I was living in Germany in the '80s. My mom, a civilian US citizen, had to get a hysterectomy. She chose to go to a German hospital (as opposed to the US Military hospital) and just pay whatever it cost. She mentioned the other day she doesn’t think they ever sent her a bill.
I live in America. But I’m originally from Ukraine. Therefore I have many friends and family from there and because of the current situation I’ve known many people that came and are still coming over from there and they keep asking the same question: you really have to pay for the ambulance?
Then I tell them ambulances are privet for profit companies. And you can see them loosing all faith in America.
Personal anecdote: my father died of cancer 4 years ago. When they were transferring him from the hospital to hospice the paramedics asked him if he was ready and Dad said yes, he was ready for the last car ride of his life… They sent us a 5000 dollar bill for a 15 minute drive.
We didn’t pay it.
Even in Canada and Mexico this mostly works the same
IIRC, an ambulance here in Canada costs 80 dollars, any treatment in hospital is free
A single accident or illness can ruin your life and your family
Spending a single day at school can kill a child
If they live though that day, they might learn that abstinence is great sex Ed
Police officers can kill you without reason with impunity
Your leaders are all millionaires who will do anything to squeeze money out of you and you never even protest?
The US is a god godawful place to live
Billionaires (with a b as white says).
Quiet frankly millionaires (at least 7 figure earners) while not awesome are not nearly as predatory as those who’s net worth are represented in billions.
Acknowledging that leaving your dystopian hellhole called home is not a possibility for many people why are these people not on the streets protesting?
Diabetes care is criminal.
Maternity leave is criminal.
Labour laws are criminal.
And yet Americans writ large take it in the ass without batting an eye. Why?
Americans have been conditioned by media to think that their current state of things is desirable and even meritorious, as if having such services provided was…communist/socialist anit-american shit
We’re slaves, it’s hard for slaves to liberate themselves in a police state.
I agree though, we have to fight back
What little care we can receive is contingent on having a full time job. Putting food on our tables and keeping a roof over our heads is also contingent on having a full time job, if not a second job on top of that. Everyone is working all the time. We don’t have time to go out onto the streets and protest. This is by design. This is our shitty system working exactly as it’s intended, and it’s designed to keep itself intact by forcing the people it fucks over to struggle to survive, so that we’re so preoccupied with existing that we can’t realistically enact change.
And there is much eye batting, don’t get it twisted. It’s just that batting eyes is about all we have energy for at the end of the day.
I work a salaried full time job that provides me absolutely zero health care coverage of any kind. I’m on the ultra-budget tier of healthcare.gov benefits and my taxes get brutalized every spring because I “earn too much” to be on it.
Given the opportunity I would gladly push a guillotine around town, and when that’s done I’d push it toward the state capitol and beyond. That opportunity will never come.
I would say most people, if not distracted by things, don’t want to be arrested and beat then disappeared, to also have your whole life opened up to the world and they make things up about you to make you look bad and like you’re a terrorist or something. Not to mention a lot of people are severely broke so good luck getting out there. No one here seems to care about the other person either, it’s all very individualistic by design to keep you from forming groups. Trying to convince people almost goes nowhere. It’s not like people like taking this in the ass, they’re either too stupid, too afraid, or too self absorbed if they happen to not be broke or ill. It’s a lot of factors. Sure, you could say it’s an excuse, but that is why (in my opinion) no one is seeming to do a lot. Not to mention, even if people are doing something, again, they’re either labeled as a terrorist or it’s not covered by the media at all; suppressed. Adding this as an edit: on top of all of the above mentioned stuff here, there is also no one who would try to save us or care. Our image as a nation is obviously not great everywhere else in the world. And don’t mistake it, I’m not saying the US is entitled to help from anyone else, but judging by how things have been historically, no one is going to care about us. At least not as far as most people here who can actually use their braincells will know that no one anywhere else will care and may even celebrate the downfall or just straight up ignore this.
What is the expected results of such protest the monied interests and the top half have most of the money like 88% of the wealth and closer to 100% of the liquid wealth. This money pays for the campaigns of the politicians who are beholden to it.
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I know expensive, shitty healthcare in the USA is a stereotype, but in my experience it’s also largely true. Maybe it’s because I’m not wealthy or connected enough to have access to the good stuff, though?
The bills for my latest medical emergency are rolling in now.
