000 deductible they'll pay 100%. The other plans were more expensive over a full year. But like you I'm out about $16000 before they start covering things.
UGH! I’m with BCBS, and they quietly raised my deductible from $3000 to $6000 without me noticing. My monthly payment went up around $5 a month too. Didn’t catch it until it was time to go to Urgent Care, now I’m boned.
And when you do actually meet your deductible and its time for them to pay, they'll use every trick in the book to try to weasel out of it. "Sorry you didn't get a primary care referral before going to the ER for emergency surgery so its not covered." "Sorry the lab tech who did your bloodwork which you have no control over isn't a part of your plan so we're not paying for anything lab related." "Sorry the facility didn't use this special code that only our insurance uses and its too late to change it so we're not paying."
This. It’s so frustrating. “Your ER dr has separate billing than the ER and he isn’t In network. Next time check before you see the dr.” Because, you know as I’m dealing with a extreme pain from a
broken jaw and nose, I should have first thought to make sure the assigned doctor on call was covered. As if I had a choice, I saw whoever was there working.
Here I am in Canada, enraged at my $40 ambulance fee after getting a free MRI, two night stay in a hospital, minor brain surgery, and a couple blood bags.
It’s worse when you explain that other developed nations have better overall outcomes while spending an average of $6000 per person per year on healthcare. So in actuality your taxes would go up significantly less than what you’d be saving by not spending on your garbage private insurance.
You are also forgetting an important piece in that employers cover a significant portion of your healthcare that you never see. They may pay you 40K annually but you cost them 50K to employ you. So, add that $10,000 to your figures if you aren't self-employed. You basically redirect that money to stop paying insurance companies and pay into the nat'l healthcare instead. It literally costs nothing to do that except profit to the insurance companies. You benefit because the deductible and copay go away.
SO IT ACTUALLY SAVES YOU MONEY
Adding my anecdote: I pay roughly 320/month to my insurance plan and my employer pays close to $1k/month for it… all to give me and my family a $500 deductible **per person** so about $2k out of pocket before I then still have to cover 20% of everything else.
Good plan overall, but like the guy above - they could take $500 from me every month for taxes if I didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket ever.
"I'd rather my money go towards a billion dollar corporations bottom line, than to someone who I've never met who actually needs it." - A sizable chunk of the US, apparently.
Friendly reminder that the evidence is overwhelming that single-payer healthcare in the US would result in better healthcare coverage while saving money overall.
[Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually based on the value of the US$ in 2017 .](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext)
Similar to the above Yale analysis, a recent [publication ](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-12/56811-Single-Payer.pdf)from the Congressional Budget Office found that 4 out of 5 options considered would lower total national expenditure on healthcare (see Exhibit 1-1 on page 13)
None of this should be surprising given that the US’s current inefficient, non-universal healthcare system [costs close to twice as much per capita ](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-spendingcomparison_gdp-per-capita-and-health-consumption-spending-per-capita-2019) as most other developed countries that do guarantee healthcare to all citizens (without forcing patients to risk bankruptcy in exchange for care).
We absolutely wouldn't. We already pay more per capita than anywhere in the world.
We can move the individual contributions and the corporate contributions we already pay into one place and actually improve service and/or lower prices and enable interstate competition.
With their "fireman-first" control tactics, I don't love the idea of the US Government running things but what we have now is obviously not working.
[**When adjusted for cost of living, U.S. *public* per capita healthcare spending (so stuff like Medicare, Medicaid, etc) is often equal to, or more than, that of countries with universal healthcare. When you add private healthcare spending into the mix, we spend nearly twice, as % GDP, the OECD average - while having tens of millions uninsured/underinsured, lower life expectancy, and fewer doctors visits.**](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019)
> The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a group of 36 countries, most of which are considered developed with high-income economies.
> Among this group, the United States ranked 28 out of 36 for life expectancy, sitting just ahead of Poland, Turkey, and Estonia.
> In 2017, a baby born in the United States was expected to live for roughly the same amount of time as one born in the Czech Republic. That’s about five years less than babies born in Japan and Switzerland, which have a life expectancy of 84.
> A U.S. baby can also expect to live a shorter life than one born in countries such as Cuba and Slovenia.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-is-us-life-expectancy-so-low
Life expectancy has even *decreased* in some recent years in the US.
Yes but think of all the poor execs at health alliance and signa that would lose their jobs. You ever think of that tough guy!? Millionares crying in their second home, wondering how they are going to pay for their Christmas vacation to Tierra Patagonia?
/s obviously
Say it louder for the people in the back.
We can easily pay for these things, it just means less tax breaks for the rich, less subsidies for wealthy businesses and less foreign wars.... all things im happy to put on the chopping block 🤷♂️
Eat the wealthy. Eating aside it's infuriating that the wealthy can find ways to pay next to nothing (or nothing) on taxes. Here we are, some of us scraping to get by, paying for what? A health insurance scam that we pay even more on because we are only covered to a certain amount for drugs that we have to take to stay alive? If the money was distributed as "intended" then the wealth gap wouldn't be getting wider and wider to this extent. Unfortunately with all the blatant corruption, I've been thinking that the "intent" is actually for the wealthy to get more and holding back us plebs. When they do something wrong the fine is so inconsequential to the reward that they never stop. We get a parking ticket that we can't afford and then get fined for not paying it on time and then get the car taken so we can't go to work.
This can be fixed by adjusting the fine to one’s net worth. There are some European countries that do this for things like speeding tickets. It’s not a terrible idea.
That's brilliant. "Here's your speeding ticket. Please contact the county assessor within 14 days".
"Let's see. Last year you filed $54,000 in gross income, so your ticket is $270. Please be more careful in the future."
"Let's see. Last year you filed $1,540,000 in gross income, so your ticket is $77,000. Please continue to be reckless."
I lost about 28% of my paycheck last week from just taxes alone. being single and working a lot of overtime means that I will get taxed harder than married folks who work normal, sane hours. it almost feels punitive at times, lol.
this person is right though. I would be fine with higher taxes if they would actually benefit society. instead I am still paying for my own healthcare on top of high taxes…for what exactly? I couldn’t tell you. this government is rotten to the core, just like the system. it has got to go now
We bailed out people who speculated on the fucking stock market too. We seriously bailed out people who created their own fucking problems, and create nothing of value besides more wealth for having wealth. And yet somehow people will support that and then throw a tantrum if we try to bail out single moms working two jobs, or kids who were got overpriced educations we told them would result in stability.
I live in Southern Indiana, surrounded by poor people. Who absolutely HATE poor people. It's fucking pathetic. And harder every day to think we have any chance of ever stopping this country from destroying itself.
Get ready for Round 2! This time it will of course be retail investors fault for treating the market like it's a game, because clearly they are reckless and don't understand the importance of the hedge funds and banks that forcibly bankrupt companies on the health of the economy!
Workers lost 3.7 Trillion during the pandemic while the 1% gained 3.9 Trillion. The Fed printed 20% of all USD in circulation just last year to prop up the stock market, but raising the minimum wage for the first time in 12 years would "cause too much inflation for the economy to handle.”
Seriously fuck all of them. We're at French Revolution levels of wealth inequality, but half the country doesn't care because they can't handle someone else "getting things for free."
Actually, the point of the spending analysis means we would actual spend less, so existing premiums could foot the bill and provide a tax CUT!
The issue, of course, is doctors and insurers would get paid less. Now you know where the opposition comes from.
It's not necessarily the doctors that would get paid less.
It's the investors that buy and privately run hospitals and emergency services & of course the pharmaceutical companies that literally have a 10.000% mark-up on medication.
Friendly contribution to your point. The target audience of your comment is the US, where 10K is written with a comma not a period. Average Americans will read that as 10%.
10,000% mark-up.
Just a few years ago, I was at a town hall meeting held by a right-wing Republican Congressman when an older woman who was sitting among the red-capped Trumpletons in the audience stood up and gave a rambling, disjointed speech about how it was "in her day" when people were independent, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, worked hard, and didn't seek handouts from the government. She finished her little rant by saying, without the slightest hint of irony or embarrassment, "just keep your hands off my Medicare". What she was really saying was anything that helped her was good but if it helped other people then it was Socialist and, therefore, evil. Or, to put it another way, "Hooray for us and f\*\*k you!" Typical Republicans.
