I wouldn't expect anything else from a Trump Policy - everything he does is to feather the nests of his wealthy supporters. I guarantee this trump-care policy was suggested and supported by health insurers.
Fun fact: On top of all that, you pay more in taxes for health care than any other country, even those where health care is entirely financed by tax money.
My supervisor at work has 2 broken teeth and one is cracking, he can't have food on his right side of his mouth and about once a month has go eat soft foods because the cracked tooth on his left side hurts again.
Another coworker has a knife wound because he managed to slice his arm open with his own folding knife (not suicidal just stupid), and he's just self-treating even though it looks infected.
I have had bronchitis multiple times in my life when I didn't have any insurance and even when I was so weak it took all my strength to crawl to the bathroom, going without eating for several days because I can't make it downstairs to the kitchen, because just the urgent care visit would have sent me into years of debt.
My sister ignored signs of cancer until her daughter asked her to go to the doctor. It could have been operated on if she had gone earlier. Now it's chemo and fingers crossed.
This shithole country kicks people when they're down andat least 1/3 of the population is polishing the boot as the rich are kicking us.
I feel bad for the americans who want to effect GOOD change
The worst part is so many americans are convinced that actually most Americans want half good, half bad policy; free healthcare is too far left, but theres definitely a cohort of voters who wont vote for that, but will vote for means-tested subsidies for health insurance companies, and that running on that policy is smarter than running on policy anyone actually wants.
We're paying twice as much for it, but getting less and worse care because most of that money is going to death panels and shitbags like David Cordani, Patrick Conway, and Mark Bertolini.
Don't forget all the time we have to waste arguing with insurance companies to get them to cover our wife's ongoing chemotherapy even though nothing has fucking changed
A) its not universal because plenty of people don't have coverage.
B) many of our insurance companies and "healthcare providers" are for profit and traded on the stock market, so our premiums are going to shareholders, with just enough paying for actual treatment to keep all of us from going full Luigi
While I was living in Seattle it was: $3.3k/mo for rent, like $500 utilities, about $1k for food (I was feeding me and another person, we ate out maybe once every couple months, I did go a bit fancy with our cooking), various things like gym and other stuff to keep my sanity brought it all up to about $5.5k/mo. My health insurance was through my work and I paid about $1.2k and they paid about $2k but that was all handled before I got my paychecks.
So in Seattle at least the answer is make at least $100k/yr before tax, don't have kids, don't have a car, be in reasonably good health, have a job that pays for most your insurance premiums, and never have a medical emergency. Or live in a house with 6 other people and dumpster dive for food. Or just go massively into debt.
Honestly the best thing skilled Americans could do is leave. Changing things would be better but honestly simply leaving in droves could already change things for the better ironically enough.
I spent years trying to change things. Protests, donating to younger people more capable of direct action than me, building community, and yes voting too because we have to use all our tools. It became too dangerous for my aging trans ass and I managed to find myself in a position to move to Sweden. I don't know if I'll ever stop feeling guilty about it but it's so much better outside the US. I'm still giving what I can to my community back in the US but at this point it's more like using scotch tape to fix a stab wound. You better believe though if the US comes for Greenland I'm going to do everything I can to help my new neighbors
Hey. Don't feel bad about leaving. You've done what you could and then did what you needed to in order to keep yourself safe. If what you say is true you've done an order of magnitude more work towards a better world than the majority of people.
I think we need good people left in this country to have a chance to try and turn things around, but I'll never be upset with someone who left for their own good. There's enough of us that can't leave, or won't leave, that we'll never become irrelevant here. The fight will go on until death do us part, for better or for worse.
You better believe though if the US comes for Greenland I'm going to do everything I can to help my new neighbors
Do it, and don't feel bad about it. If the US comes for Greenland I'm on the side of Greenland. Same for Canada, same for Mexico, same for anyone else whose sovereign borders are being threatened. Know that no matter what happens you still have friends here on the inside.
And if you can't leave (or can't do so reasonably), crashing the birth rates is another way to send a message...while simultaneously insulating you against some of the most egregiously out of control expenses.
60%+ of Americans do not even have $1,000 in some kind of savings or checking account, as an emergency fund.
We are all being run ragged, most people are in an apparently literally unbelievable amount of debt, because once you have that first month you have to borrow to pay for groceries or ultilities or rent or a medical copay... the debt spiral begins, you basically don't get out, and the hole gets worse and worse.
Or... theres also a lot of people with less than 0 financial sense, because the average reading level of the US citizenry is that of a 5th to 6th grader, and many people have compulsive shopping addiction habits.
Something like 25% of Americans have negative net equity, ie, they have more debt than all their possessions are worth.
They're basically debt slaves, whether or not they realize it.
Something like another 25% have basically 0, netted out.
... and that's all before everyone's 401ks and pension funds collapse from the Private Equity / Ptivate Capital (read: unregulated lending) firms ongoing implosion... and thats before the dollar gets further and further devalued so that the government can inflate away its real debt payments, which is the strategy the Treasury Sec is pursuing.
Americans in the bottom ~4/5 - 9/10 of society have no fucking clue how bad it is about to get.
most people are in an apparently literally unbelievable amount of debt, because once you have that first month you have to borrow to pay for groceries or ultilities or rent or a medical copay… the debt spiral begins, you basically don’t get out, and the hole gets worse and worse.
This is why I don't have a credit card. I'm terrified of getting stuck in this loop. I know, I'm supposed to get a card and use it for things I already have the money for, so I can pay it off... but my ADHD brain just thinks, "That's yet another bill to stay on top of. Another deadline to remember. Another threat if I forget to pay, or get sick one month and have a smaller paycheck in the end and can't repay it after rent and utilities." (Because remember - sick pay isn't a guarantee in the US. My "sick time" at work is combined with "vacation" as "Paid Time Off" and accrues slowly.)
It's absurd how paying for things with the money you already earned can be seen as a negative. I'd think if one doesn't have credit for long enough, that should be a good sign that they've managed their money properly without needing credit. But no, it doesn't work that way here. I'm in my upper 30s and have never had a credit card. My "credit score" is entirely based off of past student loans (that I only managed to pay off with help from my father.) Yet if I hadn't had school debt, I'd have no "credit score" to speak of and might not have been accepted when I applied for my apartment. It's all so ass-backwards. I mean, I get the logic of "credit" as a sign of responsibility, I just don't agree with it.
Genuienly, if you have ADHD and don't think you could manage the regular payments, it probably is the smart move to just not have another thing you need to remember.
There are various ways that you could go for some kind of 'credit repair' type thing that would just automatically make payments out of your checking or savings account, or something like that... but that is only really important if your credit scores are like, way, way below 720.
I also think this whole system is assbackwards insane, but as you say with the apartments and such.... it just is our social credit score, there are downsides to just not doing anything with it, you do have to 'play the game' to some extent, there is no opting out.
I was homeless for 2 years, and its now been about 2 years I'm not homeless.
I ran up some cards to avoid going to jail for stealing food, freezing to death in a blizzard or dying of exposure in a heatwave... and some of my cards (and ids) got stolen, more than once.
I'm still either paying off legit collections or arguing against illegitimate ones, to this day... But I managed to improve from ~530 to ~700 in the last 2 years time, as well as set aside an emergency fund (currently just shy of 3 months of my ongoing CoL), and a bit of investments, and get some actual basic useful home type stuff, and a bit of a shelf stable food pantry, after losing literally everything.
I've never gone bankrupt. I've never had to go to court or jail over a summary judgement on debt collections.