The $1,000 USD ambulance bill is almost a relief, since I’ve heard others say their ride cost several times more than that. I declined pretty much all medical care in the ambulance and all offers for medication/treatment, though, so maybe that’s part of it. Had I lost consciousness, I likely wouldn’t have been able to say no.
The $2,000 USD emergency room bill? That’s just the part that I have to pay out of pocket. The actual price they charged my insurance is $6,000+ for my slightly more than 90 minutes on a stretcher in the hallway. And it doesn’t seem to have covered anything specific because the imaging (which I didn’t even need), treatment, medications (which I would have refused if I knew how much they charged but they don’t know that and can’t tell you ahead of time), individual nurses, etc are all billed as separate line items. I was even charged thousands of dollars by a doctor I never even saw in person. I joked in another thread recently about $45 tylenol, but that’s actually true. I’m paying $45 for 800mg of tylenol.
Months later, the billing part isn’t even finalized. New claims/bills showed up literally 2 days ago, well after I thought I was done paying. Thousands of dollars out of pocket, on top of paying a thousand dollars a month for insurance.
At least the medical professionals that treated me were great.
I know expensive, shitty healthcare in the USA is a stereotype, but in my experience it’s also largely true
I had a brain injury from a bicycle accident. The fact that my health has bounced back, but my finances likely never will, tells me everything I need to know about our system. One injury, and I now have a lifetime of bills to pay off. I guess it makes sense in some sick way, I do owe them my life, but man, they don’t let me forget (even if my broken brain tries).
Over 60% of all private bankruptcies in the US are due to medical issues. The system is broken
The system is working as designed.
It’s designed to be predatory and evil.
Two major studies in California found 70% of the homeless were employed “productive” members of society before injury/illness forced loss of income, then housing. Yes the system is broken.
This is crazy. I once stayed at a hospital for two months, countless ultrasounds, even an invasive procedure where they sent probes down my veins, two MRI’s and the final cost was around 5k… payed by state supplied insurance. I payed 0 and even got payed 80% of my wages… cause that’s the law.
9 months of chemo, countless tests, scans, meds, consults, two stints in ICU…$0
'Straayaaaaa
In the US right? FMLA? I was also out for about 6 months but received full pay, not 80%.
FMLA is unpaid. You only get paid to miss work if you use your vacation time or if you had paid for short term disability insurance, otherwise you are fucked. I know a woman who was forced to return to work 6 weeks after giving birth because her leave was unpaid and she couldn’t afford to take any more unpaid leave
I did not need to use my vacation time and did not have short term disability. Sounds like my company did me a solid
At least the medical professionals that treated me were great
last time i was in the hospital in the states the nurses and the hospitalist intentionally tried to kill me via malpractice.
I’ve had good hospital experiences, but not in the last ten years.
As someone who hasn’t been to a hospital since he was 13 I would love to hear wtf I’m in for when it inevitably happens. Why would they do that? What did they do? Was it subtle? Stupid?
I’ve worked in a few US hospitals (in the lab, but we worked closely with nurses and doctors) and by far the biggest danger I observed (other than insurance practicing medicine without a license) was nurses and doctors making mistakes due to sleep deprivation. Doctors and nurses will work 14 hours, get called in to the ER multiple times throughout the night, and then try to work another 12 hour shift without sleep.
Another huge risk factor was overworking nurses by giving them too many patients to care for. Nurses need patient caps of 5 or 6 because each additional patient increases the risk of someone dying by 20%
short version, not subtle, very stupid. i had an acute condition with one and only one accepted course of treatment. nurse put in orders to do something very different, which likely would have caused a massive organ rupture if i wasn’t keeping track of every minutiae they did while trying to treat me. i refused the new treatment and wasn’t harmed, but the MD signed off on it. as it was i left the hospital severly dehydrated because they were refusing me IV fluids while i was NPO.
Last time I was in the states the doctors and nurses murdered me in my hospital bed.
Are you a newt or did it get better?
Am newt
And they probably even spoke English with him.
Of course they did. An US-american speaking any language but their version of English fluently is quite rare, if you don’t count the latinos
In America, it’s actually cheaper just to discard the kid and start over.
“Ah, shucks, this one broke! Shame, had a good run too”
IRL Roguelike. Restart when you get some some bad RNG.
