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Originally Posted by Rosi700
@Aurelius710 Hope you will feel satisfied with your new health insurance!
I cannot understand why Americans prefer this kind of individual insurances in their states. I cannot understand why they call our way of doing it for communism. In communism, as it has been seen in the old Soviet, the state decided what was right and wrong, but we have free speech (except for hate speech wich is criminal).
In many European countries we pay a small part of our wages in addition to the "normal" tax. With this collective tax we can become sick and be put to a hospital for free. Some kind of illnesses like bad knees and similar there is a waiting line for, but it is free. If we loose our job and it takes some time before we get a new one, the government gives us a small amount of money to pay for rent and food and some cheap food, no food stamps. (For the time being after the war began in Ucraine, the money from the state to the poor people are a bit too small and volunteer organizations have to help a bit with food).
We have a fixed roof for what we have to pay for necessary medications in a year either we work or are out of work.
I cannot understand why you Amercans don't go together and fight for a system that takes care of the health of you all ... (I am only an ordinary person who do not understand. I am not a revolutionary).
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Rosi700
When I was studying in the UK, I actually qualified for care under the NHS because of the length of my program. I loved it! Same day appointments with my PCP (with few exceptions), free prescriptions, free diagnostic testing. Bit of a waiting time for specialists, but at the time, it wasn't too bad. I was a free rider by virtue of my study abroad program but honestly, if was a British taxpayer, I'd happily fork over the extra money to cover it. I mean, my back surgery would have cost $40k out of pocket. Having a baby could easily be $20k. An extra grand in taxes seems to be a fair tradeoff to me! It's a shame what's happened to the NHS since I've been there.
You were wondering why there's no protests in the streets for better health care? (Something I would love to see!) My top two reasons: most insurance being tied to employment and at-will employment.
Unless you're very poor or very old, you have to have coverage through your employer. Private insurers won't sell to individuals and even if they did, it's cost prohibitive without an employer contribution (unless you're quite wealthy). The ACA exchanges don't negate this. When my employer starts enrollment in the fall, I will be obligated to sign up for their plan or risk having no coverage at all.
So, it's a catch-22. I have to go work a 40 hour week in order to make money to pay for the (sometimes shoddy) insurance to treat an illness that could be potentially keeping me from going to work. And there's no job protections for being sick in the US. Disabled? Sure. But bosses have the ability to fire you for being ill.
Which leads to at-will employment. In short, so long as your employer doesn't EXPLICITLY say they're firing you for organizing or being a protected class, they can fire you for anything and your recourse is to buzz off.
So, the people who would benefit the most from a better system also have the most incentive to not rock the boat. If Richie Rich's insurance policy is paying for your meds and Richie Rich is a capricious SOB who will fire you for looking at him funny, Richie Rich has leverage over you. It's hard to take a stand when your health can come crashing down as a result of someone's spite.
Speaking of spite. I'll mention Medicaid in my state and then I'll shut up. When I lost my job beginning of 2022, I immediately applied for Medicaid as my state approved Medicaid expansion by referendum. My state's politicians, being experts at sticking it to the voters when they vote for something they don't like, decided to implement the expansion, but not staff the office with enough people to meet demand. What was supposed to be a two week decision took five months. In that five months, I couldn't sign up with the ACA exchange or access any charity care because Medicaid hadn't made a decision. Yeah.
I'll leave it at that, but I could talk more!