American here.
We were taught in grade school that Europeans lived longer because of the Mediterranean diet they ate. They could eat good bread and drink red wine and out live us Americans.
Turns out it was universal healthcare. We’ll never get it here, and we’ll die earlier and poorer because of it.
The mediterranean and athlantic diets also help. But to have them you also need better quality foods, which are also worse in the US with all the derregulation.
Excuse me while I eat my super processed pringles, and wash it down with a super sugary drink.
And walking
with all the derregulation
yeah it’s a part deregulation but also the fact that US produces food in giga-farms in technical processes (like corn syrup and petroleum cheese) while in europe you have a whole lot more smaller regional farms which drives up the quality dramatically i believe. like, i think you probably won’t find something as good as french mold cheese in the US, simply because there’s not really any producers there. correct me if i’m wrong btw.
oh and also the fact that you need patience to really enjoy the food. if you’re always in a hustle (grindset), you won’t enjoy food anyways so there’s no point for food producers to produce better quality food if nobody appreciates it…
Not to mention they don’t live their lives in morbid anxiety over getting sick or injured. So that’s years more of life just by not being stressed and being able to think clearly.
Only people who live in the Mediterranean eat the Mediterranean diet. Frankly just because it’s better for you doesn’t mean it’s going to make you live longer necessarily it just won’t make you live shorter. And maybe they won’t have to make a special spherical coffin when you do die.
Glad you completely missed my point. I hope you enjoy dying earlier than anyone that has universal healthcare.
What are you on about?
Well, both are true. Apart of the traditional diet, European food regulations are solid and put consumers health above corporate benefits.
American food is almost as awful as American healthcare.
We were taught in grade school that Europeans lived longer because of the Mediterranean diet they ate.
I mean i’m pretty sure that plays a major role too. Italian diet is just on a whole other level
I mean, is it true that you eat cheese that is literally made of petroleum?
And don’t get me started on the cornflakes and sugary drinks.
It wasn’t universal healthcare, it was a combination of poor records restoration by the US Army after WW2 and rampant pension fraud.
what?
My daughter was in Ireland and had a problem that would have cost her a minimum of four thousand in the US with insurance. Her cost was 75 euros. They apologized for it not being complexly free.
Insurance is just a scam to keep people enslaved to jobs for their premiums and coverage. If only quality care wasn’t tied to employers’ insurance we might actually have competition back in the market. Have better products and a livable state of life. As someone on Medicare I can’t afford a 400% increase to my premium after tax credits are slashed in the coming years. Socialism is at least a band aid to our monolithic oppressive capitalist economy.
friendly reminder that mutual insurance exists, you can just pool your money together with other people to insure each other.
It’s probably the closest you can get to opting into socialism in a capitalist society.
Its just privatized socialism, where the rich get subsidized by the poors who have it but cant afford the minimum and co pays to actually use it.
For a nation with half of all citizens owning guns, it’s amazing that there isn’t more pressure on politicians to implement a universal healthcare scheme.
Lone wolves tend to target schools and workplaces.
It will always remain baffling to me that no rogue widows or widowers, by consequence of the system, don’t bring their grievances to those in charge of healthcare policy.
It will always remain baffling to me that no rogue widows or widowers, by consequence of the system, don’t bring their grievances to those in charge of healthcare policy.
I think last year someone did. And like the heroes from the old Western movies, (s)he vanished into the sunset, never to be seen again.
I have a friend who is a doctor and technically speaking Americans should get charged for medical treatment and then their insurance should pay for it, after all they are not citizens and don’t pay taxes. But no one seems all that clear on how to actually bill them so it almost always never happens.
The American system is so batshit crazy that no one else from any other country knows how to interface with it.
No one from the US knows how to interface with it either. It’s a giant unnavigable mess.
Yep
And they’ve been lied to not only about healthcare
They’ve also been lied to about work)life balance, about taxes for the rich, about cars and bicycles, about…
The US has become w cesspool over the past 5 decades basically because everyone there has been lying their asses off and nobody cared to force people to be truthful about anything
A good press could have stopped this tide but that’s gone since long ago too
I mean as cool as this is, it’s exactly the story the right uses to oppose it.
Non tax paying, non citizens getting subsidized healthcare. A conservative horror story for the ages
Conservatives are bad people and they should be prohibited from making policy decisions.