Giving birth is also super expensive though
I once was visiting Detroit and got very drunk My airbnb. wasn’t far from the bar and I was way too loaded for a taxi to take me back, and it was a nice night so I decided to walk back to the airbnb I made it about 200 steps and felt something Hit me in the head. Someone was grabbing at my pocket and I guess I successfully stopped them from stealth by my wallet since it’s all ripped.
Anyway my head is split open and there’s blood fucking everywhere. I tried dialing 911on my phone. Not sure if you’ve ever tried making a call on a bloood covered phone when you can’t see because you’re blind drunk and your vision is obscured by blood but it’s impossible. Anyway, a couple of people see me and get me an ambulance.
Now, I’m from Canada, and I THINK that I had international health insurance from work but I’m not sure. Anyway, they deal with the blood and tell me I’ll need stitches in the emergency room but I’m still loaded and the bleeding stopped so I ask if I can just leave and they’re like: no.
I call my buddy who shows up to take me back to the airbnb but I tell him: I’m not getting stuck with a fucking American hospital bill. Fuck this. Just walk out and I’ll meet you out front. I wait until the nurse is out of eye sight, crouch low and run past the admissions desk and out into the street, where my friend calls a very kind cab driver who sold us some decent cocaine.
I hope the rest of your night goes ok then. Let us know when you get the stitches.
This was like 6 years ago. Didn’t get any stitches. I thought I’d have a badass scar but it faded pretty quickly.
Fucking Americans lol
Hey, don’t pin that one on us. Canucks are crazier than us about this shit
In general, you’re allowed to refuse treatment. That’s bodily autonomy in action.
They’ll want you to sign a form saying you’re leaving AMA (against medical advice), but other than that and arguing with the nurses and doctors about leaving vs staying for treatment, they really can’t keep you… Unless you’re under arrest, which, it does not sound like you were.
In any case, it’s your life and your body, you can choose to, or refuse to, do whatever you want with it, provided that you’re not breaking any laws by doing so.
I mean I believe you but the nurse told me I wasn’t allowed to leave so.
It’s not a prison.
That nurse is probably just bad at their job.
Bodily autonomy? In the US?
Friend, your body belongs to the state, which belongs to the corporations. That’s called freedom.
So glad I don’t live there.
as a European it blows my mind that this is not the norm is many parts of the world :(
Yeah, this was my take too.
Guy seems amazed by it, I thought I’d missed something…
I think a lot of people in the US have their head so far up their ass being racist and doing other xenophobia, they’d rather drown in their own shit than than have “one of them” get something “for free”.
That’s what 60+ years of fascism-directed conservative politics distributed by the likes of Fox News, systematic defunding of public education, and an almost complete halt in wage increases so 90% of the population no longer has any discretionary income and is essentially forced to work paycheck to paycheck has given us. It’s working exactly as intended.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
-President Lyndon B. JohnsonThe US is an experiment in how much the people will take before they actually start a revolution. Turns out they take it all and they won’t start a revolution ever.
My limited knowledge of history suggests that it’s always something really random that finally sets off a revolution. Real “straw that broke the camel’s back” stuff. For example, Mohamed Bouazizi sets himself on fire and suddenly the entire Middle East is experiencing the Arab Spring. There was a lot of discontent leading up to it, but in the grand scheme of things, nobody could have predicted that that would be the final straw.
To borrow some terminology from Criminal Minds, there’s a difference between a stressor and a trigger.
We USAmericans love our bread and circuses!
Bad bread and boring circus 🤷♂️
, systematic defending of public education
Going to assume you meant “defunding of public education”, heh.
Damn autocorrect, it was expanded saying now it can fix grammar and stuff beyond just spelling, but then it completely ignores that same stuff if it’s close enough. Technically I guess that sentence still made sense, and it’s not smart enough to discern context.
They CLAIMED AI fixes this. Of course it’s a lie.
If anything autocorrect keeps getting worse. I’m pretty sure apple keeps deleting wrongthink words from the dictionary on their devices.
Every few years I go “ugh autocorrect is terrible, I’m turning it off!” And in the past I have eventually come back to it. Not anymore. Going without autocorrect is actually better than having it in 2025.
To be clear, those conservative politics are shared by both parties. How often do you see Blue Dig Democrats extolling Clinton for balancing the budget (by cutting welfare) or Biden for securing the border (by locking more migrants in cages)
I never tried to claim the Democrats haven’t followed right behind the Republicans as they marched their happy asses straight towards fascism.