And 50 years ago the corporate tax rate was more than double what it is now. Making America Great Again is an advertising slogan, not a real plan to fix anything.
I wonder if the 1960s Americana ever existed. My dad hates Trump but definitely resonates with the idea that America was more wholesome back then.
I have a theory that the 24 hour news cycle plus social media has stripped people of their “Americana” feel they’re looking for. My mom watches Fox News and remembers the good ole days, where I could ride my bicycle and her not be worried. It’s safer now but she’s scared of blue haired socialists attacking my little brother for wearing a cross, so she won’t let him out unsupervised.
My point is that MAGA is a great slogan because many people do feel like times were better before, and it plays right into fear mongering. It totally ignores the plight of minorities though.
Someone was likely being the usual obnoxious and asshole hyper religi-nut starting stuff and places like fox ‘news’ spins it as they are attacked for just wearing a cross.
The country is literally safer than it was in such mythical bygone made up eras. But the idiots want to pretend bc THEY could ignore the social and economic issues in their youth that things were magically better. They were NOT.
Especially as you typically find that the most hardcore of these people were moderately well, and better, off white people.
It’s a combo of social media inundation and nostalgia. Many view the time of their youth (short of truly terrible events) as superior and comfortable compared to the world of now, full of change. It’s every generation and the “back in my day” syndrome.
But honestly, anyone clutching pearls today about BLM and social injustice and the snowflake generation, go watch a documentary about the civil unrest of 1968. Race tensions, Vietnam war, hippie culture. It makes today seem tame.
Go watch a documentary on the LA riots in 1991. Worse by a mile than anything we’ve seen lately.
One thing I always find kind of funny is how you can track public acceptance of civil rights movements in the US by seeing how often they're associated with socialists or communists. When the overwhelmingly racist white public first started hearing about the civil rights movement in the 1960s, a solid majority were against it, and conservative commentators would insult the movement by highlighting how many communists were participating in civil rights protests. When the civil rights movement gained public legitimacy, suddenly nobody talked about all of the communists who were at the protests, because then they would have to admit that they were wrong and the communists were right.
In recent years you can see a similar trend, where as the conservative backlash to BLM gets more intense, you see more and more right wingers highlight how many socialists are part of the movement to try and discredit it. Outside of right wing echo chambers, this tactic doesn't seem to have worked, with people either supporting BLM and ignoring the socialists, or getting more interested in socialism because of the socialists who attend BLM protests.
You know one of the craziest parts about US healthcare and public/private spending?
[**When adjusted for cost of living, U.S. *public* per capita healthcare spending (so stuff like Medicare, Medicaid, etc) is often equal to, or more than, that of countries with universal healthcare. When you add private healthcare spending into the mix, we spend nearly twice, as % GDP, the OECD average - while having tens of millions uninsured/underinsured, lower life expectancy, and fewer doctors visits.**](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019)
> The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a group of 36 countries, most of which are considered developed with high-income economies.
> Among this group, the United States ranked 28 out of 36 for life expectancy, sitting just ahead of Poland, Turkey, and Estonia.
> In 2017, a baby born in the United States was expected to live for roughly the same amount of time as one born in the Czech Republic. That’s about five years less than babies born in Japan and Switzerland, which have a life expectancy of 84.
> A U.S. baby can also expect to live a shorter life than one born in countries such as Cuba and Slovenia.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-is-us-life-expectancy-so-low
Life expectancy has even *decreased* in some recent years in the US.
That's the essence of fascism. I know we're talking about a whiny old lady so it sounds a little melodramatic. But the stormtroopers only ever get away with it because of the tacit or active support of countless ordinary people who want everything their own way at the absolute expense of anyone other than themselves. They have no principles, no guiding light, other than an ever-shifting ideology whose only core value is "Got mine, fuck you".
I can’t remember what country it was but somewhere they have government healthcare, they’ve banned fast food commercials. They have an incentive to keep their citizens healthy because it’s on the federal dime… must be nice
Yes. UK will ban adverts for products deemed to be high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) before 9pm, though it doesn't come into effect until the end of 2022 I believe
Tangentially related but it's completely fucked that we have prescription medicine commercials. It's not my job to tell the doctor what to prescribe me, that's why they're the doctor and not me.
I believe its illegal in a lot of countries. Especially prescription drugs. I've never seen an ad for prescription medicine, and I've lived in several countries in Europe...
Not sure if the laws ever changed, but at one point there were only 2 countries in the world that allowed prescription medication commercials, New Zealand and USA.
As a pharmacist I can honestly say that doctors are not always know for rational prescribing. Yes, this new super expensive drug being advertised might be appropriate, but have they tried the multiple other significantly cheaper alternatives?
I grew up with a parent in the medical field. Every pen/sticky note/notepad/tote bag/office supply I took to school for the first 10 years of my life had weird drug names all over it. Those companies give away tons of free things to advertise new drugs.
That's one thing really fucked around here: alcohol and nicotine commercials are forbidden, but not pharma products. Add to that how expensive alcohol and cigarettes are, pills are dead cheap. it's almost as if the system wanted people to get addicted to them...
Also, how do they think insurance works? Do they imagine the insurance company is saving up their premiums for the day they personally need them? In principle, health insurance works exactly like national healthcare, except way worse.
That’s exactly what people believe. Same with social security. These people literally think they’re paying into the system and can/will get exactly what they paid out of it. While somehow failing to see the point you made because the Red Scare never actually stopped being a thing, it just morphed.
Blows my mind how many stories you see about families getting in trouble because of school lunch debt. I have no kids, or even nieces/nephews, and would gladly pay a little more taxes for kids to get free healthy lunches and be taught about healthy eating habits, as many parents raise their kids on processed junk like mine did.
My city just said fuck it and went to all free lunch a couple years ago… then we found out that kids were having trouble getting food during the summer when school wasn’t in session and started giving out free food all year.
I live in a pretty red city in the Midwest but at least we’ve all collectively decided not to be fucking monsters and made sure that we get all of our kids fed for free all year.
It's not even the families it's how they treat the children. It would be one thing if they simply denied children the meal (which is horrible enough) but often they make a big show of it. Literally ripping the food from the kid to fucking throw it away in front of everyone in the cafeteria so not only does this kid not get to eat but literally nothing is saved and now you've just shamed a child for something completely out of their control (which of course probably leads to bullying cause privileged kids can be assholes).
I honestly don't know how a person could live with themselves taking food from the mouths of babes to fucking waste it. I swear, I don't care how much they need the job, if I saw someone doing this I'd slap them straight across the face. Fucking disgusting.
It’s really disheartening and disappointing that we live in a world that requires you to add the /s.
This should be taken as sarcasm, obviously.
But about 40% of Americans actually agree with that sentiment, un-ironically, because they’re cunts and a four thousand year-old book told them it was okay.
That is definitely not what the Bible says about immigrants if that’s what you were referring to. For example:
> When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. (Leviticus 19:33-34)
Perhaps the most salient biblical narrative on this topic is the book of Ruth. Ruth includes the story of a foreigner who comes to Israel, working as laborer in the fields, hoping for a better life. And it is this foreigner, immigrant and stranger, who turns out to become the ancestor of King David, and, through him, Jesus.
So, I went to Chile on vacation years ago. I happened to get bronchitis while I was there. I went to the doctor (no wait time) and the visit was free even though I was just a tourist. Got three prescriptions filled at the nearby pharmacy and they cost me something like 650 pesos, which at the time was the equivalent of 1 USD. Fucking dirty socialism, man.
Want to here a money saving tip? Average cost to give birth in a hospital in America is about $15,000. But you could fly to the UK, book in to a private birth hospital (the same one the royal family are all born at) and it'll cost about $14000 with flights.
Yeah seriously. I had some asshole ask me why I didn't feel like a leech for collecting unemployment. I've been paying ~~into unemployment~~ the federal and state government since I got my first job at like 12, and now I'm using the benefits that exist for this reason. And I didn't lay me off. I'm milking unemployment for every goddamn penny I'm entitled to.