That'll be what happens to more and more Americans who have so much debt they either result to fraud or some other crime, or just think they can ignore it.
You can and will get arrested and jailed for not showing up at a court summons that results from debt collection, a lot of Americans don't seem to understand that.
The other alternative is basically... well you'd have an armed force of your own to stop you from getting picked up by the cops, lets put it that way.
I'm glad you managed to get out of that mess. I've had three bouts of homelessness before, the fear of it happening again is ever-looming.
I agree with everything you said and don't have much more to add. Just that I'm grateful you (and I) aren't dealing with homelessness at this point in time. It sounds like you have more of an emergency fund than I do (though I'm trying!) This whole country is pay-to-play and if we lose, we just fall to the bottom without any support. Hell, even looking for low-income housing is a massive task in and of itself. Many of us have to literally win a lottery in this country in order to have a home.
People who've never been homeless, they don't understand this country.
Its that simple.
You're not a real person anymore, you're garbage that talks for some reason, has the gall to make eye contact for some reason.
And anyone can become homeless rather quickly, if they have a run of sufficiently bad luck, untrusthworthy friends/family, just are the wrong skin color or sexual orientation, etc.
Anybody who has not experienced it is fucking delusional about what this country really is, and I mean that absolutely, doesn't matter what your ideology or day job is.
But yeah, I had to move halfway across the country, via Greyhound, to find a place to live.
Its not impossible to do this on SSDI alone (I was very seriously injured in my run of homelessness), I've managed to do it, but... its extremely difficult.
There were many days I was sure would be my last.
Saw a lot of people die.
Thats my American experience: No one cares, fuck you, die.
Glad you've survived it as well, at least thus far.
To afford everything you just need to be disabled, then you get health care, food support, monthly income, and rent help. If the top 10% paid their taxes then everyone can get these benefits.
Can't tell if sarcastic. Too many people legit think this way.
Being disabled means having to be scrutinized regularly by government authority, by filling out endless paper forms in an attempt to justify your disability to someone with a vested interest in not believing you. I helped my girlfriend fill out disability forms last year. It's particularly cruel because she can only use her hands for brief bursts of time before needing to rest. Sometimes she sends me voice recordings instead of texts so she can respond to me, because her hands simply can't type everything she wants to say. Yet she's given page after page of questions about her abilities, the chores she's capable of completing, the hobbies she has, and so on, all so someone who's never met her (or worse, probably an AI) can poke holes in her story and deny her claims.
Not really being sarcastic, I am on SSI and have been for 15+ years. Was denied twice, even with the State declaring that I am disabled. To get SSI you have to get a lawyer to file certain paperwork. Went to several doctors that the government wanted me to. Luckily I also had a psychiatrist and a therapist so my mental disorder was on record. Also had a county case manager who put I so much work to make sure that I went to the correct adult foster home and found the lawyer I needed. That isn't even scratching the surface of the paperwork I have to go through every year just to keep my CADI funding.
Trump is a gold spoon fed moron who's entirely disconnected from reality. That mofo talked about groceries like it's an afternoon club or some shit. He probably never ever even stepped into a supermarket and bought a fucking loaf of bread and something else himself. It's why he fucking has no idea how healthcare even works in America, when he had COVID they just pumped shit into him to keep his zombie body alive and he didn't even twitch even the slightest for how much that would cost. Meanwhile rest of people avoid calling an ambulance because that will cost so much it can bankrupt them. Tell me how that isn't absolutely fucked.
I live in Slovenia (Europe) and while our healthcare system isn't perfect either, not once I worried that my medical condition would set me back financially for 5 or 10 years. It just doesn't cross our minds, like at all ever. You just get in touch with doctors and they sort it out based on severity. If it's something non critical you might wait few weeks or months if it's something trivial or cosmetic, but if it's something urgent they'll send you to ER immediately and do most complex procedures asap. So it's not just "you need to wait for months because it's "free" healthcare". It is prioritized and it's perfectly understandable and logical.
The entire argument about universal healthcare taking months to see a doctor is doubly trash because it took me that long to see a doctor in the US anyways. I had to plan my general practitioner visits out 3-4 months in advance and I was on meds that needed represcribed every three months so some months I simply missed it because how long the waits were
Yeah, I think when I had a mole that turned out to be cancer, it was still a 6 months wait to see a dermatologist because there are so many people wanting to see them (and many of those are for cosmetic shit, grumble grumble). Luckily it didn't metastasize while I was waiting. Fucking us healthcare is a joke.
Absolutely unrelated, but you mentioned being from Slovenia and it reminds me of a kid I work with (in the US.) When he was 4, I showed him a map of the world. Out of all the places on it, he zeroed in on Slovenia and asked, "What's that?" I told him, "That's Slovenia." Something about your country caught his attention, I can't explain it.
The kid's an information sponge. Ever since then, when I mention things about the rest of the world (countries, flags, time zones, etc.) he becomes curious about Slovenia.
So yeah, your country has a special place in a random little boy's heart. I just wanted to share that.
I hope someone gives that kid some potica. It's an amazing Slovenian bread made by spreading a nut paste mixture over a large piece of dough which is then rolled up and baked. My Dad is half Slovenian so I grew up eating potica every Christmas.
You can take out the "almost" here. Literally every other country on Earth pays half or less per capita than what we pay in the US, and this has been the case for decades.
UNH, CVS, ELV and CI share holders disagree with you and thanks to the SCOTUS Citizen United decision they have to money and the legal framework to legally bribe politicians. I'll suggest to invest in those companies rather than flight them.
I'm not contributing to evil companies. "If you can't beat them, join them" does not apply when they're responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year and putting millions of people in poverty.
People willing to do anything to get rich is precisely the problem in this country, and I'm not going to be a part of it.
You're right about Citizens United, though. It should be revoked.
In Australia we have pretty good public health care. IDK what "universal healthcare" is exactly but everyone gets treated for free for most things.
We also have private health insurance. The relationship between the public and private systems is complex but the main difference for most people is wait times.
I know someone with a back injury that causes constant pain, they manage it with prescribed opiates. The problem is it's not life-threatening so they're not a priority for triage. They're about 1 year through a 4 year wait. If they had private insurance they could probably have the surgery in a few months.
Weirdly, they could start a private health insurance policy, serve the 1 year exclusion for pre-existing conditions, and get their back fixed - I don't know them well enough to ask why they don't do that. Anyway.
There's also a problem in my state where the hospital system is getting "clogged up" with people who should be in aged care facilities and so on. If you have a car accident and break your leg, if you don't have private health insurance an ambulance will take you to the nearest public hospital. In some cases there's a queue of ambulances parked up outside. An ER doctor will still come and check on you, just to make sure you're not dying. This wouldn't be a problem if you had private health insurance and were taken to a private hospital.
That said, there's no private hospital within 400km of where I live. I have private health insurance but I can of course still go to the public ER. I don't have anything bad to say about them. They're great really and I've never had to wait an unreasonable amount of time.
That said, the cost is no where near what others are saying it costs in the US. We pay $400 AUD a month for our whole family, but that includes a lot of extra non-hospital stuff like dental and glasses. That works out to about 3% or 4% of an average family income.
It's the same in the UK. There is national healthcare which is what most people go with because it's free (and most people underestimate how infuriating it is sitting in a waiting room for 6 hours) and then there's private healthcare which is what you go with if you want expediency.
