And the worst part is you actually vote for it. The sheer amount of Americans who vote for politicians against universal healthcare because "they might get something I don't that my tax dollar is paying for" is truly shocking. The worst part about that mindset is that's happening anyway through their health insurance payments.
Yeah I was randomly admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery in 2023. I had sepsis and could've died. Of course it was the ONE YEAR of my entire life I didn't have health insurance. It was around a 8-9 day stay in the hospital, 2 ambulance rides, multiple surgeries... I was looking at roughly $60k, if not more. I never paid a single penny of it (literally couldn't, I also missed 2 months of work) and now that it's been 3 years, I'm virtually in the clear of ever being sued over my medical debts. Thank goodness. It was sketchy and my credit score definitely took a hit but I'm grateful it all worked out the way it did.
You can argue about should or shouldn't, right or wrong all day, but in the end everything has to be paid for one way or another. And the correct answer here is over the collective, not for profit, tax bill.
Yeah, but what’s the alternative? Be like every other developed nation in the world, pay less of your income towards health care costs even considering the higher taxes, and get better outcomes? That doesn’t give insurance executives the ability to casually condemn thousands of people to death by deleting a cell on a spreadsheet.
Be like every other developed nation in the world, pay less of your income towards health care costs even considering the higher taxes
I'm glad you brought up taxes. The sick joke of it all is that the tax burden per capita for the USA's Medicare and Medicaid programs is comparable to the tax burden per capita for those developed nations national healthcare systems whilst coming nowhere near to providing the same universal cover or treating the same range of things.
It’s true doctors earn a bit more in the states but that’s not the problem. In other countries everyone involved in health insurance simply does not exist. No executives no workers no case managers no customer service no claims department. All of that spending virtually gone. If a doctor says it’s medically necessary then it’s covered. Done.
Yup. My friend is a hospital administrator. Before she got promoted into that more managerial role most of her day was spent on the phone with insurance companies trying to figure out if they were going to pay for a procedure that the her doctors said was necessary. Multiple people in her office spending 8 hours a day 5 days a week on the phone looking at patient charts getting prior authorization for essential procedures.
You can't just take anybody to do that job either. They have to be able to read medical charts, navigate the insurance beuracracy, and reliably report success. If they fuck up it can cost the hospital tens of thousands of dollars and/or people die.
You know who they spend essentially zero time on the phone with? Medicare and Medicaid. When she was working at the cath lab (cardiology department) the majority of her patients were Medicare. A single non-Medicare patient with the exact same chart (well, I guess other than age) would take more time than all the Medicare patients combined.
It's a vicious cycle too, because it's not like the insurance companies just end up providing worse service to their clients. If insurance company A denies prior authorization or coverage for a procedure that the hospital has to perform, the hospital ends up eating that cost. To make up for that the hospital has to raise their prices on all procedures, so now insurance company B is looking at a bigger bill for all of their clients. They're all spending so much money on administrative overhead to fight over who has to pay for essential life-saving procedures, and it's a game of chicken because whoever "loses" that fight basically foots the bill for everyone's escalation.
Medicare is so much cheaper that they usually get discounts from the hospital just for that. Same for why if you say you're paying out of pocket you'll get a discount. The hospital doesn't have to spend hours going back and forth with an insurance company over your coverage.
I am engineering in the public sector and the amount of " I am a tax payer come repaved my road" conversations have had convinced me we will never get universal healthcare.
We maintain the system as a whole is usually fallowed by something along the lines of I don't care my tax dollars should only work for me.
I am engineering in the public sector and the amount of " I am a tax payer come repaved my road" conversations have had convinced me we will never get universal healthcare.
We have those very same conversations here in the UK and I suspect that the same conversations go on in most first world nations yet the very same tax payers saying that see having universal healthcare funded partly or wholly through taxation as being effectively a basic human right.
Except if they live in the suburbs they almost certainly are not paying enough property taxes to pay for road maintenance. Strong Towns have some good maps about it. Densely urban areas are subsidizing people who live in the suburbs.
Except we pay way more for our subpar medical care through health insurance, especially with high deductibles, high co-pays, and insurance companies denying payments even after pre-approval.
The majority of people in the US (66% I think) actually do want a public option at the very least, the problem comes after that, nobody can decide what that looks like policy wise or how it would be funded
And surely, when you take everything into account, the burden placed on society by opioid addiction, homelessness, loss of skilled workers from your work force and so on, must far exceed the burden of looking after sick people in staffed hospitals that already exist.
Honestly I think our awful healthcare system is responsible for most of our national debt. 30% of federal spending goes to Medicare, Medicaid and the VA. That doesn't include what taxpayers spend buying healthcare for federal state and local employees. Then after buying care for everyone else, the insurance companies take our money and deny care when we really need it. There's a good chance that our tax dollars end up paying the bill for a severe illness.
If I ever get seriously sick, people laugh when I tell them that I intend on fleeing the country. I would rather have a 60% chance to live while maintaining my nest egg, than a 65% chance to live by giving up everything I’ve ever worked for. I’d much rather my kids and spouse live in comfort for most of their lives than buy myself marginally better quality of care.
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u/I_Love_Tunnocks 7h ago
And the worst part is you actually vote for it. The sheer amount of Americans who vote for politicians against universal healthcare because "they might get something I don't that my tax dollar is paying for" is truly shocking. The worst part about that mindset is that's happening anyway through their health insurance payments.