I have a similar story that works much better:
When I lived in Japan, I cracked a rib. Went to the doctor, got an x-ray, and a follow up appointment. Total cost to me, with insurance, ~$50. Cost without insurance (e.g. a tourist) would have been ~$160
Americans are so afraid of communism that they forgot the good things that it can bring. Capitalism on the other hand…
It’s not communism it’s just social responsibility. The medical services aren’t free they are paid for by society.
It’s just that your value to society is not prejudiced by some corporate overlord before you’re allowed to get your medical treatment.
Americans are so afraid of communism that they jump at shadows. It’s almost impossible to forward a progressive idea without being accused of being some evil communist. It’s kind of amazing the country has managed to get to 250 years without imploding
I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard someone use the term communism or socialism correctly.
He was murdered by communism
Communism didn’t bring this. Capitalism brought this. Trail blazed by the NHS, in the UK, the country that took capitalism global.
A bit confused arent you? Capitalism brought the opposite. Die next to me, while I’m finishing my cocktail.
True or false: The Netherlands, where Amsterdam is, is a capitalist country?
Sounds like COMMUNISM to me!
As an American, I’ll gladly support the world’s greatest economy by paying a few thousand to get checked out. Know why all these European countries are so poor? Because their health insurance and private health care companies barely make anything.
Do your part! Contribute to the economy!
God bless America!
Actually, private health companies make bank. Where I live, public health care is top notch, but you may have waiting lists, or have to share a room, and things like that. Private companies often provide more immediate appointments, single hospital rooms, certain diagnostics on demand, etc. Quite a few people either pay to have those plans, or their employer does. This is on top of public health care, not instead. You can have your cake and eat it too.
Because their health insurance and private health care companies barely make anything.
As an european, i didn’t even know we have private health care companies. We have private doctors, sure, where you pay a bit more in exchange they take a bit more time per patient, but public doctors are absolutely fine and do a good job, most of the time.
So, there’s no insurance company which could profit to begin with. I think the “insurance company” is actually ran by the state and operates as a non-profit.
Germany has private and federal insurance. You have to be insured in either one of them. Still, private insurance is not insanely expensive, the main downside is that you generally have to foot the bill first and then make a claim to your insurance carrier. The upside is that doctors know they get their money for everything, even the “unnecessary” tests, so you get preferential treatment like less wait times for medical imaging and such which is a constant point of contention and discussion as it somewhat introduces a medical caste system.
What makes the German system way less toxic tho is that insurance carriers cannot just deny your claim with bullshit cop-outs like “out-of-network hospitals” or such. That doesn’t exist.
France has some. They offer refunds on things that the public one doesn’t support, and you will need some of them a few times in your life. I would guess something around 800€ was spent on me for non-refunded stuff thus far. It probably wouldn’t justify getting an insurance, but it justifies their existence
You forgot the /s
If you need the /s, you don’t deserve the /s
Wtf? Do Americans not buy travel insurance when they leave the country?
it’s too expensive.
you forget, for Americans to leave the USA they are often spending $1000s on plane tickets. a ticket to my friends in Toronto is usually $300 for a cheap flight, average cost is closer to $500. Hotel for a 3-5 nights is another grand almost. Travel insurance is another 10% on top of all of that, or more.
Thousands?? I didn’t realize it was that expensive for you to go to Europe. Is it like some kind of export tax you guys are charging yourselves because I had always assumed you guys can fly for cheaper due to the sheer volume of flights.
Even from Vancouver to London, it looks like it’s less than $600US. I live in Japan right now and I’m headed to Germany next week, which is costing me $1000 ish per family member and I think I have to pay for insurance to be able to stay in the Schengen area.
If you ever find a cheap flight to Okinawa, hit me up and I’ll treat you to a beer!
The upper classes are the only ones that can afford to travel in the USA. And they look down on everyone else as uncultured swine for not doing so.
I never got on a plane until I was in college and my college paid for it. My first trip abroad to Germany was $5000, and the college paid for $5000 of it. I spent paid the other $1000 and incidentals and it wiped out two entire summers of employment worth of savings.
Most people in the USA are poor. The median wage is 60K for a family w two working adults. To travel w/ a family you have to be making closer to 250K/yr.
You just only meet rich americans. You think a plane ticket for $1000 is cheap… wow.
America could’ve had the first steps to this, but even democrats avoid it even if they have full house control, it’s out of control, I would not expect any reform unless it was PSL
No shit, our president has a horrible aversion to the truth and shit rolls downhill.