A lot of the time if you go with private you end up being tended to by the same medical staff anyway, you're basically just paying to skip the queue.
and most people underestimate how infuriating it is sitting in a waiting room for 6 hours
As an American: those are rookie numbers, I've been stuck waiting 6-8 on a bad day to get seen, not even counting the hours it takes to get more than vitals and some iv liquid...
Not trying to one up, I wish we had a system like that here.
We have long wait times too. Even with gold standard health insurance. ER can easily take 6-12 hours, and appointments are scheduled usually weeks to even months out
People are very bad at setting aside small amounts of money to save for large purchases. Especially when that purchase is "one day I might get real sick". That is insurance.
But that is also taxes, so we should just pay those and get healthcare for free.
It's also hard to put away like - well I had $330k of surgeries for a spontaneous pneumothorax about 15 years ago - most people will definitely not experience that. I was in my 20s. Who could save that much by then?
So yeah everyone else in the state paid a little more to cover my bills. By the same token, when God gives a 6yo leukemia (his ways are mysterious lol) I pay a little more to cover her treatment. And by the same token, when someone is lucky enough not to be chosen by God for either of these experiences (hallowed be thy name) then he pays a little more for both of us, which is how he buys a society where he doesn't have to watch a bunch of people die because God was having fun that day.
So really let's put the blame where it's due here, and acknowledge that mankind attempts to introduce fairness into a system where the Lord (worship him lest you burn) is playing fast and loose with His children He loves so much.
Insurance isn’t the same as savings though. Insurance is just a bet. The insurance company basically says “Give me $5000 this year and I will cover your health care costs if you ever accrue any this year otherwise I keep the money.” The insurance company just bets that most of their clients won’t put in any claims.
Not to mention most people can never save enough money to cover the cost of a massive healthcare bill if they get into an accident or get cancer.
Another version is that the insurance is a mutual fund where everyone is polling money that can be used at any time to pay medical bills. This is not what is happening in the US of course but in some countries the model is similar to that.
The administrators of the mutual fund still make a bet that their income (mainly the money they charge members/customers) will meet or exceed the claims they pay out, no? They might not have a profit motive, but that doesn't change the basic economics of needing income to be >= expenses.
That's not insurance, but - funny, I don't know an English word for this concept. Ok - looked it up, there are words like "friendly society" and "mutual aid fund". Literally what you wrote.
I've got a "Cadillac" plan in Spain, which for a family of 4 is about 5K a year. No copays or anything. Occasionally I'll have a prescription which will cost €20, and the farmacist will get angry on my behalf.
In the US, we were paying $25,000 (pretax) in premiums for a meh plan with copays at every turn.
In Canada the eyecare industry is a capitalist hellscape. We just got national dental care and now the opticians and eye doctors are jealous and revolting against their own system because people are buying their contacts and glasses online and not going to the eye doctor. Less and less people have jobs that cover eye care so the ones I talk to want their industry socialized like everyone else’s in the health industry.
In Spain? I moved to Spain, and use Sanitas. My bank offers additional benefits since I signed through them - but honestly, as an American, they could be overcharging me massively and I'd never notice.
The distinction here is important- $26K is premiums which is money that goes to the insurance companies. You will end up paying more than that with co-pays, deductibles, etc.
Usually all inclusive from what Ive heard from others. Problem is wait times. But if it's not life threating, you're waiting anyways in the US. United States healthcare is dominated by insurance lobbyist. Fear mongering Republicans keep the system up.
I looked at an apartment once which was the upstairs of a house. Dogs had eaten large chunks out of the bedroom doors and there were two giant piles of dog shit left in the kitchen. The owner was enormous and unable to climb stairs so she hadn't seen the state of the place after the previous tenants had moved out. After I told her what the situation was, she said if I cleaned it up myself she would knock off $200 ... from the security deposit. Get fucked.
Every subsidy that goes to a person basically is a roundabout way to fund an industry. Even tax write offs are. Like a mortgage interest rate deduction just helps banks and the real estate industry, not the people buying a house. The write off pushes housing prices up, since the banks can give out slightly higher mortgages to borrowers and the market adjusts to the bigger inflow of cash and supply doesn’t increase faster. If the write off didn’t exist people could borrow less but houses would cost less as well. This basically happened in my country the Netherlands. Nobody benefited from the introduction of the mortgage interest deduction except the banks and people who already owned a home when the policy was introduced.
Now now, why would you only increase it by the amount the government will give you, you clearly dont have what it takes to be a CEO. If everyone would get 20k. Increase the price to 25k
Bingo. Socializing profits or whatever this is called…”neoliberalism” “private public partnerships” is exactly what destroyed everything good about western society.
it's like putting bandages over the real issues: student loan forgiveness (instead of lowering tuition), homeless shelters (instead of rent control), food stamps (instead of a living wage), now it's a healthcare subsidy (instead of universal healthcare).
the US already spends more public funds in healthcare per capita than every country with free healthcare.
on top of that, we pay a shit ton extra for insurance, then a shit ton more in copays/deductibles, plus a shit ton more because something isn't included....
you could lower taxes by thousands and give everyone free healthcare.
the US healthcare is nothing but a massive scam. the kind where the perpetators kill tens of thousands per year and rake in endless money. there's no justification besides rich people like being rich, even if it means killing thousands of innocents. in any civilized world those executives should be tortured to death.
It was like 500-600 a month for two people a decade ago but the insurance plans on the exchange have gone up in price about a 100 monthly, every year. But they also dissappear after getting too high, so there are increasingly fewer plans from new or small providers. This year it's 1200 monthly. These plans were actually quite good though compared to regular plans people get from their employer, with 0 copay and 0 deductible. For low income people on the exchange it cost them 0-100$ monthly for them, and the subsidies covered the entire plan cost up to around 1000$ a month. So last year you could have excellent health coverage for 50 dollars a month, but no longer.
The big problem of course was that without the universal mandate, the whole obamacare plan didn't really work long term because the cost kept going up without any of the parts to keep that price down because of the Supreme court.
these plans were actually quite good though compared to regular plans people get from their employer, with 0 copay and 0 deductible
I'm super skeptical of the 0 deductible plans. I've only ever seen them offered in situations where the plans can be expected to be not-great, both on the marketplace for both '25 and '26 (I'd never used the insurance marketplace before last year) and when working at a tiny company with less than 10 employees. I'm not sure how they work but given that I assume they end up costing more than plans with a deductible
The marketplace just had their subsidies cut. Its so funny its like "here's less than 1/3 back what we cut to line our pockets, you filthy animals, PS, fuck off and die, signed Donald Pedophile Trump."
Assuming a typical family of four, 2k a month for marketplace insurance is actually pretty cheap. My partner just got his tax documents, and between him and his employer, they spent 10k last year to insure a single adult. I've got a ton of health problems, and we've talked about adding me to his plan, but that's an extra $500 a month.
"We'll do socialism, but we'll do it just a little bit, not enough to matter to any single human being's actual needs, but at least we broke our ultraconservative ideals for no good reason I guess?"
It's absolutely crazy to me that you guys have the most expensive healthcare system in the world (per capita) and at the same time one of the worst compared to other sufficently develloped nations.
We get discounted 9% of our income every month in my south American country for a deficient health care system, so we have to opt for the private option for an extra 2% of discount.
Yeah. He's kind of a bell end. I'm not sure if the world has noticed yet. Perhaps he should give another rousing speech at the world economic forum, I was so inspired by the 30 sending long pauses.
Wait... when the government gives people money... that sounds like... SOCIALISM.