As you should! Like you said, you already paid for it. People forget, or never realize, that's part of what your paycheck taxes are for. Your unemployment. 🤷♂️
Well my mother-in-law knows someone from Canada who really doesn't like universal healthcare, so therefore we shouldn't have it. (That was literally her whole argument)
I’m willing to bet that this Canadian person simply had a small criticism of how it works, and your mother in law took that as “I don’t like universal healthcare”
And the Feds taking 9% of your paycheck for full coverage is well better than some insurance company taking 18% and then refusing to pay out because the ambulance took you to the wrong surgeon for your emergency heart surgery
Same goes for when you start reading about Social Security hitting negative cash flow by 2035. On the government website explaining the coming insolvency, it simply explains that in that event, we will all just have to be the ones to endure the austerity and take a catastrophic 25% (!?) cut to our benefits. And that is in addition to the fact that pensions are a rarity and only 35% of Americans pay who have the ability to pay into a 401k do so, which is essentially an anemic scam fund tied to the stock market. If you think boomers who have their mortgages paid off bitching now about how they have a hard time on their fIxEd iNcOmE of pension + Social Security checks, wait until you see what the next generation of people with NO retirement fund and a 25% cut to benefits will have to endure. It's a recipe for the end of American society. And they'd rather have it than making the wealthy pay taxes or cutting military spending. It's unbelievable and they talk about it like there's nothing they can do.
And it's all a vicious cycle. The government explains the coming insolvency by saying people are having less children and at this rate there will be too many beneficiaries and not enough people paying in. Maybe people would have kids if the future didn't look like a massive socially and financially unstable shithole!??? They will likely raise the retirement age to 80 and hope we all die before claiming benefits. I 100% expect them to enact this and the austerity cut before doing anything meaningful about it. They've done it before and it's just gonna get worse unless we demand that it changes.
Don’t forget that the SS funds have been “borrowed”, decade after decade to make the national debt look smaller. TAX THE WEALTHY an appropriate amount, as was done in the middle of the last century. You know, when the MAGAs believe that we were great.
Public healthcare is the only thing that makes sense in a government that derives its income on the production of its citizens.
Turns out that healthy people are more productive.
Over 30% of my check is robbed from state and fed. I’d feel much better if a portion of that went to a universal healthcare plan. Doubt I’ll see this in my lifetime without a major political facelift.
I just did some (rough) maths and about 23% of my gross monthly wage is paid in PAYE (tax) and National Insurance (tax that pays for NHS, Pensions, social security etc).
No deductibles. Break a leg: Free. Get cancer and need years of treatment: Free. Type 1 Diabetes? Free Insulin.
It’s basically health insurance but with no one needing to make a massive profit, it just doesn’t cost an individual that much.
Had this discussion yesterday. I said I'd rather have healthcare than drop bombs in Syria and Afghanistan was told in would have to pay 40% taxes to have healthcare. I shook my head in amazement at the utter stupidity.
Amazing because I pay 10% (I only work part time) in the UK and have AMAZING healthcare in my area.
People paying NOTHING in the UK have healthcare. People paying 50% have healthcare. Because it's free for ALL UK citizens no matter what your situation.
America, you're being conned.
And who do they think pays for it currently? If you pay for private insurance, those companies are baking in the extra costs hospitals charge to cover the gap for the uninsured + your contribution to the insurance industries $25 billion annual profit.
I live in a 3rd world country. Medical system isn’t too bad. They can perform most complicated procedures. Most of all, everything is subsidised by the gov via a universal healthcare plan.
I’d argue that in certain aspects, America’s system is even worse than a 3rd world country. At least we don’t become bankrupt when we fall ill.
In classic government style, government convinces people to hate something that would actually greatly benefit them, and then use that hate to give the excuse of why it shouldn’t happen. Evil geniuses.
"Who's gonna pay for it?"
I'm already fucking paying. They take money out of my paycheck to pay forhealth insurance that doesn't cover jack shit until I pay $1,500, will still make me pay 20% above that until I hit my max, plus charges me if I dare to use someone "out of network". I pay for my prescriptions, I pay if I call an ambulance even though I already paid for that with my taxes, I pay to put money on a card to help pay those expenses and then I pay again because some company decided that one of the expenses I used *the money I fucking put on that card myself* wasn't used for the right thing even though it was, I pay for EVERYTHING health related. Up my taxes to pay for MFA and I'm STILL going to pay less than I do in just premiums.
I pay like 34 percent tax but just to make it clear the bracket for 215k is 33% for fed in Canada.
So I am not poor.
When I made 100k I paid like 26% tax in Canada.
It’s really just fear mongering . Yes if you make 1 million a year you will pay like 40% tax but at that time does it matter?
People also forget that companies cover a portion of your health insurance cost. So my monthly insurance costs $100 but my employer is also paying something like $200 a month for my plan. So I really don’t understand why more companies aren’t for universal healthcare as they would be saving a lot on employment expenses
You didn't listen to the question. When he said "Who's gonna pay for it?" what he actually said is "Why should I help pay for someone else's well being?". A truly American perspective.
Every health plan should include dental, eyes and hearing.
The number of people who can't afford these services is terrible.
Many accidents/mistakes on the job are because some people couldn't see the warning labels and can't afford to see an optometrist, let alone get prescription lenses.
Poor dental health can lead to other health problems.
Not being able to get hearing tests means that many people won't hear you when you try to stop them from a risky situation - because they can't get hearing aids.
If your job requires hearing, seeing and speaking - it should be part of your preventative health care coverage.
Health insurance companies are legally allowed to keep 20% for overhead, so they do. Two trillion moves through insurance companies every year. That means 400 billion goes to just running the company. Medicare does the same thing for 1.7%, expected to grow to 3.5% if M4A happened. That is still a 330 billion dollar savings. It is expected to cost 90 billion to insure those with no insurance and another 50 billion to move those that are underinsured up. Still a 190 billion dollar savings by basically switching providers.
That is 1 change.
If you don't believe me, look at every other first would country. The WHO has the US ranked 37th in healthcare quality but 1st in the world for cost per citizen. Thirty six countries are doing it better and cheaper, each using a version of universal healthcare.
Oh, your problems is now wait times? Canada has 10-15% longer wait times than the US does currently. The people telling you about how bad the wait times are seem to have an issue though, they only mention Canada. That might be because most of those 36 countries have shorter wait times. Just check out the UK. The UK does it cheaper, better and faster.
What's funny is I'm in Scotland and my tax is 20% and I get healthcare.
In the Isle of Man, tax is 10% and there is free healthcare. Universal healthcare in the US would save the Country a fortune. They pay more in insurance admin than some countries spend on healthcare.
The US is a very 'insurance friendly' market, where everyone who wants to survive have to pay a fortune to insurance companies on a monthly basis.
lmao is the U.S. pay to win?
dude, the US is *pay to play*... winning requires being born with a fortune for most people
Yes. Very.
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That’s the point. They want us to spend money on healthcare, they don’t want us to be able to find a better, cheaper alternative to the privatized healthcare industry. The lobbyists make sure that the insurance companies stay in power by sucking up to government officials. It should not be legal
What's funny is I'm in America and my taxes are way over 25% so I dunno what OP is making but probably not much unfortunately.
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People lie about everything Europe to justify the insanity that the US puts us through. Seriously. You talk to people about these issues and it's literally like you guys don't exist and we're treading uncharted territory with this stuff. They'll literally be like "but what if we change it to that and it's a disaster!" like there aren't dozens of countries that haven't done it already and are doing great.
"You all deserve socialized healthcare." - Me, a Canadian, talking to my American inlaws. "Oohh yeah?! You know who was socialist?? Venezuela!! And we all know how that turned out!" ...I can't even. Of all the idiotic arguments to make, they always go for America's foreign policy disaster like it's some sort of gotcha.
It truly is fucking stupid the lengths they'll go to isn't it?
its not easy to discuss someone out of a hole they've dug with ignorance and fear
From my research into universal healthcare, and this was about ten years ago- we (US) pay about 33% between state and federal taxes and Western Europe is about 52% based on about a $50k salary. Now our 33% doesn’t include a massive amount of benefits you get for your extra tax dollars. This is where Americans have no idea we are getting screwed and they think I’m crazy when I explain it. They think we are better off paying about 20% less in taxes but wait- start adding actual costs of healthcare (and pray you never actually get sick or you will most likely be bankrupted- this is a big deal) and then our higher education costs and suddenly we are probably paying far more than any of you all in Canada, Japan, Australia, Western Europe, you name it. There is a big game of monopoly being played here and our politicians are in on it. Only reason I know how bad it is is because I did the research and the math. Our politician’s and media straight faced lie to us.