Without exception, every problem with the US has a straightforward and realizable solution being blocked by a piece of shit who cannot accept even the slimmest of chances that someone they consider undeserving might possibly, in some small way, benefit.
I don’t think that is the motive.
Usually there is a middleman that is blocking and change because they will lose money otherwise.
It’s both, the middle man gets to do his thing because of the racism of the others.
The middle man also does everything he can to feed and expand that racism in order to benefit from it.
Very much so, and buys politicians to further that cause.
That’s a fairly standard response of the right-wing internationally. The key is to just straight up ignore them.
This is the sad truth. We are unusually extreme in that sense. But despite this right wing lunacy and constant barrage of propaganda, most folks do support something like Medicare for all. Even people who vote Republican! So I keep hope alive.
Have you ever been to the USA?
I live there and can tell you that statement is quite on the mark.
I live there. Why?
I live there and this is accurate.
Have you?
I once collapsed and lost consciousness in the streets in Russia. Someone must have called an ambulance. I woke up in a hospital with a woman yelling at me for my insurance number. (I am a Russian citizen but I have never lived there, I tried explaining I had a traveller’s insurance, but she didn’t understand what I meant.) Anyway, after I got treated they released me basically as Jane Doe, I never got billed anything.
Over the course of the years I had to go to a hospital in Russia two more times. Each time they would rather not bother with figuring out how international insurance works (basically, I would pay a bill and then send it in to the insurance company and they would reimburse me - I explained that over and over) and just let me go free of charge.
The treatment was good and professional and stereotypically unkind. I’m still amazed by how they’d rather not bill you because they aren’t sure what you’re talking about than try to get the money and let you figure out how to pay it. Too much of a hassle I guess.
“just whatsapped me”
Lol, fuck off, he sent you a message, not all apps and websites need to become a fucking verb
nah I like to flex that one of my friends Signaled me
at least that’s an actual English verb
War plans?
maybe
Your mom just Bumbled me.
Jokes on you, you grandma just Onlyfansed me
Doesn’t signalling someone sound like your “saying you available either romantically or sexually” or is that just the weird way my brain works
Standing in the street outside your crushes house, flag in each hand, trying desperately to remember the proper way to signal “will you go out with me” in semaphore.
I think it’s such a general word that your association says something about what subjects are on the top of your mind.
My association was hand gestures, or more comically, flag signals :D
You could just say I’m a bit of a freak :P
But yeah that checks out
I think that’s just you.
Or maybe it’s the signal to like, commence the flashmob.
Odd hill to die on but I’m kinda for it.
Yeah I’m gonna pipe my opinion here too. If I said “so and so signaled me” that would be very weird in any context. Facebook Messengered me? iMessaged me? Smsed me? Snapchatted me? I mean fuck twitter people said “dmed” me not twittered me
If you told someone in Europe you were going to txt them they would think you were weird
“What you don’t have whatsapp? It’s literally free”
Europeans don’t text, they use messenger apps, mostly WhatsApp
Europeans don’t text, they use messenger apps
It really depends on the country. SMS is still commonly used in France for instance.
French people actually use MMS, which I never thought anyone would.
I wonder if France had cheaper SMS rates in the early 2000s because that was the big driver of WhatsApp. I have to admit though in my experience I don’t think I know of any situation where someone from France has ever used anything other than WhatsApp. I would hate it if they texted me because then it wouldn’t auto translate.
Standard mobile plans in France have included unlimited SMS since the mid 2000s I’d say. People still use it, but WhatsApp/Messenger are pretty popular too.
Europeans don’t text, they use messenger apps, mostly WhatsApp
That’s texting and anyone who says it isn’t is a fucking idiot, unless they’re only communicating via emoji or some wild shit
There’s a lot of people who have never been to, and never even tried to learn what things are like in Europe
And it shows
I would be embarrased dying on a hill i was ignorant of
I would be embarrased dying on a hill i was ignorant of
Says the person claiming sending a text-based message isn’t texting
There’s a lot of people who have never been to, and never even tried to learn what things are like in Europe
And it shows
I would be embarrased dying on a hill i was ignorant of
In my country SMS is free
True but only if you really specify “SMS”, because if you just say “I’ll text you” they’ll just assume that means WhatsApp/messenger.
