Well, here in Germany you're paying (you have to) around 15% of your gross income for health insurance plus 3.4% for intensive care insurance. Your employer pays for half of those. Insurances are expensive but if you need them it's cheaper than paying for treatment yourself. What I pearsonally find worse is the public tv and radio fee you have to pay each month (18 euros, same as netflix premium) to finance some dickwad director earning 200k+ even if you don't watch or even have a tv/radio. Also it doesn't matter how much you earn, the fee is the same.
So workers pay 7.3% and employers pay 7.3%? It covers all of your health care costs? U.S. insurance varies in cost but we have medical bills on top of insurance costs.
Yep, all covered except for some extra stuff like getting your teeth deep-cleaned by your dentist or some premium dental prosthetics, but they usually subsidize it. Edit: also having most people enrolled in the public insurance (wealthier people have private insurance) makes this system possible, at least for now.
The public broadcasting fees are important to prevent private monopolies. To add some context to non germans: The most people here who cry about the fee are far right wingers because the public channels are the only ones really doing work to uncover things like Nazis in the police.
And if you are without a job you dont have to pay it.
I find it interesting that u mention the German public broadcasting fee in a post about healthinsurance fees. Anyway I see the point why some criticise this specific fee. Imo the fact that is actually a separate "fee" and not hidden behind general state funding as taxes is the problem why people even mention it. Obviously when we would talk about taxes you will see there are much more fucked up ways where your tax is wasted. Anyway most of Europe does indeed have public broadcasting that is funded by public money. That is because they are indeed supposed to serve the public. In the EU, they are organized in the Eu Broadcasring Union. There is are very lengthy wiki articles on the history on PB or the EBU. However the gist of why this is such a vital concept could maybe summarized as " EBU members are public service media (PSM) broadcasters whose output is made, financed, and controlled by the public, for the public. PSM broadcasters are often established by law but are non-partisan, independent and run for the benefit of society as a whole."
This is very ironic if you work for an insurance company.
I imagine working for a major health insurance provider... One would use them for health insurance?
Would be a shame if you had an...accident
Has an accident
Insurance company that won't help you: ...... Isn't that a shame :(
You're paying for a service. How much of your paycheck are they taking anyway? Mine is less than 5%. $70 a week. It's not a whole lot.
statistically Americans pay twice as much in insurance and taxes as Europeans pay in just taxes for healthcare
What about the money your company pays for the healthcare? I only see ~$350 a year deducted from my paycheck to pay for my insurance, but according to my W2, my employer pays another $8,000 per year to the insurance company. You're paying a lot more for your health insurance than you see on your paychecks.
So many fucking people fight me on this...
The company sees your benefits as part of your total compensation. They factor all of it in when considering your "value." If they weren't paying the insurance they'd need to pay you more to maintain a level of competitiveness that they claim the benefits add... Not to mention if everyone working paid a healthcare tax there's no way in fucking hell it would be $1,200+ a month like it currently is... Not to mention eliminating the need for profits which add to the costs...
Ever had to fight with an insurance company?
I have insurance. I went to urgent care when I was pretty sure I had the flu or COVID or something about a year ago (just slightly before COVID was declared "over.") I paid my copay for doctors office visit, I was in there for about an hour, with roughly 40 minutes of that sitting in a room waiting for a doctor (in an empty clinic) and then had a flu test and a COVID test.
They still sent me to collections for $350 for this visit. I pay a stupid amount for insurance, which my employer subsidizes, and I still can't even get a fucking flu/COVID test apparently.
For profit health insurance in America is evil. It is easily one of the most fucked up things about this country that we just absolutely ignore.
Nope... Only providers for screwing up basic billing to my insurance.
Every damn provider I seem to have in my area can't fucking code and bill the correct insurance no matter how much hand holding you do for them. Or worse, they wait 6-10 months before they even send the bill and of course insurance doesn't want to go back that far. Then they try to bill me.
TL;DR... No it's always a fight with the doctors office, never the insurance for me.
How is your deductible and max out of pocket? You don't count that? Lol I don't run into too many people who say anything good about our healthcare scam system.
I guess I pay a similar amount as you; around £230 a month in National Insurance. According to XE that's about $280.
And yeah, that's not a bad amount to cover any medical needs I might have.
The difference is that, by and large, that's all I pay. If I got hit by a car tomorrow, I wouldn't get charged a penny for the paramedic, for the equipment they use to help me, for the ambulance to take me to hospital, for the doctors and nurses who patch me up, and for all the physio, medications and aftercare I'll need.
I'll pay ~£10 per prescription, but if I develop a chronic, life threatening condition, that fee will be waived. If I don't, then I can pay a flat annual fee of £110 and receive as many prescriptions as I need.
Also, my National Insurance contributions (theoretically) ensure that when I reach retirement age I'll be able to receive a state pension.
The NHS is something that I'll fight tooth and nail to keep, and you guys in the US should be fighting for your own version of it.
i wonder how many people will live through their whole lives without ever needing to use the insurance they pay for anyway.
You pay more per week in case you have a medical emergency than I pay per year for literal medical emergencies. You pay more in a month for just having insurance than I paid for a 10 day hospital stay, completely uninsured.
Yeah I just pay like $36 a month or so and my copays are $35, or $75 if a specialist.