This is to point out his hypocrisy, not even to note that this is a stupid way of distributing money (it just goes into the hands of middle men) and only intends to generate some good sounding news instead of actually solving a problem
I can't tell if this is sarcastic, but I'll respond the same way regardless.
This is not socialism. Government provided social programs or financial assistance are a basic function of governance. Virtually every government on Earth does this, whether democratic, authoritarian, or communist.
How can there still RELATIVELY many people be able to have kids financially? The fertility rate in most european countries in comparison is lower, although we have affordable healthcare (well, compared to the US at least).
Why do you think they're trying to shut down reproductive rights? They want people to have kids despite financial capability to raise them. As long as they survive growing up, they'll labor.
Things feel so dystopian that I get the feeling that after they get everyone on debt slavery that they'll put propaganda about how it's unfair that debt is absolved on death and that your family/kids should pay for it. Fox News will be like: "why should a company's debts just disappear? it's unfair to the lender!"
In an ideal world that's what robots/AI would do. But we get the opposite; artists become unemployed whereas manual labor still continues to exist for humans.
It's getting to the point where I'm staying to wonder if i should just pay my own way with healthcare. If i only go to the doctor 2x a year and it's like $150 per visit, then I'll be saving a cool $25,000 that i could have wasted on insurance. I just have to make sure i don't have any emergencies or car accidents that require a trip to the hospital... 🤔
I just have to make sure i don’t have any emergencies or car accidents that require a trip to the hospital
Just go and then don't pay (and hopefully they don't kick you out). You can always negotiate later to pay a much smaller amount than what they initially bill you for.
A bigger concern is something like cancer. Your chemo will not be covered by anything and as a result you simply won't get it.
$26000?? In Germany, which is neither known for a bad nor for a cheap health care system, the maximum a person is able to pay is 11299.68 € regardless of the number of family members who are included. Ok - if both parents are working the family might pay up to 22599.36 €, but only if both parents were earning more than the cut-off. The majority of people pays far less.
In America, the AVERAGE is $26000. That's for middle of the road insurance for a family. I have multiple friends whose entire family pays well over 30k - 35k a year for medical insurance (2,800 a month)
Wait, am I reading this correctly? When you say 11299.68, that includes not only the person working, but also their spouse and children??? How much does that cover?
Right now, I'm lucky to have possibly the best healthcare plan in the US through my wife's job. She was able to add me to her plan for $8580 per year, but it fully covers almost everything with no deductible - something basically unheard of in the US. In comparison, the cheapest marketplace plan I could have gotten would have been something like $8400 per year, with an $8500 deductible, and then it only would have covered 25% of expenses after that. Before I got on her plan, it usually cost me $300 to see a doctor for a regular cold. I'm in my 30s, a normal weight, reasonably fit, and don't have any health problems other than occasional acid reflux. Under my previous plan, the pharmacy was going to charge me $980 to get a 2 month supply of acid reflux medication (40 mg esomeprazole magnesium tablets). So much winning living in the US. 🙄
health insurance (better would ve mutual gealth fund – it's not an insurance in the normal sense) is ~15.5 % of your taxable income, shared between employer and employee.
this includes all of your core family without income.
if you earn more than 66150 € per year, your fee will be cut.
if you earn more than 6672 € per year, you'll need your own health "insurance", which would cost you 570 € and would cover in theory the entire family.
If your self-employed, cost doubles, of course. A self-employed couple earning more than 132300 € per year would have to pay 43754.40 € per year. Most will change to a private insurer, unkess they got a bunch of kids.
Esomeprazol 40 mg 90 tablets are ~ 20 €. You'll have to pay 5 € yourself.
For context: median income was 43750 € in 2024.
The horrors of public health not funded by taxes. (These are usually free of charge.)
Ten years. Presumably, if he was working on it in earnest he’d have started in 2016. And if he truly had the best interests of Americans in mind, he could have continued on it during the Biden years.
Of course he doesn’t and never did have Americans best interest in mind.
Roflmao. Do you really think he just pulls this number out of his ass??
Of course it takes a lot of study=time (economy, income levels, global state of health tech) to pinpoint the exact solution to this complex issue for such a big country
Worst health outcomes than their biggest adversaries, spending more than their biggest adversaries, crying more than their biggest adversaries.... This is America and has been for a long time.
Noo, you don't see, you don't understand, everything will be better, in fact everything is already better, in fact everything is perfect, and if you can't see that well then that is because you are deranged. Trump 2029!
The health insurance plans will just raise their prices by another $2000
I wouldn't expect anything else from a Trump Policy - everything he does is to feather the nests of his wealthy supporters. I guarantee this trump-care policy was suggested and supported by health insurers.
Of course. It didn’t change anything and it’s unrealistic.
This is the biggest lesson I've learned in adulthood. As a high schooler I said many things like "just go fix it".
Problem is there's always someone who will happily take advantage and ruin something that should be a good thing.
A lot don't get insurance and just hope they don't die?
Enraging and 100% true. About 11% of working age Americans have no health insurance.
Consider also how many people have health insurance but cant afford to use it?
Fun fact: On top of all that, you pay more in taxes for health care than any other country, even those where health care is entirely financed by tax money.
But hey, you go from having to pay 20 lifetimes worth of crippling debt to only 5 lifetimes worth of crippling debt, look on the bright side
Its definitely not a circle, but the middle portion is big enough to make me lose hope for humanity.
Leopards be feasting
Literally true. I've lost two friends this way.
Literally, yes.
My supervisor at work has 2 broken teeth and one is cracking, he can't have food on his right side of his mouth and about once a month has go eat soft foods because the cracked tooth on his left side hurts again.
Another coworker has a knife wound because he managed to slice his arm open with his own folding knife (not suicidal just stupid), and he's just self-treating even though it looks infected.
I have had bronchitis multiple times in my life when I didn't have any insurance and even when I was so weak it took all my strength to crawl to the bathroom, going without eating for several days because I can't make it downstairs to the kitchen, because just the urgent care visit would have sent me into years of debt.
My sister ignored signs of cancer until her daughter asked her to go to the doctor. It could have been operated on if she had gone earlier. Now it's chemo and fingers crossed.
This shithole country kicks people when they're down andat least 1/3 of the population is polishing the boot as the rich are kicking us.
Yes
The worst part is so many americans are convinced that actually most Americans want half good, half bad policy; free healthcare is too far left, but theres definitely a cohort of voters who wont vote for that, but will vote for means-tested subsidies for health insurance companies, and that running on that policy is smarter than running on policy anyone actually wants.
We dont though, tons of people forgo healthcare because they can’t afford it.
We're paying twice as much for it, but getting less and worse care because most of that money is going to death panels and shitbags like David Cordani, Patrick Conway, and Mark Bertolini.
Don't forget all the time we have to waste arguing with insurance companies to get them to cover our wife's ongoing chemotherapy even though nothing has fucking changed
If by "this" you mean an autoimmune disease for which there is no cure, yup!
A) its not universal because plenty of people don't have coverage.
B) many of our insurance companies and "healthcare providers" are for profit and traded on the stock market, so our premiums are going to shareholders, with just enough paying for actual treatment to keep all of us from going full Luigi
While I was living in Seattle it was: $3.3k/mo for rent, like $500 utilities, about $1k for food (I was feeding me and another person, we ate out maybe once every couple months, I did go a bit fancy with our cooking), various things like gym and other stuff to keep my sanity brought it all up to about $5.5k/mo. My health insurance was through my work and I paid about $1.2k and they paid about $2k but that was all handled before I got my paychecks.