This is a very American mindset though because people absolutely do say “I’m going to whatsapp you”.
It’d come down to popularity and ease of use, right? I don’t know if it’s “good” generally to verb a company, but if it’s popular and either easy to say or easy to shorten, it’ll be easy to turn into a verb. Surprisingly, I hear “snapchatted me” not uncommonly, despite not using Snapchat myself.
Twittered me doesn’t work, because dms aren’t the primary use. If someone said “oh i’ll twitter you” I’d assume it’d be a post pinging me or something and think it’s kind of a strange way to say that. If dms were the primary use case of Twitter on release, I think “tweet” probably would have gone there, and if tweet wasn’t decided on early posting on twitter would just become “twittered” or probably more like twiting, has to be short and catchy after all.
iMessage and Facebook Messenger I believe are both default apps (less sure about fb Messenger, might be my memory playing tricks on me). The default message app is “texting”, which I think is why the others get verbed. Also doesn’t help that Messenger isn’t that distinct from “message” which is what text means anyways, and Facebook falls into the Twitter problem. Not a lot of good ways to abbreviate for speech either.
I imagine Signal just isn’t popular enough, I don’t know if I went to a group of people they would know what I meant. Definitely can’t help that “signalling” is a real word with a different meaning that humans regularly do, so if you use it with someone who doesn’t know they’ll just be confused. If you were with a group that had the main chat in signal, I think saying “oh yeah I’ll signal you” wouldn’t be like an outrageous thing to say. Might be different since for Signal users it tends to be a full or almost full replacement, so saying “text” implies “signal”.
Why would that be a hill to die on? It was just a response. No one was insisting on anything.
What a weird thing to get angry at.
I think using brands as verbs might be very normalised in the US but it’s less common elsewhere.
It’s not offensive but it’s… jarring or noticeable.
Here no one would say whatsapped or telegramed or signalled. It’s just messaged.
Are they angry?
Plus the additional information can be useful. If someone says “I’ll whatsapp you the details” you might respond with: “No I don’t have internet connection, just SMS me instead” or “I don’t use whatsapp, how about signal”. At the very least you know where to look for the message
Easy to say when you have balls of steel
Lemmites love to find the most pointless pretentious things to get high and mighty over.
Fred Grindred me last night.
It’s like those guys that name brand EVERYTHING.
“Can you get my iPhone 17 extreme from my Hermes leather jacket, it’s in the backseat of my Audi R8.”
…fucking cringe.
VELCRO EXCEPTION!
“Is that xerox a Canon?”
Whatsapp is the only real form of instant communication in my country (Jamaica), because it still costs money to send texts and a lot of other messaging services aren’t even available/supported in the region.
No way in hell do I believe that Signal won’t work on Jamaica.
Signal did not replace expensive texting and offer free wireless communication for the first time EVER in basically every developing country. Get off your high horse.
Tons of things work.
When people say things like that, they don’t understand technology and just say that the popular thing is the “only” way.
In my case, good luck convincing the average Jamaican to switch to Signal, same problem everywhere! Just trying to give context to the verb “whatsapp”.
I don’t think they actually said that I think they were just saying that WhatsApp is the primary method of communication in Jamaica
a lot of other messaging services aren’t even available/supported in the region.
They were clearly saying that
It was probably easier to say that, than explain the social forces at work, but still, they said it.
It’s not relevant to the point I was making, even if it’s the only thing that’s used it doesn’t mean that a text message becomes “a WhatsApp” or that you get “whatsapped”.
It might not have been a message, it might have been a WhatsApp video call. In which case ‘whatsapped me’ is a little shorter than ‘just video called me’ or ‘just WhatsApp video called me’.
The app is over a decade in popular use, people will integrate it into language.
Yeah those two characters of savings will really translate into something significant
Whatapp is the preferred messaging app for most of europe because it subverts the complicated and sometimes expensive telephone networks
It’s the same as saying you txted someone
All my international coworkers when I travel ask me to use WhatsApp. It saves them money and makes it easy to connect to others. Anyone in this thread shitting on it has either never traveled internationally or is just an asshole.
I am the asshole.
I refuse to install that goddamn app.
When I’m in Europe and people want to catch up, I’m the one forcing them to open their email. Or to actually dial the phone.
Or uses signal, the better version
I don’t know why people think that that’s some kind of argument.
