The individual in that article likely had reasonably good insurance, someone earning minimum wage likely would have insurance that would cover very little if anything and they'd likely owe the entire 3* amount.
The countries doing lots of testing are basically countries with socialized medicine, the cost is being passed on to the tax payers. For the United States you are responsible for your medical costs, if you are fortunate you have good insurance that will cover varying percentages of your medical insurance.
I have 'good' insurance, several years ago I required hospitalization and ended up incurring somewhere between 13 and 15k USD in bills for about 30 hours in the hospital and the ambulance ride. I ended up paying something like 12-13% of that. At a start I personally owed 100 USD for every single doctor that touched my case which ended up being 5 doctors if I recall correctly, only 3 of which I ever met. In this instance the hospital was very courteous and allowed me to set up a payment plan and repay them, interest free, over many months. I paid the debt off over a year and a half if I recall correctly.
They then wanted more blood over the next several days and had to see a primary care physician to get my medical leave paperwork filled out and those two things cost me another 200-300 USD after insurance.
> The individual in that article likely had reasonably good insurance, someone earning minimum wage likely would have insurance that would cover very little if anything and they'd likely owe the entire 3* amount.
That’s worser than I thought :-(
I was thinking that $1400 is too pricey to anybody — turns out that it was higher for people who don’t have insurance.
> For the United States you are responsible for your medical costs
Is this a culture/mind difference, or does everybody in the US doesn’t like this but has no time to fix it? Genuinely interested, as most people in our country almost everybody relies on only the default insurance — is this a cultural difference between the US(western world) and here? Are countries in the Europe similar?
>Is this a culture/mind difference, or does everybody in the US doesn’t like this but has no time to fix it?
This is just the way it is. We don't know anything else and when you start talking about changing it a lot of people lash out and can get quite heated.
Our government is not the best at managing things efficiently, socialized medicine means it gets paid via taxes, the medical and drug companies have lobbyists and can largely get away with setting whatever prices they want right now, etc.
Personally I'd be fairly hesitant to get on board with socialized medicine here in the United States purely for the fact I would fear it would be just as corrupt and I don't know if the increased taxes would be more than I pay for my insurance currently considering my employer pays more of the cost of my insurance than I do and I doubt that sudden savings would be passed on to me as increased pay.
> That’s worser than I thought :-( I was thinking that $1400 is too pricey to anybody — turns out that it was higher for people who don’t have insurance.
He's giving you false information, that's not actually true.
If you are poor you don't usually have a deductible in your insurance (because it's government subsidized), which means you are responsible for LESS of the bill, not more.
People have a lot of false views on US healthcare, mainly because it's a political issue, so people have a strong motivation to spin it one way or another.
One of our two parties is actively working to get rid of even the existing insurance programs for the poor (Medicaid) and elderly/disabled (Medicare). The people who support them would rather their fellow Americans die than to help them. This is the culture here. The other party is just now starting to think about providing people with insurance. It doesn't matter that there is huge support among the people to have proper insurance as you do and every other developed country in the world does. That's why things are the way they are. On the other hand though, we have just lowered business taxes and have no problem spending money on the military and other garbage while people suffer and die from lack of healthcare. Greatest country in the world.
The individual in that article likely had reasonably good insurance, someone earning minimum wage likely would have insurance that would cover very little if anything and they'd likely owe the entire 3* amount.
The countries doing lots of testing are basically countries with socialized medicine, the cost is being passed on to the tax payers. For the United States you are responsible for your medical costs, if you are fortunate you have good insurance that will cover varying percentages of your medical insurance.
I have 'good' insurance, several years ago I required hospitalization and ended up incurring somewhere between 13 and 15k USD in bills for about 30 hours in the hospital and the ambulance ride. I ended up paying something like 12-13% of that. At a start I personally owed 100 USD for every single doctor that touched my case which ended up being 5 doctors if I recall correctly, only 3 of which I ever met. In this instance the hospital was very courteous and allowed me to set up a payment plan and repay them, interest free, over many months. I paid the debt off over a year and a half if I recall correctly.
They then wanted more blood over the next several days and had to see a primary care physician to get my medical leave paperwork filled out and those two things cost me another 200-300 USD after insurance.