This comes up whenever the conversation with my mom turns political. I point out that Canada has free health care and they're not communist, and she says 'That's why they all come to America for surgeries, the doctors up there isn't as good!'
Some richer Canadians do do that, it's true, or they go to a private clinic or doctor up here (which do exist despite our communist hellhole) but the average Canadian isn't chomping at the bit to drop... I don't even know anymore EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS on heart surgery
Is it eight million dollars? Twenty minutes ago I thought the expensive ambulance was like two hundred bucks so i'm gonna assume it's eight million dollars.
I shit you not, I know someone whose kid needed to be in the NICU for several months, and their bill, before insurance coverage, was nearly a million dollars
Wait, hold on. So you still have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for healthcare AND hundreds of dollars for the insurance that doesn't cover all of your healthcare?
I got into this with becca's dad at one point and his argument was that public schools and infrastructure both suck, so socialized medicine would obviously be horrendous
The high cost of health care is being blamed on illegal immigrants getting emergency services for free because doctors are required to treat them, and somehow people believe that.
I have good insurance for an American because I have a union job and my union fought to keep our good insurance. I still paid nearly 1k out of pocket for an uncomplicated birth
most insurance plans are high-deductible too. i have insurance through my employer and it's about $150/mo in premiums with a $3,000 deductible, and that's considered good tbh
thankfully it also covers prescriptions before the deductible is met but i still have to pay $70/mo for my anti-depressants because they're still under patent and there's no generics yet
at my last job, i had a $3,000 deductible and it didn't cover medications before the deductible was met, so at the start of every year i had a good 4 or 5 months of being completely fucking broke and dipping into my savings while i paid $500+ a month on medication alone until i finally met the deductible and the insurance kicked in
insurance covered it so i only had to pay what was remaining to hit my out-of-pocket maximum, so it was around $2,500 out of pocket and insurance covered the rest
but ofc that makes things worse because with fewer people in the risk pool, it's the people who need insurance that get it, so premiums increase to cover the difference.........
people who pearl-clutch about ~SOCIALIZED MEDICINE~ honestly don't understand the difference between nationalized healthcare and single-payer healthcare, and they're so used to the system we have now that they can't imagine an alternative
oh yeah, here's an especially upsetting fact about US healthcare: so when the hospital bills your insurance, the insurance company has a set amount that they've agreed to pay for each thing being billed. like "we'll pay up to $X for a saline IV" and if the hospital bills $X+Y then they're still only paying $X
you're completely on the hook for that extra $Y, with no assistance from your insurance, in fact it doesn't even go toward your deductible or out-of-pocket maximum at all because as far as insurance is concerned they already paid the amount the hospital was allowed to charge
I remember once when going back and forth with a doctor about my colitis, I wound up waiting for like seven hours at a hospital to see someone who did absolutely nothing for me. I had to pay hundreds of dollars for my troubles. With insurance.
so when the hospital bills your insurance, the insurance company has a set amount that they've agreed to pay for each thing being billed. like "we'll pay up to $X for a saline IV" and if the hospital bills $X+Y then they're still only paying $X