I’d like to know other non-US citizen’s opinions on your health care system are when you read a story like this. I know there are worse places in the world to receive health care, and better. What runs through your heads when you have a medical emergency?
A little background on my question:
My son was having trouble breathing after having a cold for a couple of days and we needed to stop and take the time to see if our insurance would be accepted at the closest emergency room so we didn’t end up with a huge bill (like 2000$-5000$). This was a pretty involved ~10 minute process of logging into our insurance carrier, and unsuccessfully finding the answer there. Then calling the hospital and having them tell us to look it up by scrolling through some links using the local search tool on their website. This gave me some serious pause, what if it was a real emergency, like the kind where you have no time to call and see if the closest hospital takes your insurance.
The funny thing is that the US actually spends about twice as much on healthcare per capita as other developed countries. The reason that outcomes are so much worse there isn’t lack of money.
Oh wow, I didn’t know that. Google says $13.493 per person in 2022. And in Germany it’s a bit more than $7.000…
Also things like maternal mortality are WAY worse…
I mean the USA is bigger and maybe things don’t translate exactly from a somewhat densely populated central european country to the vast emptiness of rural Wyoming. I guess an hospital is also something that is subject to economy of scale… But even most northern european countries where doctors come in with helicopters, don’t exceed the ~$7.000.
It is really off for the USA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
(If that is correct, you could spend half the money on healthcare and also live 3 years longer, on average…)
Life expectancy is going down cuz suicide rates are shooting up. Like suburban boys with shopping malls, their classrooms and/or heroin/fent
Fuuuuck. Nailed it, I’m fucking kiiiiiiiiilling it today. Ziiiing!
Hmmh, but that’s only the thing on top. Contrary to other countries, life expectancy seems to be actually going down since 2014… But there is already something seriously wrong since ~1980…
Reagan, Thatcher
And seems it never has gotten better than that, regarding this apect. Even worse 😮💨
Yeah, it’s not a healthcare system. It’s a jobs system and wealth transfer scheme. Insurance companies have the government in their pocket and get employer money, government money, and employee money and transfer it to the already outrageously rich, and all that in between cost (salespeople, billing specialists, HR benefits specialists) is somebody’s paycheck.
That’s without consideration of actual fraud, which moves money from the government to the rich without even providing services at all, and is easier to hide in such an outrageously complicated and expensive system.
Our entire nation exists to funnel money to the rich. Whenever someone wonders, “why is x this way in the USA?” The answer is always it puts more money in a rich person’s pocket. The healthcare system is the emperor’s new clothes. Bask in it, if you can see how great it is.
It’s just THAT expensive. An ambulance is 2-3k minimum. Just for showing up. Going to an ER, talking to reception and then giving up and leaving? That’ll be a $1200 bill, to NOT see a doctor.
I don’t even know the line where I would voluntarily to go the hospital, knowing it’s sacrificing the next 10-20 years of all my extra income. Would it be when I put my thumb thru a grinding disc on my angle grinder, cutting it clean in two right thru the entire nail?
Naw, hell no. I would have cut my thumb tip off with a chef’s knife and cauterized It if I thought it wouldn’t heal on its own, rather than spend an app $15,000 I don’t have. Took about 10 weeks to heal.
I know how to fight off an abscess tooth without antibiotics. It takes about 8 days, of constant stabbing, arching your back pain. Ive broken knuckles just to have a different pain to focus on. No one should know how to do this in 2024. Abscess teeth kill. Kennewick Man, y’know, the Popsicle? That’s what killed him. My story isn’t unique, America is a third world country with iPhones. Don’t visit. I wish the world would boycott every American company until we learn how to have a civil society.