Well, here in Germany you’re paying (you have to) around 15% of your gross income for health insurance plus 3.4% for intensive care insurance. Your employer pays for half of those. Insurances are expensive but if you need them it’s cheaper than paying for treatment yourself. What I pearsonally find worse is the public tv and radio fee you have to pay each month (18 euros, same as netflix premium) to finance some dickwad director earning 200k+ even if you don’t watch or even have a tv/radio. Also it doesn’t matter how much you earn, the fee is the same.
So workers pay 7.3% and employers pay 7.3%? It covers all of your health care costs? U.S. insurance varies in cost but we have medical bills on top of insurance costs.
But what does your insurance pay for if not the medical bills? It’s supposed to be its entire purpose, pay the medical bills.
Insurance companies put enormous amounts of resources, time, and manpower into avoiding paying the bills. They’ll find some excuse buried in their 400 page packet, or they’ll deem something not a “medical necessity “ until it’s too late to do anything about it.
There’s different tiers, but in the case of a doctor visit and prescriptions for medication, you typically have a copay amount which insurance does not cover. If you have a serious illness and require treatment in the hospital you would be required to pay 30%-40% of the total bill. Also some insurance requires that you pay a certain amount per year before it will take effect, then the insurance pays the rest for the year. There’s tons of different plans and scenarios, insurance here is a rip off.
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Exactly! It’s ridiculous. My father is disabled and on a fixed income. He has insurance but his treatment still costs him thousands a year, even though he only receives a few thousand to live on.
Yep, all covered except for some extra stuff like getting your teeth deep-cleaned by your dentist or some premium dental prosthetics, but they usually subsidize it. Edit: also having most people enrolled in the public insurance (wealthier people have private insurance) makes this system possible, at least for now.
The public broadcasting fees are important to prevent private monopolies. To add some context to non germans: The most people here who cry about the fee are far right wingers because the public channels are the only ones really doing work to uncover things like Nazis in the police.
And if you are without a job you dont have to pay it.
This is very ironic if you work for an insurance company.
I imagine working for a major health insurance provider… One would use them for health insurance?
If you mean specifically health insurance… yeah this is spot on.
I think it’s more complicated for other kinds of insurance though.
Health insurance shouldnt be health insurance.
It should just be health care.
Absolutely agree.
And to your point, traditional insurance (home, auto, etc) pretty much targets a specific profit margin of about 3% or $0.03 for every dollar they take in. They tend to get eaten alive by competition when they get greedy, unlike a lot of other industries. But rates increase as costs increase ro maintain that 3% target…and costs have increased a LOT in recent years.
It’s a pretty misunderstood industry tbh, and not without its own issues for sure. But overall it has its purpose and is heavily regulated to ensure they’re playing responsibly. They earn their money on investing the money they take in, and basically take the bet that they can earn more in the market than the risk they take on for every policy sold.
I basically agree. Those are actually insurance, and serve a purpose. Health “Insurance” isn’t insurance at all really…
Yes, agree with that. Health Insurance is just to ensure you have to have a job it feels like.
Would be a shame if you had an…accident
You’re paying for a service. How much of your paycheck are they taking anyway? Mine is less than 5%. $70 a week. It’s not a whole lot.
So nearly 300$ a month for…what exactly? To be denied life saving treatment?
Even if you have no insurance, they will not deny you life-saving treatments.
It happens all the time. You’re thinking of emergency life-saving treatment. They won’t let you bleed out on the hospital steps. But insurance denies necessary care for chronically ill people because it’s deemed unnecessary by them.
Not on paper, but they absolutely fucking will in person. They’ll tell you your fine, they’ll tell you the wrong thing, and then they put off your appointments and then your dead.
They have a duty of care. The doctors are not administration. Administration cares about profits. The doctors just get paid regardless.
ON PAPER They have a duty of care. In real life all they give a shit about is you not dying in front of them. If you’re lucky. Sounds like you are. Maybe in your happy little corner of the fucking world it’s all morphine and triage, but here DOCTORS in the emergency room will only do enough to keep you from dying in front of them. You’ll have a stroke and they won’t do any follow up care and you’ll have another one two weeks later and you’re dead, because the doctors wouldn’t let you make an appointment in time.
Also they’ll cut off your fucking leg because it’s cheaper than reconstruction, and not just because reconstruction is impossible.
Also just realized dumbass OP up there casually dropped that he’s loaded and the rest of us are just stupid for being poor.
Don’t bring logic into these comments
They didn’t though…
statistically Americans pay twice as much in insurance and taxes as Europeans pay in just taxes for healthcare
When I hear that I also think of Canada and their massively overwhelmed healthcare system. Just remember. If you’re suffering because you can’t get the care you need you can now just ask to die.
Are you saying that people should die instead of of being treated, when a treatment is possible, just because they cannot afford it?
I’m referencing Canadas MAID law that has become an absolute disaster causing or allowing the medical system to recommend suicide for those with solvable problems instead of solving those problems.
Canada’s MAID law is not a disaster and that’s speaking as a Canadian.
Ten seconds on Google brought up the follow up to this story from March 10, 2023.
Do you think the mistakes of a single employee that the system’s check and balances would have caught justifies discrediting the entire system?
Because the same chucklefucks that keep pushing to provatise insurance even harder in the US are defunding Canadian health systems so 1. It can’t be used as an argument against privatisation and 2. They can go ‘look at how badly this works, we should provatise Canadian healthcare!’
They create the problem with Canadian healthcare, and then offer a solution that puts half the money in their own pocket.
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OK Boomer
What about the money your company pays for the healthcare? I only see ~$350 a year deducted from my paycheck to pay for my insurance, but according to my W2, my employer pays another $8,000 per year to the insurance company. You’re paying a lot more for your health insurance than you see on your paychecks.
Ever had to fight with an insurance company?
I have insurance. I went to urgent care when I was pretty sure I had the flu or COVID or something about a year ago (just slightly before COVID was declared “over.”) I paid my copay for doctors office visit, I was in there for about an hour, with roughly 40 minutes of that sitting in a room waiting for a doctor (in an empty clinic) and then had a flu test and a COVID test.
They still sent me to collections for $350 for this visit. I pay a stupid amount for insurance, which my employer subsidizes, and I still can’t even get a fucking flu/COVID test apparently.
For profit health insurance in America is evil. It is easily one of the most fucked up things about this country that we just absolutely ignore.
Sorry you had to deal with that.
Thanks. I mean, I’m fine. I’m sorry that this is the reality for the simplest of things in this country.
Thanks Obamna.
How is your deductible and max out of pocket? You don’t count that? Lol I don’t run into too many people who say anything good about our healthcare scam system.
Paying for a service that most of the rest of the world decided should already be covered.
It’s getting paid from somewhere, by someone. Doctors aren’t just suddenly free because they have universal healthcare.
I didn’t say they would be. But to pretend American healthcare makes sense is beyond absurd. Workers are already taxed to fund Medicare/-aid (which we can’t access), then we’re also expected to pay private insurance premiums. The best part is that’s de minimis! All that gets you is a pass to get in the door.
Then you have to pay co-pays and coinsurance, and possibly your deductible. We pay SIGNIFICANTLY more than our peers in the wider world for no reason other than greed.
You do realized you still pay for your healthcare via taxes in those nations right?
Yeah I just pay like $36 a month or so and my copays are $35, or $75 if a specialist.