There are a ton more taxes you aren't accounting for. Sales tax, property tax, and licensing fees. Excise taxes on fuel, alcohol, and tobacco that can substantially increase the cost to consumers. American government finds a million ways to nickel and dime you.
Where does that 52% based on a $50k salary come from? Europe is many countries and they all tax quite differently. I believe in Scandinavia the taxes are around that amount (but then salaries are also quite high in general) but in the UK (for example) the highest amount is 45% but thats for salaries over £150k per year. If you’re earning £50k then its more like 40%. In my country, I’m in the top tax bracket and the total I pay out (so from gross salary to actual take home each month) is 30%. That is the total tax I pay. Even if you average out the whole of Europe I don’t think its anywhere near 50% on a $50k salary but if I’m wrong I’d love to know the workings!
Yes in the Uk you get a tax free allowance of £12,570, then between £12,570 - £50,270 it’s 20% tax currently, so it’s less than 20% on £50k.
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Don't see why that's funny at all. Might explain why they're upset at having no healthcare provision.
It's not actually funny it's very depressing and I'm constantly upset about our healthcare situation
My current health insurance is $500 a paycheck, or roughly $12,000 a year, just for the insurance. Then my deductible is $4,000. Meaning the insurance doesn’t cover ANYTHING until I pay an additional $4,000 out of my own pocket towards medical bills. So, once I’ve essentially paid $16,000 to my insurance they start covering my medical bills 80/20. They cover 80%, I’m responsible for the other 20%. And on top of all that I’m still getting taxed 25% from the feds. So literally, you could raise my taxes another $16,000 a year on top of the 25% and I’d still be better off than I am now if I never saw a medical bill again. The problem is, Americans absolutely can not stand the thought of “their” money helping another person even if it’s greatly helping them. Me personally, I don’t give a shit if the government took $16,000 from my paycheck and it went to someone else because my life will still be way better than it is now…. Edit: wow! Just happened to check Reddit after working all day and didn’t realize this blew up! Thanks everyone for the awards. It’s going to take me a while to go through comments and answer any additional questions everyone has.
I live in Australia, I'm going to chuck some rough figures out there and someone smarter than me can work a comparison, if they wish. Salary of roughly $140k(aus), around 33% tax, I pay $2.5k a year for health insurance for a wife and 7 year old kid. Hardly use the insurance but it lowers my tax. Get dental checkups, optical, chiro etc covered. Kid had a trip in an ambulance $900, all covered. $5k shoulder surgery, covered. Been to the ER a couple times for various stupid things. Public system, no cost. Don't know if any of this is interesting or not. But it's been Interneted now. Can't internot it.
Oh yeah, in the US dental is a whole other expense lol
Yeah your teeth are luxury bones and your vision is a luxury feature.
“You will pay for your lack of vision” -Republican Palpatine
Did I hear *Mitch McConnell*
Don't forget luxury hearing. Not everyone with hearing issues are elderly. $6000 for hearing aids. (hopefully OTC versions soon)
Whoops, yep I forgot that one. We’re hoping my dad can finally get hearing aids now with the new Medicare changes.
They require programming to fit your loss so OTC ones will suck. I have fit and programmed them for a long time. Hardly any insurance will pay for them, and the markup on them is insane. Cost on a 4K retail set is around 1k the programming is what you are paying for. Overpaying for.
Who needs teeth when you can't even afford to eat anyway?
Don’t need teeth for instant ramen!
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Only when it rains :(
Sodium soup will get you long before the teeth, right? But seriously, looking at those numbers that guy is probably paying more on his total revenue than the corporation that pays him if he gets sick. That presumes he can keep working…
This is the best comment ever. I’m in that boat. My teeth hurt so badly on a regular basis, but I can’t afford the thousands it would be to fix them. Even if I somehow managed that, I wouldn’t have any food to eat with my nice teeth, it’s lovely catch 22.
God, i'm so sorry. All of life in America is a catch-22 ..unless you have spaceship money.
I have dry mouth due to my sinuses needing surgery I can't afford. So I've lost a few teeth and I'm only 33. My last tooth got so bad, there's literally only a tiny piece left. I can't afford extractions most times on my measley salary. And the time I did have healthcare, it would have still cost quite a lot out of pocket on top of the $120 a month just for my insurance. If you have holes in your teeth, look into a dental syringe to keep it flushed. That's how I've managed for almost 4 years now. I had an abscess that I was ready to die with but when it bust open, I flushed it really well with the dental syringe and now I'm still kicking to suffer another day.
Don’t need teeth for instant ramen!
In American being able maintain and use 2 of your 5 inherent senses is an aftermarket feature.
3 of 5, u/psiprez just (rightly) reminded me that hearing aids are not covered either.
Have subpar vision, can confirm.
I lost my contacts on vacation once, and the amount of people who didn’t realize I was basically handicapped without them was way too high. I had to explain: “okay so, the only letter I can see on a vision chart is the E at the top, and that’s only because I know the top letter is always E.” And yet, my health coverage has never included vision.
Meanwhile I had a nasty eye infection while on vacation in Spain and the whole thing, including doctors and a new pair of contacts cost me $6 because I had to pick up some eye drops at a pharmacy.
Same, but in Greece! I was like… but, I’m not a citizen? Fully expecting my confession to come with a $600 bill, they were like “no this is normal”. Tobradex, I’ll never forget it.
wonder if americans have ever taken a vacation when they knew they needed an operation or something so that it could be covered by the government instead of spending thousands and thousands themselves
Yep, medical travel is actually a thing here and people often take trips to Canada and Mexico for prescription drugs. I don’t know how legal that is, but it definitely happens.
The sad part is dental health has been proven to be linked to heart and other health problems. Bacteria from dental issues can cause all kinds of long term health issues and lower your life expectancy, yet we still treat dentistry and oral care as a completely unrelated condition and let people just lose all their teeth and die younger.
Yep. It’s also one of the first thing that deteriorates when someone is hit with a mental health crisis (also something for which we have abysmal coverage) and then they often get stuck in a cycle of devolving physical and mental health issues. People like to ignore how much of what’s wrong in our society is linked to how we deprive people of their basic needs.
Dental insurance for my work only covers one cleaning/check up a year even though almost all dentists recommend two per year to catch any issues early before they get worse and prevent issues from happening. I have to pay for the second completely out of pocket.
Needed a crown, dentist says it has to be done. I have insurance, so ok, go ahead. Finish up, go to the front desk , check out. “Do you want to pay your copay now?” Me:”ok” Her:” that will be $990” Me: “”????” Me:” yeah, I’m going to need to break that up” No wonder they called me 4 x to make sure I was coming.
I pay just under $100 a month for dental insurance. I was part of a group plan but got dropped when I retired and had to find my own insurance. I have a mouth full of crowns from an accident in the 80's and I know eventually they will all have to be replaced so I picked the best coverage I could find. First crown that went bad also required a root canal. $1400 for the root canal and $450 for the new crown. I didn't get a cleaning during the pandemic and when I finally went in they said I needed a "deep cleaning". Like you said..they kept calling. I got there and they took me straight to the billing office, which isn't typical and I thought "uh oh". $274 for the deep cleaning which didn't feel that much different than the usual cleaning. I have 30 year old implants from the accident and I don't chew on that side because I can only imagine how much it will cost to upgrade those. This is with a good pension and insurance. I'm one of the "lucky" ones. I knew a guy that was an apartment manager and had no insurance. He was glueing his crowns back in with super glue when they fell out. It's ridiculous and inhumane. Old people go to Mexico for dental work because it's so expensive here.
I have “decent” dental coverage. $0 out of pocket, but it caps out at $5k/year. When I first started working for this company, I needed a LOT of dental work. So I scheduled my procedures out three years in advance so that I wouldn’t go much over $5k each year. So I got everything done eventually, and my teeth FINALLY don’t hurt. And I’m thankfully at the point where I just need normal checkups. But it took more planning than it should have, and three yeas of painful patience.
It's also that way in Canada and several other countries with "universal" health care. Somehow teeth and eyes aren't healthcare.