So in Seattle at least the answer is make at least $100k/yr before tax, don't have kids, don't have a car, be in reasonably good health, have a job that pays for most your insurance premiums, and never have a medical emergency. Or live in a house with 6 other people and dumpster dive for food. Or just go massively into debt.
Credit cards and payday loans until you declare bankruptcy 6 times just like uncle
samtrump.60% of the country lives check-to-check, the rest are mostly in debt
Honestly the best thing skilled Americans could do is leave. Changing things would be better but honestly simply leaving in droves could already change things for the better ironically enough.
I spent years trying to change things. Protests, donating to younger people more capable of direct action than me, building community, and yes voting too because we have to use all our tools. It became too dangerous for my aging trans ass and I managed to find myself in a position to move to Sweden. I don't know if I'll ever stop feeling guilty about it but it's so much better outside the US. I'm still giving what I can to my community back in the US but at this point it's more like using scotch tape to fix a stab wound. You better believe though if the US comes for Greenland I'm going to do everything I can to help my new neighbors
Hey. Don't feel bad about leaving. You've done what you could and then did what you needed to in order to keep yourself safe. If what you say is true you've done an order of magnitude more work towards a better world than the majority of people.
I think we need good people left in this country to have a chance to try and turn things around, but I'll never be upset with someone who left for their own good. There's enough of us that can't leave, or won't leave, that we'll never become irrelevant here. The fight will go on until death do us part, for better or for worse.
Do it, and don't feel bad about it. If the US comes for Greenland I'm on the side of Greenland. Same for Canada, same for Mexico, same for anyone else whose sovereign borders are being threatened. Know that no matter what happens you still have friends here on the inside.
And if you can't leave (or can't do so reasonably), crashing the birth rates is another way to send a message...while simultaneously insulating you against some of the most egregiously out of control expenses.
Does your country have decent healthcare and need IT Admins?
60%+ of Americans do not even have $1,000 in some kind of savings or checking account, as an emergency fund.
We are all being run ragged, most people are in an apparently literally unbelievable amount of debt, because once you have that first month you have to borrow to pay for groceries or ultilities or rent or a medical copay... the debt spiral begins, you basically don't get out, and the hole gets worse and worse.
Or... theres also a lot of people with less than 0 financial sense, because the average reading level of the US citizenry is that of a 5th to 6th grader, and many people have compulsive shopping addiction habits.
Something like 25% of Americans have negative net equity, ie, they have more debt than all their possessions are worth.
They're basically debt slaves, whether or not they realize it.
Something like another 25% have basically 0, netted out.
... and that's all before everyone's 401ks and pension funds collapse from the Private Equity / Ptivate Capital (read: unregulated lending) firms ongoing implosion... and thats before the dollar gets further and further devalued so that the government can inflate away its real debt payments, which is the strategy the Treasury Sec is pursuing.
Americans in the bottom ~4/5 - 9/10 of society have no fucking clue how bad it is about to get.
This is why I don't have a credit card. I'm terrified of getting stuck in this loop. I know, I'm supposed to get a card and use it for things I already have the money for, so I can pay it off... but my ADHD brain just thinks, "That's yet another bill to stay on top of. Another deadline to remember. Another threat if I forget to pay, or get sick one month and have a smaller paycheck in the end and can't repay it after rent and utilities." (Because remember - sick pay isn't a guarantee in the US. My "sick time" at work is combined with "vacation" as "Paid Time Off" and accrues slowly.)
It's absurd how paying for things with the money you already earned can be seen as a negative. I'd think if one doesn't have credit for long enough, that should be a good sign that they've managed their money properly without needing credit. But no, it doesn't work that way here. I'm in my upper 30s and have never had a credit card. My "credit score" is entirely based off of past student loans (that I only managed to pay off with help from my father.) Yet if I hadn't had school debt, I'd have no "credit score" to speak of and might not have been accepted when I applied for my apartment. It's all so ass-backwards. I mean, I get the logic of "credit" as a sign of responsibility, I just don't agree with it.
Genuienly, if you have ADHD and don't think you could manage the regular payments, it probably is the smart move to just not have another thing you need to remember.
There are various ways that you could go for some kind of 'credit repair' type thing that would just automatically make payments out of your checking or savings account, or something like that... but that is only really important if your credit scores are like, way, way below 720.
I also think this whole system is assbackwards insane, but as you say with the apartments and such.... it just is our social credit score, there are downsides to just not doing anything with it, you do have to 'play the game' to some extent, there is no opting out.
I was homeless for 2 years, and its now been about 2 years I'm not homeless.
I ran up some cards to avoid going to jail for stealing food, freezing to death in a blizzard or dying of exposure in a heatwave... and some of my cards (and ids) got stolen, more than once.
I'm still either paying off legit collections or arguing against illegitimate ones, to this day... But I managed to improve from ~530 to ~700 in the last 2 years time, as well as set aside an emergency fund (currently just shy of 3 months of my ongoing CoL), and a bit of investments, and get some actual basic useful home type stuff, and a bit of a shelf stable food pantry, after losing literally everything.
I've never gone bankrupt. I've never had to go to court or jail over a summary judgement on debt collections.
That'll be what happens to more and more Americans who have so much debt they either result to fraud or some other crime, or just think they can ignore it.
You can and will get arrested and jailed for not showing up at a court summons that results from debt collection, a lot of Americans don't seem to understand that.
The other alternative is basically... well you'd have an armed force of your own to stop you from getting picked up by the cops, lets put it that way.
I'm glad you managed to get out of that mess. I've had three bouts of homelessness before, the fear of it happening again is ever-looming.
I agree with everything you said and don't have much more to add. Just that I'm grateful you (and I) aren't dealing with homelessness at this point in time. It sounds like you have more of an emergency fund than I do (though I'm trying!) This whole country is pay-to-play and if we lose, we just fall to the bottom without any support. Hell, even looking for low-income housing is a massive task in and of itself. Many of us have to literally win a lottery in this country in order to have a home.
Yep yep yep.
People who've never been homeless, they don't understand this country.
Its that simple.
You're not a real person anymore, you're garbage that talks for some reason, has the gall to make eye contact for some reason.
And anyone can become homeless rather quickly, if they have a run of sufficiently bad luck, untrusthworthy friends/family, just are the wrong skin color or sexual orientation, etc.
Anybody who has not experienced it is fucking delusional about what this country really is, and I mean that absolutely, doesn't matter what your ideology or day job is.
But yeah, I had to move halfway across the country, via Greyhound, to find a place to live.
Its not impossible to do this on SSDI alone (I was very seriously injured in my run of homelessness), I've managed to do it, but... its extremely difficult.
There were many days I was sure would be my last.
Saw a lot of people die.
Thats my American experience: No one cares, fuck you, die.
Glad you've survived it as well, at least thus far.
I'd just give up, buy food with credit, and literally walk off to invade someone's forest, cannibalize them, use their land to hunt.
After all, they crowded everyone out on purpose.
Who am I kidding, I'm a pussy even now.
To afford everything you just need to be disabled, then you get health care, food support, monthly income, and rent help. If the top 10% paid their taxes then everyone can get these benefits.
Can't tell if sarcastic. Too many people legit think this way.
Being disabled means having to be scrutinized regularly by government authority, by filling out endless paper forms in an attempt to justify your disability to someone with a vested interest in not believing you. I helped my girlfriend fill out disability forms last year. It's particularly cruel because she can only use her hands for brief bursts of time before needing to rest. Sometimes she sends me voice recordings instead of texts so she can respond to me, because her hands simply can't type everything she wants to say. Yet she's given page after page of questions about her abilities, the chores she's capable of completing, the hobbies she has, and so on, all so someone who's never met her (or worse, probably an AI) can poke holes in her story and deny her claims.