The better version is the version that people use. WhatsApp is the better version because that’s the version everyone uses
No one is shitting on the app, I’m shitting on the language used, go read what I wrote again.
Or if you prefer
No one is Totoing on the app, I’m American Standarding on the language used, go read what I Gboarded again.
I wasn’t replying directly to you and was replying to someone else, adding support to what they said. Context matters, but I can see why you could take what I said out of context.
Personally I will use whatever app as a verb if it suits the moment or conversation at hand. Language can be fluid and doesn’t always have to conform to a strict set of rules - see slang used in any language globally.
Yep, I agree it’s pretty annoying. What’s ironic though is that in the spirit of shortening everything (like many Americans seem to do), “texted” would’ve been shorter (and in this instance there’s nothing particular about which app they used to do that).
It might be to highlight that he used WhatsApp, which is popular in Europe but not America.
Sure, but it still doesn’t change the story. It’s a piece of text, it gets from one person to the other over a mobile network or over the Internet.
Whatsapp doesn’t use the SMS protocol though so if you send a WhatsApp message it doesn’t appear as a text message it appears in the WhatsApp app, you have to have the app installed so it is a significant distinction to make.
When I’m dealing with clients I’m mostly told to send them a WhatsApp message but occasionally they will tell me to send a text message and that means that they don’t have WhatsApp and I actually have to use the SMS system. They just say WhatsApp or text and know that I’ll be able to work it out.
I know how it works. Texting sometimes means SMS specifically, but other times it might mean messaging over any non-SMS app/protocol.
Yes but for us reading the story it’s irrelevant if he received a WhatsApp, signal or SMS message
And that message is received in a text form, hell, use “messaged me” if you prefer, I don’t care
Just to avoid any false impressions: healthcare is not free in Germany. You should always get travel health insurance. Having said that, it’s pretty affordable. I pay about €80 a year for me and my wife for worldwide coverage.
Same in Ireland but a trip to the emergency room (including ambulance if you need it) sets you back €100 euro which is about $110 USD.
2nd last time I was in one there was an American couple across from us whose daughter had gone into a seizure in their hotel. We ended up chatting a good bit and I honestly was very glad for them that they weren’t paying American pricing.
Last time I was in one we had a referral from our doctor so it was free (there’s a filtering process to stop people with a cold coming to emergency) Included an MRI for my daughter and we’ve a follow up coming. Again all free.
So when you say it’s not free, it’s strictly true but holy moly the difference in potentially life destroying cost and not having to weigh that up. It saves lives.
In Germany you would need to pay a copay for the ambulance between 5-10€, the emergency room would be fully covered. Only if you get admitted you would be charged a copay of 10€/day up to 30 days a year. For prescription medications there is also a copay between 5-10€ for each of them.
All Co-Pays are capped at 2% of your yearly income, or 1% if you suffer from chronic diseases
My son was in the hospital for 4 days and the charge was $20,000.
The ER visit before admitting was a separate $2,000 charge.We have insurance, so we only had to pay around $8,000 out of pocket. It would have been less, but some of the people in the hospital didn’t take our insurance, and our insurance also said that some procedures were overpriced so they only paid the amount they thought was fair.
We didn’t get to pick any of the people who provided care, and we were not presented with the ability to negotiate on prices to make sure our insurance wasn’t being taken advantage of while they were doing respiratory therapy on our baby.
Our entire system needs to be torn the fuck down and be replaced with something entirely free. I don’t even give a fuck about people abusing the system at this point. Fuck it, let it cover elective cosmetic surgery. Never say no to anyone unless the doctor says it first.
My taxes will go up, but I can fucking promise they won’t go up by as much as I’d be saving in premium.
Because of right, I pay hundreds of dollars a month for the insurance that then only pays once I get fucked hard enough, and then still doesn’t pay for all of it.
Fuck the entire industry, fire them all and seize their assets.And I’m well off compared to a lot of people.
Better yet, have Mario pay them a visit. They have more than earned it! 👹
Our entire system needs to be torn the fuck down and be replaced with something entirely free. I don’t even give a fuck about people abusing the system at this point.
Make a lemmy community and make people subscribe who want change.
The American system for me.
Halfway through the year cost so far:
Relatively inexpensive union insurance for the family $2310. Out of pocket expenses so far $3,700. Total $6010 so far…
Estimated total by the end of the year - $2310 in insurance premiums, 3,000 out of pocket.