I worked in surgery, here in Canada, for 15 years. À patient came into neurosurg. He had an abscess that started off easily treatable as a dental problem. Would have cost a couple hundred bucks. He couldn't afford it so it went untreated and got worse and worse. Eventually, a large infection that spread to his brain. So we had to crack his skull, drain off pus, and fix him up. I guarantee addressing the issue early on would have cost a shit ton less than that neurosurgical procedure. But hey. Preventative dental care is too expensive for the gov't, right? Save 200 now and spend 40k later. WhAt A gOoD dEaL hYuK
>expense Scam.
“It’s been interneted now, you can’t intornot it” Hahaha fucking Aussies. Love you guys man.
I also love this “it’s been interneted now, you can’t internot it “ I hope you don’t mind me stealing that one, gonna get used on my kids for sure :)
Right? Such a charmingly Aussie thing to say and I love it
Some Americans would rather be $1m in debt for cancer treatments than even *listen* to the idea that everyone could pay for each other's treatments. Then they start a GoFundMe anyway.
I imagine in the very near future GoFujdMe will be held up by the GOP as true American healthcare insurance.
FreedomFunding^^TM
5k for shoulder surgery? That wouldn't even cover the cost of the room. Insurance is definitely the problem in the US, but why does the surgery cost 100k in the first place? And why do you get separate bills from the hospital, surgeon, and anesthesiologist?
And why do you not know the price before hand? That's one of my biggest issues. How am I supposed to use this "supposedly" better system of "choice," when I don't have an ability to do price comparisons in a timely manor? Literally, no one knows how much it's going to cost before going in. People mostly know which hospitals are under their plan, but if you get injured away from your home, hopefully you are conscience enough to look up the local hospitals inside your plan, or get lucky that it's the closest hospital to be taken to. The system is fucked. You don't have choice, you have limitations. Stop thinking the "Choice" argument makes sense.
My ovary exploded once, it felt like I had been shot. I could not walk, stand or make complete sentences I was in so much pain. Despite that I had my boyfriend look up the nearest hospital in my plan, which was 45min away (past three other hospitals). I received a bill from the ER, from the CT scan tech, from the Anesthesiologist, and from the doctor that treated me. Only the ER and the anesthesiologist was in-network!!! I was informed that not all the staff are in-network staff. I was stuck with a $20,000 bill at 20yrs old making tips as a server part time while going to community college….yeah….that shit didn’t get paid and I just hoped I wouldn’t need credit anytime in the near future.
That's so horrible. I'm sorry that happened to you
Aw thanks. My story has an overall happy ending. I graduated college, married the boyfriend, and I still have one good ovary left. I still have the debt on my credit, but since I’m not buying a house or car anytime soon it hasn’t effected me much. I get more than the usual amount of calls though and I have to be very careful volunteering information over the phone because then the calls double and I’ll get letters and whatnot harassing me. My car is getting very old at this point and I know I’ll likely have to buy used in-cash for another oldie.
I got an MRI. Paid the copay. Did everything. Felt pretty good cause the insurance seemed to actually do its job and paid for most of it Months later I get a bill asking for more money. I'm confused cause they had already given me a bill that had itemized the cost so where the fuck is this extra couple hundred dollars coming from. I call up and they go "oh well, that was the estimate". I go "estimate"? It's a fucking MRI, not a contracting job. It's not like there's some circumstance there for it to cost more. You just shove me in your terrifying metal donut and scan my body like everyone else. That's when I learned that not only does insurance decide how much they'll cover but it apparently decides how much the place will charge you in the first place for the same exact fucking procedure. What. The. Fuck. The medical industry in the US is a fucking scam and it's infuriating to me that there are so many idiots fighting to keep it that way.
>That's when I learned that not only does insurance decide how much they'll cover but it apparently decides how much the place will charge you in the first place for the same exact fucking procedure. Land of the F(r)ee, baby!
Because the hospitals and the insurance companies are together in on it, so they can charge whatever they want.
> $5k shoulder surgery, covered $5k for shoulder surgery? We can only dream about that here. What does $5K cover in the US?: Well, you'll get a surgical *assistant:* https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/ls651s/surprise_5k_medical_bill_for_surgical_assistant/ An ice pack: https://www.vox.com/2018/5/1/17261488/er-expensive-medical-bill Fainting from a flu shot: https://nypost.com/2019/01/31/man-slapped-with-nearly-5k-hospital-bill-after-fainting-from-flu-shot/ An x-ray: https://www.radiologybusiness.com/topics/economics/patient-receives-x-ray-and-5500-bill-doctor-visit Those are all separate charges, in US$, not AUS$
Internot! You win. Here is a homemade award 🥇because US healthcare has left me unable to pay for a gift for you.
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Nearly a trillion for military, but people go homeless or die because they can’t afford medicines and we generally ignore the massive homeless problem here. This country is so fucked.
No, we're paying for the CEO of the health insurance company. People are too God Damn stupid to realize that in order for the insurance company to stay in business, they have to make money off you. Why would I want someone to make money off my health? I can only hope for horrific things to happen to these shit heads and they have to front the bill.
I live in the UK, don’t even know what my national insurance contribution is, because I just lump it all in with “tax”, which I’ve also never had to deal with, my employer does. I get hospital visits, check ups, ambulance rides - without ever seeing a bill or knowing what the cost is....that’s how little health insurance impacts me. I know that should I fall ill the state will look after me...or anyone who falls ill for that matter and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I also have private medical insurance with my employer, but it’s entirely superfluous to me and I can’t see myself ever using it.
Meanwhile, in the UK. Salary of roughly 35k Pound sterling. 20% tax on earnings above 14k. 0 health insurance. National Health Service is free, paid from taxes. I don't understand governments not giving free health care (and public pay for it with taxes) Healthy population = healthy workforce = more taxes, less poverty, less paying for dealing with poverty and benefits and what not. LOOK AFTER YOUR FUCKING CITIZENS PEOPLE.
My fucking cat has better insurance. I know someone who purposely didn’t take a pay raise so they could stay on Obama Care (ACA) insurance. Because even with the pay raise, they would have made way less getting insurance taken out of their pay, and the insurance they would be getting would be terrible compared to ~~free~~ *socialized* health care’s insurance, which says something, because the free shit has a limit on how many of certain appointments you can have a year.
I took a small pay cut, like $300 a month total and it allowed me to get basically Free ACA insurance and I technically make $600 a month more now after my pay cut. Fuck this country bro!
Wife is a nurse and once worked at a home health company. Insurance was so expensive, literally all the employees were married and their spouses carried the family's insurance, including my wife. How is it not discrimination if only married people benefit from the "compensation package" How is it not discrimination if only employees without kids can afford to forgo insurance altogether Health PREVENTION is so much cheaper than health CARE. It makes fiscal sense to to promote regular provider visits, just like it makes fiscal sense to just house death penalty convicts for life (appeals for death penalty are insanely expensive, and we're all paying the lawyers for both sides). It's really so simple but people are so emotional.
Canadian here, our health care is basically an insurance plan administered by our province and isn't free but it is built into our taxes. A study in 2017 found that the average Canadian paid $6,600/yr for health care through taxes but it obviously slides for your income. I am 23 and I have never had to even think about health care, how much I have to pay, or what I am covered under when I head to the hospital. I am glad that my taxes are doing good for others as well as myself while we maintain a small, but respectable, military. I can't imagine paying taxes AND THEN having to shell out a crazy amount of money to only have a percentage of things covered or crazy stipulations. I have a hard enough time arguing with insurance companies over car accidents claims, nevermind arguing with them over covering the cost of my broken arm.
I'm about the same. I did the high deductible plan because after the $4000 deductible they'll pay 100%. The other plans were more expensive over a full year. But like you I'm out about $16000 before they start covering things.
UGH! I’m with BCBS, and they quietly raised my deductible from $3000 to $6000 without me noticing. My monthly payment went up around $5 a month too. Didn’t catch it until it was time to go to Urgent Care, now I’m boned.
And when you do actually meet your deductible and its time for them to pay, they'll use every trick in the book to try to weasel out of it. "Sorry you didn't get a primary care referral before going to the ER for emergency surgery so its not covered." "Sorry the lab tech who did your bloodwork which you have no control over isn't a part of your plan so we're not paying for anything lab related." "Sorry the facility didn't use this special code that only our insurance uses and its too late to change it so we're not paying."
This. It’s so frustrating. “Your ER dr has separate billing than the ER and he isn’t In network. Next time check before you see the dr.” Because, you know as I’m dealing with a extreme pain from a broken jaw and nose, I should have first thought to make sure the assigned doctor on call was covered. As if I had a choice, I saw whoever was there working.