Don't even get me started on the income limits.
Not really being sarcastic, I am on SSI and have been for 15+ years. Was denied twice, even with the State declaring that I am disabled. To get SSI you have to get a lawyer to file certain paperwork. Went to several doctors that the government wanted me to. Luckily I also had a psychiatrist and a therapist so my mental disorder was on record. Also had a county case manager who put I so much work to make sure that I went to the correct adult foster home and found the lawyer I needed. That isn't even scratching the surface of the paperwork I have to go through every year just to keep my CADI funding.
Health insurance premiums are going to cost $28000 from now on.
It's one healthcare, Michael. What could it cost? $2000?
Damn you beat me to it! Take your upvoter and be proud...
Circuses are cheap, bread is expensive
Not in America, you just add more sugar to make it cheap
Absolute circus.
I feel like there should still be 13 stripes
It's the 9 original colonies that didn't vote for Trump in 2024.
Edit: I made that up
(the white stripes also count)
Duum dudum dum dum duuuum duum
Same. I like the image, but the last two red stripes are inaccurate, and superfluous. We didn't have 17 or 18 colonies, we had 13.
You didn't have any colonies, the British did.
My Great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, who owned and sold 2/3 of Virginia at the time might disagree.
I want a refund
Trump is a gold spoon fed moron who's entirely disconnected from reality. That mofo talked about groceries like it's an afternoon club or some shit. He probably never ever even stepped into a supermarket and bought a fucking loaf of bread and something else himself. It's why he fucking has no idea how healthcare even works in America, when he had COVID they just pumped shit into him to keep his zombie body alive and he didn't even twitch even the slightest for how much that would cost. Meanwhile rest of people avoid calling an ambulance because that will cost so much it can bankrupt them. Tell me how that isn't absolutely fucked.
I live in Slovenia (Europe) and while our healthcare system isn't perfect either, not once I worried that my medical condition would set me back financially for 5 or 10 years. It just doesn't cross our minds, like at all ever. You just get in touch with doctors and they sort it out based on severity. If it's something non critical you might wait few weeks or months if it's something trivial or cosmetic, but if it's something urgent they'll send you to ER immediately and do most complex procedures asap. So it's not just "you need to wait for months because it's "free" healthcare". It is prioritized and it's perfectly understandable and logical.
The entire argument about universal healthcare taking months to see a doctor is doubly trash because it took me that long to see a doctor in the US anyways. I had to plan my general practitioner visits out 3-4 months in advance and I was on meds that needed represcribed every three months so some months I simply missed it because how long the waits were
Like all arguments in dumb asshole America, we can't have a real argument where the basic concept of triage exists.
Yeah, I think when I had a mole that turned out to be cancer, it was still a 6 months wait to see a dermatologist because there are so many people wanting to see them (and many of those are for cosmetic shit, grumble grumble). Luckily it didn't metastasize while I was waiting. Fucking us healthcare is a joke.
Absolutely unrelated, but you mentioned being from Slovenia and it reminds me of a kid I work with (in the US.) When he was 4, I showed him a map of the world. Out of all the places on it, he zeroed in on Slovenia and asked, "What's that?" I told him, "That's Slovenia." Something about your country caught his attention, I can't explain it.
The kid's an information sponge. Ever since then, when I mention things about the rest of the world (countries, flags, time zones, etc.) he becomes curious about Slovenia.
So yeah, your country has a special place in a random little boy's heart. I just wanted to share that.
I hope someone gives that kid some potica. It's an amazing Slovenian bread made by spreading a nut paste mixture over a large piece of dough which is then rolled up and baked. My Dad is half Slovenian so I grew up eating potica every Christmas.
He might be a sleeper Slovenian agent and he gets activated by the keyword hehe XD
Adding $660,000,000,000 to the federal deficit annually and still not making a dent in people's healthcare costs?
A single-payer universal healthcare system would be cheaper, as almost every other country's systems show.
The real trick is to get private equity and for-profit corporations out of healthcare. All they do is drive up costs while lowering outcomes.
Healthcare should be a public service, funded by the government.
Yeah, the US actually pays more PUBLIC funds per person than most other nations. Then the private cost on top - all for worse health outcomes.
We need more Luigis just from a financial perspective.
You can take out the "almost" here. Literally every other country on Earth pays half or less per capita than what we pay in the US, and this has been the case for decades.
UNH, CVS, ELV and CI share holders disagree with you and thanks to the SCOTUS Citizen United decision they have to money and the legal framework to legally bribe politicians. I'll suggest to invest in those companies rather than flight them.
I'm not contributing to evil companies. "If you can't beat them, join them" does not apply when they're responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year and putting millions of people in poverty.
People willing to do anything to get rich is precisely the problem in this country, and I'm not going to be a part of it.
You're right about Citizens United, though. It should be revoked.
Why does the health insurance industry even exist?
That's a question Americans are prevented from having because it would offend Ayn Rand or something.
Because "value" must be created and extracted, doesn't matter if that means people can't afford insulin
In Australia we have pretty good public health care. IDK what "universal healthcare" is exactly but everyone gets treated for free for most things.
We also have private health insurance. The relationship between the public and private systems is complex but the main difference for most people is wait times.
I know someone with a back injury that causes constant pain, they manage it with prescribed opiates. The problem is it's not life-threatening so they're not a priority for triage. They're about 1 year through a 4 year wait. If they had private insurance they could probably have the surgery in a few months.
Weirdly, they could start a private health insurance policy, serve the 1 year exclusion for pre-existing conditions, and get their back fixed - I don't know them well enough to ask why they don't do that. Anyway.
There's also a problem in my state where the hospital system is getting "clogged up" with people who should be in aged care facilities and so on. If you have a car accident and break your leg, if you don't have private health insurance an ambulance will take you to the nearest public hospital. In some cases there's a queue of ambulances parked up outside. An ER doctor will still come and check on you, just to make sure you're not dying. This wouldn't be a problem if you had private health insurance and were taken to a private hospital.
That said, there's no private hospital within 400km of where I live. I have private health insurance but I can of course still go to the public ER. I don't have anything bad to say about them. They're great really and I've never had to wait an unreasonable amount of time.
That said, the cost is no where near what others are saying it costs in the US. We pay $400 AUD a month for our whole family, but that includes a lot of extra non-hospital stuff like dental and glasses. That works out to about 3% or 4% of an average family income.
It's the same in the UK. There is national healthcare which is what most people go with because it's free (and most people underestimate how infuriating it is sitting in a waiting room for 6 hours) and then there's private healthcare which is what you go with if you want expediency.
A lot of the time if you go with private you end up being tended to by the same medical staff anyway, you're basically just paying to skip the queue.
In America we pay too much for healthcare AND sit in the waiting room for hours
As an American: those are rookie numbers, I've been stuck waiting 6-8 on a bad day to get seen, not even counting the hours it takes to get more than vitals and some iv liquid...
Not trying to one up, I wish we had a system like that here.
We have long wait times too. Even with gold standard health insurance. ER can easily take 6-12 hours, and appointments are scheduled usually weeks to even months out
People are very bad at setting aside small amounts of money to save for large purchases. Especially when that purchase is "one day I might get real sick". That is insurance.
But that is also taxes, so we should just pay those and get healthcare for free.