Yearly estimated total $11,320.
2 years ago we had the corporate America special. Premium was $16,200, out of pocket was 8,000. $24,200 was the total cost. It was 26.8% of my gross income that year.
Well 2310$ per year isn’t that much.
In Germany the statutory Health insurance is 14,6% of your salary, capped at a maximum of 942€/month (half paid by you, half paid by your employer ), this also covers your children and your wife if she’s not working.
But on the other hand, there won’t be any significant out of pocket expenses here
Tourists pay for healthcare in Britain, and pay a charge as part of the visa costs, as well as expenses if they use it. except for emergency care, which is always free for everyone.
I pay $250 in copay if I drive too close to a hospital in the US.
But after $5,500 out of pocket, the insurance will start paying.
It’s literally robbery. They’re legal thieves. They collect until you’re dead, and they sure as hell aren’t lifting a finger to keep you alive.
United Healthcare got caught forging DNRs. So they will definitely lift a finger, to kill you!
That’s literal, actual murder. No hyperbole.
Faking documentation to make people die
“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”
That’s basically free to Americans. We pay that per visit if we are lucky. Health insurance here exists to make a profit, not to help people out when they need it.
More death = More profit
It’s only the charge for the extra travel insurance. The actual health care itself costs a lot more and depends on your income. Don’t think it’s just 80€ a month. I wish it were
Correct. That’s just travel insurance. Regular health insurance is calculated as a percentage of your salary and it’s anything but cheap. A lot better than in the US, though.
I pay $80 twice a week for coverage for my wife and myself in only a very limited fraction of US facilities.
To be clear, that’s 100× as much money for far less coverage.
Where do you get travel health insurance from?
From commercial providers. It’s not necessary for EU Citizens travelling inside the EU/EEA as they are treated like people in the national systems for emergencies.
But it simplifies a lot because you can go to any doctor and sometimes they play dumb and pretend they don’t know about the rules and want to force you to pay out of pocket (Happened to me in Austria, I’ve just reported them to the Austrian Health Insurance, he wanted 200€ which is outrageous overpriced and was a contracted doctor of ÖGK). Especially in Eastern Europe. But that applies only to GPs, Hospitals usually play by the rules.
And it’s also useful for travelling outside of the EU
Especially in Eastern Europe.
In post-Soviet countries, it was sadly normal that doctors would demand bribes on top of state insurance. The most outrageous shit I heard was and ob/gyn charging a months salary for a birth, half a month if it turned out to be a girl.
Not necessary but some countries have a deductible. Like in the Netherlands hospitals will charge you up to €380 and only claim the costs above that amount from your insurer. So cheaper to get travel insurance.
If that’s all you’re worried about then paying a insurance 20-80€ a year to insure a risk of 380€ would be a pretty stupid idea, and on average certainly not cheaper
You don’t have to pay every year if you are not going on holiday every year. Also not everything will be covered by your normal health insurance, like if you need to get air lifted back home.
Thanks. I should have been more specific on my question, thats on me. Like, would I get it through my current health insurance in the US, like an addon to my plan? Or would I get it through a provider in the country/EU where I would travel too?
Squaremouth (weird name) is like a kayak.com site for travel insurance. Just put in your details and it’ll give you a big list to pick from based on price, coverage, etc.
I don’t know much about the US health plans, you might check if they have some special offers, or if they are valid worldwide. I’ve bought mine through Allianz, a big German insurance company.
They seem to offer travel insurance in the US too. But it’s much more expensive and they have pretty low coverage limits in the US. (Here I pay 30€ a year and don’t have any coverage limits for medical costs, there I was quoted 400$ a year for much shittier coverage). But you can compare yourself
https://www.allianztravelinsurance.com/
https://www.allianz.de/gesundheit/reisekrankenversicherung/rechner/#/angebot
Same in the Netherlands. If you are uninsured and not an EU citizen an ambulance can cost you €400 to €700. And even if you have European health insurance you still need to pay the €380 deductible if you need to visit the hospital. And if you are not an EU citizen but have travel insurance you probably need to pay the hospital bill upfront.
The Netherlands has a privatized health insurance system. So yeah don’t expect free healthcare if you visit.
Yeah some of us are poor enough to never forget how obscenely predatory America in general, and capitalism in specific, are.
This is the most “American abroad” story I ever read lol