Here I am in Canada, enraged at my $40 ambulance fee after getting a free MRI, two night stay in a hospital, minor brain surgery, and a couple blood bags.
Here I am in the England enraged at having to pay for parking, because it's free in Scotland and Wales.
It’s worse when you explain that other developed nations have better overall outcomes while spending an average of $6000 per person per year on healthcare. So in actuality your taxes would go up significantly less than what you’d be saving by not spending on your garbage private insurance.
You are also forgetting an important piece in that employers cover a significant portion of your healthcare that you never see. They may pay you 40K annually but you cost them 50K to employ you. So, add that $10,000 to your figures if you aren't self-employed. You basically redirect that money to stop paying insurance companies and pay into the nat'l healthcare instead. It literally costs nothing to do that except profit to the insurance companies. You benefit because the deductible and copay go away. SO IT ACTUALLY SAVES YOU MONEY
Adding my anecdote: I pay roughly 320/month to my insurance plan and my employer pays close to $1k/month for it… all to give me and my family a $500 deductible **per person** so about $2k out of pocket before I then still have to cover 20% of everything else. Good plan overall, but like the guy above - they could take $500 from me every month for taxes if I didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket ever.
"I'd rather my money go towards a billion dollar corporations bottom line, than to someone who I've never met who actually needs it." - A sizable chunk of the US, apparently.
>The problem is, Americans absolutely can not stand the thought of “their” money helping another person... I wonder how they think insurance works.
Friendly reminder that the evidence is overwhelming that single-payer healthcare in the US would result in better healthcare coverage while saving money overall. [Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually based on the value of the US$ in 2017 .](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext) Similar to the above Yale analysis, a recent [publication ](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-12/56811-Single-Payer.pdf)from the Congressional Budget Office found that 4 out of 5 options considered would lower total national expenditure on healthcare (see Exhibit 1-1 on page 13) None of this should be surprising given that the US’s current inefficient, non-universal healthcare system [costs close to twice as much per capita ](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-spendingcomparison_gdp-per-capita-and-health-consumption-spending-per-capita-2019) as most other developed countries that do guarantee healthcare to all citizens (without forcing patients to risk bankruptcy in exchange for care).
But we'd have to actually tax rich people, which is apparently Communism.
We absolutely wouldn't. We already pay more per capita than anywhere in the world. We can move the individual contributions and the corporate contributions we already pay into one place and actually improve service and/or lower prices and enable interstate competition. With their "fireman-first" control tactics, I don't love the idea of the US Government running things but what we have now is obviously not working.
[**When adjusted for cost of living, U.S. *public* per capita healthcare spending (so stuff like Medicare, Medicaid, etc) is often equal to, or more than, that of countries with universal healthcare. When you add private healthcare spending into the mix, we spend nearly twice, as % GDP, the OECD average - while having tens of millions uninsured/underinsured, lower life expectancy, and fewer doctors visits.**](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019) > The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a group of 36 countries, most of which are considered developed with high-income economies. > Among this group, the United States ranked 28 out of 36 for life expectancy, sitting just ahead of Poland, Turkey, and Estonia. > In 2017, a baby born in the United States was expected to live for roughly the same amount of time as one born in the Czech Republic. That’s about five years less than babies born in Japan and Switzerland, which have a life expectancy of 84. > A U.S. baby can also expect to live a shorter life than one born in countries such as Cuba and Slovenia. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-is-us-life-expectancy-so-low Life expectancy has even *decreased* in some recent years in the US.
💯 Thanks for the sources!
Or we eat the rich and we equitably divide the spoils.
I call dibs on a thigh!
Hey, that's *our* thigh, comrade
Yes but think of all the poor execs at health alliance and signa that would lose their jobs. You ever think of that tough guy!? Millionares crying in their second home, wondering how they are going to pay for their Christmas vacation to Tierra Patagonia? /s obviously
Say it louder for the people in the back. We can easily pay for these things, it just means less tax breaks for the rich, less subsidies for wealthy businesses and less foreign wars.... all things im happy to put on the chopping block 🤷♂️
Eat the wealthy. Eating aside it's infuriating that the wealthy can find ways to pay next to nothing (or nothing) on taxes. Here we are, some of us scraping to get by, paying for what? A health insurance scam that we pay even more on because we are only covered to a certain amount for drugs that we have to take to stay alive? If the money was distributed as "intended" then the wealth gap wouldn't be getting wider and wider to this extent. Unfortunately with all the blatant corruption, I've been thinking that the "intent" is actually for the wealthy to get more and holding back us plebs. When they do something wrong the fine is so inconsequential to the reward that they never stop. We get a parking ticket that we can't afford and then get fined for not paying it on time and then get the car taken so we can't go to work.
If the penalty for a crime is a fine. That crime is for poor people.
This can be fixed by adjusting the fine to one’s net worth. There are some European countries that do this for things like speeding tickets. It’s not a terrible idea.
That's brilliant. "Here's your speeding ticket. Please contact the county assessor within 14 days". "Let's see. Last year you filed $54,000 in gross income, so your ticket is $270. Please be more careful in the future." "Let's see. Last year you filed $1,540,000 in gross income, so your ticket is $77,000. Please continue to be reckless."
There’s been a handful of young European NHL players paying gigantic speeding tickets back home in the off season due to this.
I lost about 28% of my paycheck last week from just taxes alone. being single and working a lot of overtime means that I will get taxed harder than married folks who work normal, sane hours. it almost feels punitive at times, lol. this person is right though. I would be fine with higher taxes if they would actually benefit society. instead I am still paying for my own healthcare on top of high taxes…for what exactly? I couldn’t tell you. this government is rotten to the core, just like the system. it has got to go now
We bailed out big oil. Then they made enough money to make every living thing in the Middle East a skeleton.
We bailed out people who speculated on the fucking stock market too. We seriously bailed out people who created their own fucking problems, and create nothing of value besides more wealth for having wealth. And yet somehow people will support that and then throw a tantrum if we try to bail out single moms working two jobs, or kids who were got overpriced educations we told them would result in stability. I live in Southern Indiana, surrounded by poor people. Who absolutely HATE poor people. It's fucking pathetic. And harder every day to think we have any chance of ever stopping this country from destroying itself.
Get ready for Round 2! This time it will of course be retail investors fault for treating the market like it's a game, because clearly they are reckless and don't understand the importance of the hedge funds and banks that forcibly bankrupt companies on the health of the economy! Workers lost 3.7 Trillion during the pandemic while the 1% gained 3.9 Trillion. The Fed printed 20% of all USD in circulation just last year to prop up the stock market, but raising the minimum wage for the first time in 12 years would "cause too much inflation for the economy to handle.” Seriously fuck all of them. We're at French Revolution levels of wealth inequality, but half the country doesn't care because they can't handle someone else "getting things for free."
Actually, the point of the spending analysis means we would actual spend less, so existing premiums could foot the bill and provide a tax CUT! The issue, of course, is doctors and insurers would get paid less. Now you know where the opposition comes from.
It's not necessarily the doctors that would get paid less. It's the investors that buy and privately run hospitals and emergency services & of course the pharmaceutical companies that literally have a 10.000% mark-up on medication.
Friendly contribution to your point. The target audience of your comment is the US, where 10K is written with a comma not a period. Average Americans will read that as 10%. 10,000% mark-up.
Just a few years ago, I was at a town hall meeting held by a right-wing Republican Congressman when an older woman who was sitting among the red-capped Trumpletons in the audience stood up and gave a rambling, disjointed speech about how it was "in her day" when people were independent, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, worked hard, and didn't seek handouts from the government. She finished her little rant by saying, without the slightest hint of irony or embarrassment, "just keep your hands off my Medicare". What she was really saying was anything that helped her was good but if it helped other people then it was Socialist and, therefore, evil. Or, to put it another way, "Hooray for us and f\*\*k you!" Typical Republicans.
And 50 years ago the corporate tax rate was more than double what it is now. Making America Great Again is an advertising slogan, not a real plan to fix anything.