It's also hard to put away like - well I had $330k of surgeries for a spontaneous pneumothorax about 15 years ago - most people will definitely not experience that. I was in my 20s. Who could save that much by then?
So yeah everyone else in the state paid a little more to cover my bills. By the same token, when God gives a 6yo leukemia (his ways are mysterious lol) I pay a little more to cover her treatment. And by the same token, when someone is lucky enough not to be chosen by God for either of these experiences (hallowed be thy name) then he pays a little more for both of us, which is how he buys a society where he doesn't have to watch a bunch of people die because God was having fun that day.
So really let's put the blame where it's due here, and acknowledge that mankind attempts to introduce fairness into a system where the Lord (worship him lest you burn) is playing fast and loose with His children He loves so much.
Insurance isn’t the same as savings though. Insurance is just a bet. The insurance company basically says “Give me $5000 this year and I will cover your health care costs if you ever accrue any this year otherwise I keep the money.” The insurance company just bets that most of their clients won’t put in any claims.
Not to mention most people can never save enough money to cover the cost of a massive healthcare bill if they get into an accident or get cancer.
This is the US version.
Another version is that the insurance is a mutual fund where everyone is polling money that can be used at any time to pay medical bills. This is not what is happening in the US of course but in some countries the model is similar to that.
The administrators of the mutual fund still make a bet that their income (mainly the money they charge members/customers) will meet or exceed the claims they pay out, no? They might not have a profit motive, but that doesn't change the basic economics of needing income to be >= expenses.
That's not insurance, but - funny, I don't know an English word for this concept. Ok - looked it up, there are words like "friendly society" and "mutual aid fund". Literally what you wrote.
Those poor corpos won't be able to afford to sex traffic kids without those billions of dollars.
Oh wow! In switzerland there is immense political pressure beause health insurance is very expensive.
I pay 6300 per year.
I've got a "Cadillac" plan in Spain, which for a family of 4 is about 5K a year. No copays or anything. Occasionally I'll have a prescription which will cost €20, and the farmacist will get angry on my behalf.
In the US, we were paying $25,000 (pretax) in premiums for a meh plan with copays at every turn.
I love that.
In Canada the eyecare industry is a capitalist hellscape. We just got national dental care and now the opticians and eye doctors are jealous and revolting against their own system because people are buying their contacts and glasses online and not going to the eye doctor. Less and less people have jobs that cover eye care so the ones I talk to want their industry socialized like everyone else’s in the health industry.
Mind giving more detail? Who is the insurance provider and how did you sign up?
In Spain? I moved to Spain, and use Sanitas. My bank offers additional benefits since I signed through them - but honestly, as an American, they could be overcharging me massively and I'd never notice.
In Spain, yeah. Sanitas seems like a popular option for visa holders. The cost seems amazing, one year is about what I'd pay per month in the US.
Is that all inclusive, or do you pay additional costs when things happen?
The distinction here is important- $26K is premiums which is money that goes to the insurance companies. You will end up paying more than that with co-pays, deductibles, etc.
So this is including the deductibles. Ater that there still is 10% in co-pay. But that is really not that much.
Usually all inclusive from what Ive heard from others. Problem is wait times. But if it's not life threating, you're waiting anyways in the US. United States healthcare is dominated by insurance lobbyist. Fear mongering Republicans keep the system up.
Typical NYC slumlord style: "Free first months rent."
I looked at an apartment once which was the upstairs of a house. Dogs had eaten large chunks out of the bedroom doors and there were two giant piles of dog shit left in the kitchen. The owner was enormous and unable to climb stairs so she hadn't seen the state of the place after the previous tenants had moved out. After I told her what the situation was, she said if I cleaned it up myself she would knock off $200 ... from the security deposit. Get fucked.
His daddy was exactly that. A slumlord. Rotten apple from a rotten tree
This is just a roundabout way of subsidizing the health insurance industry while making his base think he actually did something for them.
No that's the ACA. This is just peanuts.
Every subsidy that goes to a person basically is a roundabout way to fund an industry. Even tax write offs are. Like a mortgage interest rate deduction just helps banks and the real estate industry, not the people buying a house. The write off pushes housing prices up, since the banks can give out slightly higher mortgages to borrowers and the market adjusts to the bigger inflow of cash and supply doesn’t increase faster. If the write off didn’t exist people could borrow less but houses would cost less as well. This basically happened in my country the Netherlands. Nobody benefited from the introduction of the mortgage interest deduction except the banks and people who already owned a home when the policy was introduced.
Even if the government gives us $20,000 to buy health insurance, premiums will likely increase by $20,000.
Now now, why would you only increase it by the amount the government will give you, you clearly dont have what it takes to be a CEO. If everyone would get 20k. Increase the price to 25k
Bingo. Socializing profits or whatever this is called…”neoliberalism” “private public partnerships” is exactly what destroyed everything good about western society.
Just more money being pumped straight into the pockets of the insurance company shareholders.
it's like putting bandages over the real issues: student loan forgiveness (instead of lowering tuition), homeless shelters (instead of rent control), food stamps (instead of a living wage), now it's a healthcare subsidy (instead of universal healthcare).
all these things are good, but could be better
Have you noticed how they all result in letting the rich class extract more money from the poor?
holy shit is it really 26000?? that's more than what i pay in tax every year in europe. (granted i am poor but)
the US already spends more public funds in healthcare per capita than every country with free healthcare.
on top of that, we pay a shit ton extra for insurance, then a shit ton more in copays/deductibles, plus a shit ton more because something isn't included....
you could lower taxes by thousands and give everyone free healthcare.
the US healthcare is nothing but a massive scam. the kind where the perpetators kill tens of thousands per year and rake in endless money. there's no justification besides rich people like being rich, even if it means killing thousands of innocents. in any civilized world those executives should be tortured to death.
You guys need a lot more Italian plumbers...
why? they didn't do anything, Luigi was with me that day
It was like 500-600 a month for two people a decade ago but the insurance plans on the exchange have gone up in price about a 100 monthly, every year. But they also dissappear after getting too high, so there are increasingly fewer plans from new or small providers. This year it's 1200 monthly. These plans were actually quite good though compared to regular plans people get from their employer, with 0 copay and 0 deductible. For low income people on the exchange it cost them 0-100$ monthly for them, and the subsidies covered the entire plan cost up to around 1000$ a month. So last year you could have excellent health coverage for 50 dollars a month, but no longer.
The big problem of course was that without the universal mandate, the whole obamacare plan didn't really work long term because the cost kept going up without any of the parts to keep that price down because of the Supreme court.
I'm super skeptical of the 0 deductible plans. I've only ever seen them offered in situations where the plans can be expected to be not-great, both on the marketplace for both '25 and '26 (I'd never used the insurance marketplace before last year) and when working at a tiny company with less than 10 employees. I'm not sure how they work but given that I assume they end up costing more than plans with a deductible
Tbh this is also shocking to me as an American. I am not sure if this is only for marketplace plans or a specific kind or what
The marketplace just had their subsidies cut. Its so funny its like "here's less than 1/3 back what we cut to line our pockets, you filthy animals, PS, fuck off and die, signed Donald Pedophile Trump."
The insult on top of that injury is that the penalties for being uninsured weren't removed.
Assuming a typical family of four, 2k a month for marketplace insurance is actually pretty cheap. My partner just got his tax documents, and between him and his employer, they spent 10k last year to insure a single adult. I've got a ton of health problems, and we've talked about adding me to his plan, but that's an extra $500 a month.
