I’d like to know other non-US citizen’s opinions on your health care system are when you read a story like this. I know there are worse places in the world to receive health care, and better. What runs through your heads when you have a medical emergency?
A little background on my question:
My son was having trouble breathing after having a cold for a couple of days and we needed to stop and take the time to see if our insurance would be accepted at the closest emergency room so we didn’t end up with a huge bill (like 2000$-5000$). This was a pretty involved ~10 minute process of logging into our insurance carrier, and unsuccessfully finding the answer there. Then calling the hospital and having them tell us to look it up by scrolling through some links using the local search tool on their website. This gave me some serious pause, what if it was a real emergency, like the kind where you have no time to call and see if the closest hospital takes your insurance.
I’m American and trust me, in no way does it feel normal even after living with it my whole life. Simply hearing what you describe - not thinking about it - feels so deeply right and reasonable that it reminds me just how much weight of “this is not normal” we carry around.
I have a diabetic colleague in America who laughed when they heard how much tax I pay (which includes nationalised healthcare).
We decided to calculate the equivalent tax they were paying when factoring in health insurance (including the ridiculous deductible), dental, the fact the diabetes pump cost absurd amounts (doesn’t where I live).
Federal and state taxes may look lower on paper compared to European countries but once you run the numbers, Americans pay absurdly more across the board for things we take for granted.
One colleague was paying a $10K deductible and around €2K a month on a specific drug. Over here, repeat prescriptions of that drug are around $10.
$10,000 vs $120 a year (and that’s just the drug, not even the cost of the insurance plan).
It’s heartbreaking when you start realising how trivial medical problems cripple so many Americans financially which people in other countries take for granted it’s free/covered by their national/federal taxes (which are naturally means tested).
America would be a far happier country with a national health service.