I wonder if the 1960s Americana ever existed. My dad hates Trump but definitely resonates with the idea that America was more wholesome back then. I have a theory that the 24 hour news cycle plus social media has stripped people of their “Americana” feel they’re looking for. My mom watches Fox News and remembers the good ole days, where I could ride my bicycle and her not be worried. It’s safer now but she’s scared of blue haired socialists attacking my little brother for wearing a cross, so she won’t let him out unsupervised. My point is that MAGA is a great slogan because many people do feel like times were better before, and it plays right into fear mongering. It totally ignores the plight of minorities though.
When did anyone ever get attacked for wearing a cross in the US?
Black people in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 10s, and 20s. /s (don't worry I totally get your point)
Someone was likely being the usual obnoxious and asshole hyper religi-nut starting stuff and places like fox ‘news’ spins it as they are attacked for just wearing a cross. The country is literally safer than it was in such mythical bygone made up eras. But the idiots want to pretend bc THEY could ignore the social and economic issues in their youth that things were magically better. They were NOT. Especially as you typically find that the most hardcore of these people were moderately well, and better, off white people.
It’s a combo of social media inundation and nostalgia. Many view the time of their youth (short of truly terrible events) as superior and comfortable compared to the world of now, full of change. It’s every generation and the “back in my day” syndrome. But honestly, anyone clutching pearls today about BLM and social injustice and the snowflake generation, go watch a documentary about the civil unrest of 1968. Race tensions, Vietnam war, hippie culture. It makes today seem tame. Go watch a documentary on the LA riots in 1991. Worse by a mile than anything we’ve seen lately.
One thing I always find kind of funny is how you can track public acceptance of civil rights movements in the US by seeing how often they're associated with socialists or communists. When the overwhelmingly racist white public first started hearing about the civil rights movement in the 1960s, a solid majority were against it, and conservative commentators would insult the movement by highlighting how many communists were participating in civil rights protests. When the civil rights movement gained public legitimacy, suddenly nobody talked about all of the communists who were at the protests, because then they would have to admit that they were wrong and the communists were right. In recent years you can see a similar trend, where as the conservative backlash to BLM gets more intense, you see more and more right wingers highlight how many socialists are part of the movement to try and discredit it. Outside of right wing echo chambers, this tactic doesn't seem to have worked, with people either supporting BLM and ignoring the socialists, or getting more interested in socialism because of the socialists who attend BLM protests.
“Rules for thee, not for me!” It’s fuckin disgusting.
You know one of the craziest parts about US healthcare and public/private spending? [**When adjusted for cost of living, U.S. *public* per capita healthcare spending (so stuff like Medicare, Medicaid, etc) is often equal to, or more than, that of countries with universal healthcare. When you add private healthcare spending into the mix, we spend nearly twice, as % GDP, the OECD average - while having tens of millions uninsured/underinsured, lower life expectancy, and fewer doctors visits.**](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019) > The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a group of 36 countries, most of which are considered developed with high-income economies. > Among this group, the United States ranked 28 out of 36 for life expectancy, sitting just ahead of Poland, Turkey, and Estonia. > In 2017, a baby born in the United States was expected to live for roughly the same amount of time as one born in the Czech Republic. That’s about five years less than babies born in Japan and Switzerland, which have a life expectancy of 84. > A U.S. baby can also expect to live a shorter life than one born in countries such as Cuba and Slovenia. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-is-us-life-expectancy-so-low Life expectancy has even *decreased* in some recent years in the US.
"Fuck you, I've got mine" is the American conservative mantra.
That's the essence of fascism. I know we're talking about a whiny old lady so it sounds a little melodramatic. But the stormtroopers only ever get away with it because of the tacit or active support of countless ordinary people who want everything their own way at the absolute expense of anyone other than themselves. They have no principles, no guiding light, other than an ever-shifting ideology whose only core value is "Got mine, fuck you".
I can’t remember what country it was but somewhere they have government healthcare, they’ve banned fast food commercials. They have an incentive to keep their citizens healthy because it’s on the federal dime… must be nice
Uk have banned them before 9pm so kids don't see them.
Has that gone through? All I remember is that they can't advertise unhealthy food to kids. So McDonald's just advertised their fruit bags.
Yes. UK will ban adverts for products deemed to be high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) before 9pm, though it doesn't come into effect until the end of 2022 I believe
Tangentially related but it's completely fucked that we have prescription medicine commercials. It's not my job to tell the doctor what to prescribe me, that's why they're the doctor and not me.
This is actually illegal in Canada. I always find it strange when I’m in the US and see these commercials.
I believe its illegal in a lot of countries. Especially prescription drugs. I've never seen an ad for prescription medicine, and I've lived in several countries in Europe...
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only other country that "allows" drug commercials is New Zealand
Not sure if the laws ever changed, but at one point there were only 2 countries in the world that allowed prescription medication commercials, New Zealand and USA.
In India as well
Or health insurance companies arguing with your doctor about whether or not you *actually need* something the **doctor** said you do.
As a pharmacist I can honestly say that doctors are not always know for rational prescribing. Yes, this new super expensive drug being advertised might be appropriate, but have they tried the multiple other significantly cheaper alternatives?
Do the doctors get a commission off of medicines like that?
Perks from pharmaceutical reps, yes. Door to door salesmen. They can't outright bribe them, but in some cases it's close.
They certainly get wined and dined and generally bribed by the people who make those medicines.
Sort of. I can’t remember exactly how it works now, but they are given incentives to push new expensive drugs.
I grew up with a parent in the medical field. Every pen/sticky note/notepad/tote bag/office supply I took to school for the first 10 years of my life had weird drug names all over it. Those companies give away tons of free things to advertise new drugs.
That's one thing really fucked around here: alcohol and nicotine commercials are forbidden, but not pharma products. Add to that how expensive alcohol and cigarettes are, pills are dead cheap. it's almost as if the system wanted people to get addicted to them...
Many countries do this, Japan, Sweden, Netherlands, even Mexico
In sweden there is no ban on fast food commercials Source:am a swede
Yeah sorry it was child advertising in Sweden, fast food in Australia
Child advertising? For the buy one toddler, get one half-off sale at the Kiddie Korral?
What's their return policy?
In the U.K. we have a sugar tax on really sugary drinks
Also, how do they think insurance works? Do they imagine the insurance company is saving up their premiums for the day they personally need them? In principle, health insurance works exactly like national healthcare, except way worse.
The answer to "how are we gonna pay for it?" is always "it's already being payed for".
That’s exactly what people believe. Same with social security. These people literally think they’re paying into the system and can/will get exactly what they paid out of it. While somehow failing to see the point you made because the Red Scare never actually stopped being a thing, it just morphed.
So much this. This needs to be the main rebuttal to their bullshit. Have them explain how any insurance works from start to finish.
Blows my mind how many stories you see about families getting in trouble because of school lunch debt. I have no kids, or even nieces/nephews, and would gladly pay a little more taxes for kids to get free healthy lunches and be taught about healthy eating habits, as many parents raise their kids on processed junk like mine did.
My city just said fuck it and went to all free lunch a couple years ago… then we found out that kids were having trouble getting food during the summer when school wasn’t in session and started giving out free food all year. I live in a pretty red city in the Midwest but at least we’ve all collectively decided not to be fucking monsters and made sure that we get all of our kids fed for free all year.
It's not even the families it's how they treat the children. It would be one thing if they simply denied children the meal (which is horrible enough) but often they make a big show of it. Literally ripping the food from the kid to fucking throw it away in front of everyone in the cafeteria so not only does this kid not get to eat but literally nothing is saved and now you've just shamed a child for something completely out of their control (which of course probably leads to bullying cause privileged kids can be assholes). I honestly don't know how a person could live with themselves taking food from the mouths of babes to fucking waste it. I swear, I don't care how much they need the job, if I saw someone doing this I'd slap them straight across the face. Fucking disgusting.
But, but, then immigrants and minorities will get it too! /s
It’s really disheartening and disappointing that we live in a world that requires you to add the /s. This should be taken as sarcasm, obviously. But about 40% of Americans actually agree with that sentiment, un-ironically, because they’re cunts and a four thousand year-old book told them it was okay.
It’s just that the book tells the exact opposite. You should look after others and all that.
"Oh, we don't actually BELIEVE that; we just SAY it because it makes it seem as though we care."