Yeah, but what’s the lie on this context? And it’s stating the obvious that the $0.00 bill is untrue because the $ is “added” taxes, it’s not free for the people there. I’m all for single-payer/socialized care, but this text is kinda crap.
IMO the buried story is that a foreigner got full, quality, unquestioned medical care and was not given a guilt trip or asked to pay. That’s the amazing part.
if you call health-care premiums a tax (a rose by any other name etc) - Americans pay more as an amount, a percentage and per capita anyway. The only difference is the name.
Yeah, Americans don’t just pay for healthcare but also to enrich insurance company workers. And even the healthcare part is gamed because the hospitals want to gouge the insurance companies for as much as possible, which then means the insurance companies reject some treatments (and guess who is ultimately paying for the people whose role is to deny as much coverage as possible?).
That wasn’t what I was arguing.
here’s how I read it:
“it’s not free because Europeans pay taxes”
“yeah, so do Americans, they just call it premiums rather than taxes, and when comparing that way, Americans still pay way more”
BuT bUt BuT tHe TaXeS!!
… I can almost guarantee the taxes are still less than the lost direct compensation from employers that instead goes to your insurance “benefit.” :/
I was doing the math on the new benefits package my company is rolling out and we’re getting close to the point it’d be cheaper in nearly every instance to simply not have health insurance. I’m literally only keeping it for that slim chance one of us becomes extremely ill and needs major medical intervention.
This industry is like a balloon waiting to pop.
Last I checked the US spent more than any comparable country on healthcare/capita, roughly twice the OECD average.
And, they have to deal with medical bankruptcies, using Uber instead of ambulances, insulin rationing, and whatnotIt’s the least effective system, but at least it’s not
communismsocialisma system where tax money is used to cover human rightsPlus hundreds of thousands of lawyers and lawsuits.
yup. Last time i checked, america was paying about $14K per capita, and the rest of the developed world was paying $3K-6K
but what about the shareholders?!?
exactly. Fuck the people, just as long as shareholders get that extra 1c per share.
yeah but why would I pay for healthcare if I’m healthy(now)!!??
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Healthcare is not cheap. I pay over a thousand euros per month. But it covers my whole family including me so its worth it.
I live in the Netherlands. If I visit the hospital I have to pay my yearly deductible of €350 first. This person paid zero dollars because her travel insurance paid for it.
The Netherlands has the same system as Obamacare. Privatized insurance with government subsidies for low income. Only difference is that the government sorta acts like a single payer, they negotiate with big pharma over medicine prices and the government with the insurers make a price list for healthcare providers on what they can charge.
Of course a healthcare provider can decide to charge whatever they want but then insurance won’t cover that business.
Only recently did the United States start treading into monopsony territory when it comes to healthcare funding. Specifically the cost of a certain small list of medicines.
Of course, those gains have been reversed by the shift in political winds, but there is a potential for this policy to expand in the future.
My deductible is something like $2,500 per person, $13,000 for the family deductible. Once we reach our deductibles we have the joy of coinsurance kicking in where insurance will pay for 50% and we pay the rest. I took a trip to the ER earlier this year for chest pains. They took a chest xray and had me on an EKG for an hour. I got a separate bill for each little thing they did from like 5 different companies (???) Totaling ~$4,000.
I also live here and I can see a consultation with my GP cost 20 eur per visit. So you have to pay 350 first only if its very expensive care.
A GP visit is fully covered by insurance, a visit to a specialist, like in an hospital, needs to be paid by the deductible first even for a mere consultation with a specialist. Doesn’t matter if it was expensive or not.
And if you visit a specialist without a referral from your GP or dentist then usually insurance won’t cover anything. Except for visits to the emergency room.
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The Netherlands is something like the 2nd most costly medical care in the world, far behind the US but still way more expensive than necessary. We had a “center right” party in power for ages, with their religious belief that the only way to do anything is for someone to make profit. 😑
Edit:
I just checked and we’re actually below Switzerland, Norway, and Germany. I’m shocked!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
The number for Germany seems to also include Lohnfortzahlung and Krankengeld (employer only pays part of a sick employee’s salary, rest is paid by health insurance) maybe that’s why. Germany is also a world champion of unnecessary surgeries.
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By about 50% more according to the bar chart in that link