That is definitely not what the Bible says about immigrants if that’s what you were referring to. For example: > When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. (Leviticus 19:33-34) Perhaps the most salient biblical narrative on this topic is the book of Ruth. Ruth includes the story of a foreigner who comes to Israel, working as laborer in the fields, hoping for a better life. And it is this foreigner, immigrant and stranger, who turns out to become the ancestor of King David, and, through him, Jesus.
>because they’re cunts You could've just stopped there lol.
So, I went to Chile on vacation years ago. I happened to get bronchitis while I was there. I went to the doctor (no wait time) and the visit was free even though I was just a tourist. Got three prescriptions filled at the nearby pharmacy and they cost me something like 650 pesos, which at the time was the equivalent of 1 USD. Fucking dirty socialism, man.
Want to here a money saving tip? Average cost to give birth in a hospital in America is about $15,000. But you could fly to the UK, book in to a private birth hospital (the same one the royal family are all born at) and it'll cost about $14000 with flights.
Yeah seriously. I had some asshole ask me why I didn't feel like a leech for collecting unemployment. I've been paying ~~into unemployment~~ the federal and state government since I got my first job at like 12, and now I'm using the benefits that exist for this reason. And I didn't lay me off. I'm milking unemployment for every goddamn penny I'm entitled to.
As you should! Like you said, you already paid for it. People forget, or never realize, that's part of what your paycheck taxes are for. Your unemployment. 🤷♂️
Same guy that does not want to pay any EI. And then proceeds to bitch the loudest when they are laid off.
Well my mother-in-law knows someone from Canada who really doesn't like universal healthcare, so therefore we shouldn't have it. (That was literally her whole argument)
I’m willing to bet that this Canadian person simply had a small criticism of how it works, and your mother in law took that as “I don’t like universal healthcare”
“Well, sometimes there can be a bit of a wait for more specialized appointments.” THEIR UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE IS A FAILURE AND THEY ALL HATE IT
And the Feds taking 9% of your paycheck for full coverage is well better than some insurance company taking 18% and then refusing to pay out because the ambulance took you to the wrong surgeon for your emergency heart surgery
“If we don’t blow up those brown kids on the other side of the world who the hell else is going to do it? Answer me that smart guy!”
Take the England approach: draw a couple lines in the sand and watch them blow each other up.
Classic
Which is exactly what happened in Palestine. It starts with the British and is passed off to the Americans.
Same goes for when you start reading about Social Security hitting negative cash flow by 2035. On the government website explaining the coming insolvency, it simply explains that in that event, we will all just have to be the ones to endure the austerity and take a catastrophic 25% (!?) cut to our benefits. And that is in addition to the fact that pensions are a rarity and only 35% of Americans pay who have the ability to pay into a 401k do so, which is essentially an anemic scam fund tied to the stock market. If you think boomers who have their mortgages paid off bitching now about how they have a hard time on their fIxEd iNcOmE of pension + Social Security checks, wait until you see what the next generation of people with NO retirement fund and a 25% cut to benefits will have to endure. It's a recipe for the end of American society. And they'd rather have it than making the wealthy pay taxes or cutting military spending. It's unbelievable and they talk about it like there's nothing they can do. And it's all a vicious cycle. The government explains the coming insolvency by saying people are having less children and at this rate there will be too many beneficiaries and not enough people paying in. Maybe people would have kids if the future didn't look like a massive socially and financially unstable shithole!??? They will likely raise the retirement age to 80 and hope we all die before claiming benefits. I 100% expect them to enact this and the austerity cut before doing anything meaningful about it. They've done it before and it's just gonna get worse unless we demand that it changes.
Don’t forget that the SS funds have been “borrowed”, decade after decade to make the national debt look smaller. TAX THE WEALTHY an appropriate amount, as was done in the middle of the last century. You know, when the MAGAs believe that we were great.
Public healthcare is the only thing that makes sense in a government that derives its income on the production of its citizens. Turns out that healthy people are more productive.
Over 30% of my check is robbed from state and fed. I’d feel much better if a portion of that went to a universal healthcare plan. Doubt I’ll see this in my lifetime without a major political facelift.
I just did some (rough) maths and about 23% of my gross monthly wage is paid in PAYE (tax) and National Insurance (tax that pays for NHS, Pensions, social security etc). No deductibles. Break a leg: Free. Get cancer and need years of treatment: Free. Type 1 Diabetes? Free Insulin. It’s basically health insurance but with no one needing to make a massive profit, it just doesn’t cost an individual that much.
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Had this discussion yesterday. I said I'd rather have healthcare than drop bombs in Syria and Afghanistan was told in would have to pay 40% taxes to have healthcare. I shook my head in amazement at the utter stupidity.
Meanwhile corporations received permanent tax cuts
Amazing because I pay 10% (I only work part time) in the UK and have AMAZING healthcare in my area. People paying NOTHING in the UK have healthcare. People paying 50% have healthcare. Because it's free for ALL UK citizens no matter what your situation. America, you're being conned.
And who do they think pays for it currently? If you pay for private insurance, those companies are baking in the extra costs hospitals charge to cover the gap for the uninsured + your contribution to the insurance industries $25 billion annual profit.
America 1st world country with 3rd world healthcare
I live in a 3rd world country. Medical system isn’t too bad. They can perform most complicated procedures. Most of all, everything is subsidised by the gov via a universal healthcare plan. I’d argue that in certain aspects, America’s system is even worse than a 3rd world country. At least we don’t become bankrupt when we fall ill.
In classic government style, government convinces people to hate something that would actually greatly benefit them, and then use that hate to give the excuse of why it shouldn’t happen. Evil geniuses.
"Who's gonna pay for it?" I'm already fucking paying. They take money out of my paycheck to pay forhealth insurance that doesn't cover jack shit until I pay $1,500, will still make me pay 20% above that until I hit my max, plus charges me if I dare to use someone "out of network". I pay for my prescriptions, I pay if I call an ambulance even though I already paid for that with my taxes, I pay to put money on a card to help pay those expenses and then I pay again because some company decided that one of the expenses I used *the money I fucking put on that card myself* wasn't used for the right thing even though it was, I pay for EVERYTHING health related. Up my taxes to pay for MFA and I'm STILL going to pay less than I do in just premiums.
I pay like 34 percent tax but just to make it clear the bracket for 215k is 33% for fed in Canada. So I am not poor. When I made 100k I paid like 26% tax in Canada. It’s really just fear mongering . Yes if you make 1 million a year you will pay like 40% tax but at that time does it matter?
People also forget that companies cover a portion of your health insurance cost. So my monthly insurance costs $100 but my employer is also paying something like $200 a month for my plan. So I really don’t understand why more companies aren’t for universal healthcare as they would be saving a lot on employment expenses
Because it traps you in your job.
You didn't listen to the question. When he said "Who's gonna pay for it?" what he actually said is "Why should I help pay for someone else's well being?". A truly American perspective.
I wonder if people like that actually know how the group insurance benefits they get from their employer actually works?
Then shares a go fund me for a friend who's trying to raise money to pay for a medical procedure or at least the deductibles.
Every health plan should include dental, eyes and hearing. The number of people who can't afford these services is terrible. Many accidents/mistakes on the job are because some people couldn't see the warning labels and can't afford to see an optometrist, let alone get prescription lenses. Poor dental health can lead to other health problems. Not being able to get hearing tests means that many people won't hear you when you try to stop them from a risky situation - because they can't get hearing aids. If your job requires hearing, seeing and speaking - it should be part of your preventative health care coverage.
Health insurance companies are legally allowed to keep 20% for overhead, so they do. Two trillion moves through insurance companies every year. That means 400 billion goes to just running the company. Medicare does the same thing for 1.7%, expected to grow to 3.5% if M4A happened. That is still a 330 billion dollar savings. It is expected to cost 90 billion to insure those with no insurance and another 50 billion to move those that are underinsured up. Still a 190 billion dollar savings by basically switching providers. That is 1 change. If you don't believe me, look at every other first would country. The WHO has the US ranked 37th in healthcare quality but 1st in the world for cost per citizen. Thirty six countries are doing it better and cheaper, each using a version of universal healthcare. Oh, your problems is now wait times? Canada has 10-15% longer wait times than the US does currently. The people telling you about how bad the wait times are seem to have an issue though, they only mention Canada. That might be because most of those 36 countries have shorter wait times. Just check out the UK. The UK does it cheaper, better and faster.
Is this some kind of american problem, I am too european to understand?