It's not 2k for coverage... Its 2k to gfys. Orange man backwards ubi
Republican healthcare plan can be sum up as "get fucked and die you dirty peasant".
"We'll do socialism, but we'll do it just a little bit, not enough to matter to any single human being's actual needs, but at least we broke our ultraconservative ideals for no good reason I guess?"
confused_jackie_chan_meme.jpg
For real, if they just took that budget and applied it as a single payer healthcare system, it would be orders of magnitude more effective.
It's absolutely crazy to me that you guys have the most expensive healthcare system in the world (per capita) and at the same time one of the worst compared to other sufficently develloped nations.
'It's really expensive, but at least it's awful' should be the new motto, print it on the money under e pluribus anus
Isn't that basically universal basic income?
If he does it the proper way yes, but it'll probably be something stupid and strictly controlled to be only insurance
Also ignoring the fact that even if it was $2000 annually no strings attached that still does little, though it would certainly be welcome
Health insurance would magically become $2k more expensive overnight, so
In other news most countries only pay 3 to 5% of their income for universal healthcare but sure we’ll see how Pedo Care works out for Americans
We get discounted 9% of our income every month in my south American country for a deficient health care system, so we have to opt for the private option for an extra 2% of discount.
Even with that you still pay less
The clinics are still expensive and they do all they can to keep the line going up, while the hospitals are collapsed
What country?
The reason his healthcare plan is ridiculous is because he hasn't put any effort into it. Which for Trump is saying something.
Yeah. He's kind of a bell end. I'm not sure if the world has noticed yet. Perhaps he should give another rousing speech at the world economic forum, I was so inspired by the 30 sending long pauses.
Or perhaps he could loudly shit himself a few more times.
My dudes, we have nothing to lose but our chains
Trump used to support a Canadian-style, single-payer health care plan. However, the closer he got to the presidency, the more he backed away from that. Funny how that works.
I mean, it takes minimum 150k per year to raise a family in the US, so that tracks.
Wait... when the government gives people money... that sounds like... SOCIALISM.
This is to point out his hypocrisy, not even to note that this is a stupid way of distributing money (it just goes into the hands of middle men) and only intends to generate some good sounding news instead of actually solving a problem
I can't tell if this is sarcastic, but I'll respond the same way regardless.
This is not socialism. Government provided social programs or financial assistance are a basic function of governance. Virtually every government on Earth does this, whether democratic, authoritarian, or communist.
I think they're playing by the conservative alarmists' definition of 'socialism.'
I would have to agree.
10% off, typically corporate garbage. Whenever you see something with like $100 off you can usually just times it by ten to figure out the real cost.
$2,000 off x 10 = $20,000 which is surprisingly close to the actual cost.
Also, weird, the annual price is going up by 2000 dollars
If you don't buy insurance, do you still get the money? Or is it like a coupon.
How can there still RELATIVELY many people be able to have kids financially? The fertility rate in most european countries in comparison is lower, although we have affordable healthcare (well, compared to the US at least).
Why do you think they're trying to shut down reproductive rights? They want people to have kids despite financial capability to raise them. As long as they survive growing up, they'll labor.
And be raised by parents who don't have any financial independence, ensuring they're also in debt slavery for the rest of their lives.
Things feel so dystopian that I get the feeling that after they get everyone on debt slavery that they'll put propaganda about how it's unfair that debt is absolved on death and that your family/kids should pay for it. Fox News will be like: "why should a company's debts just disappear? it's unfair to the lender!"
Hey, someone is going to have to do all those below-subsistence jobs that the deported immigrants have been doing.
In an ideal world that's what robots/AI would do. But we get the opposite; artists become unemployed whereas manual labor still continues to exist for humans.
Concepts of a plan
It's getting to the point where I'm staying to wonder if i should just pay my own way with healthcare. If i only go to the doctor 2x a year and it's like $150 per visit, then I'll be saving a cool $25,000 that i could have wasted on insurance. I just have to make sure i don't have any emergencies or car accidents that require a trip to the hospital... 🤔
For right now they legally have to stabilize you if you walk into a hospital. So uh. Just saying
Just don't have any ID on you and use as little English as possible.
They won't treat you. Like you'd still have a broken bone but you wouldn't be in a state of "dying within the next 24 hours" anymore. Which is nice...
Land of the Free, eh?
I'd retort with "Land of the Fee" but that underplays just how expensive it is to exist as a human here
Just go and then don't pay (and hopefully they don't kick you out). You can always negotiate later to pay a much smaller amount than what they initially bill you for.
A bigger concern is something like cancer. Your chemo will not be covered by anything and as a result you simply won't get it.
Is he really just replacing like 6k+ valued ACA subsidies with 2k in subsidies that are implemented more stupidly
This plus the 50 year mortgages and I'm starting to feel relieved I'll probably die before the real aftermath of this shit hits.
26,000 for a high deductible plan.
So you can get 2k, to spend 26K, to spend 10K in deductibles before insurance covers a damn thing.
He truly is the smartest American
You take that back!
"It's only $26,000 that's like the price of a single bottle of wine. Why are the peasants complaining?"
The Trump Doesntcare, thoughts and prayers lol
$26000?? In Germany, which is neither known for a bad nor for a cheap health care system, the maximum a person is able to pay is 11299.68 € regardless of the number of family members who are included. Ok - if both parents are working the family might pay up to 22599.36 €, but only if both parents were earning more than the cut-off. The majority of people pays far less.
In America, the AVERAGE is $26000. That's for middle of the road insurance for a family. I have multiple friends whose entire family pays well over 30k - 35k a year for medical insurance (2,800 a month)
Wait, am I reading this correctly? When you say 11299.68, that includes not only the person working, but also their spouse and children??? How much does that cover?
Right now, I'm lucky to have possibly the best healthcare plan in the US through my wife's job. She was able to add me to her plan for $8580 per year, but it fully covers almost everything with no deductible - something basically unheard of in the US. In comparison, the cheapest marketplace plan I could have gotten would have been something like $8400 per year, with an $8500 deductible, and then it only would have covered 25% of expenses after that. Before I got on her plan, it usually cost me $300 to see a doctor for a regular cold. I'm in my 30s, a normal weight, reasonably fit, and don't have any health problems other than occasional acid reflux. Under my previous plan, the pharmacy was going to charge me $980 to get a 2 month supply of acid reflux medication (40 mg esomeprazole magnesium tablets). So much winning living in the US. 🙄
It covers everything. From a paper cut to brain cancer. No copay.
Yes, but:
If your self-employed, cost doubles, of course. A self-employed couple earning more than 132300 € per year would have to pay 43754.40 € per year. Most will change to a private insurer, unkess they got a bunch of kids.
Esomeprazol 40 mg 90 tablets are ~ 20 €. You'll have to pay 5 € yourself.
For context: median income was 43750 € in 2024.
The horrors of public health not funded by taxes. (These are usually free of charge.)
Ten years. Presumably, if he was working on it in earnest he’d have started in 2016. And if he truly had the best interests of Americans in mind, he could have continued on it during the Biden years.
Of course he doesn’t and never did have Americans best interest in mind.
Roflmao. Do you really think he just pulls this number out of his ass??
Of course it takes a lot of study=time (economy, income levels, global state of health tech) to pinpoint the exact solution to this complex issue for such a big country
Brilliant!
Remember when they unveiled "the plan" many years ago? Huge stacks of paper, it looked very comprehensive indeed.
Of course, all the pages were blank. IT WAS TOP SECRET, YOU SEE, INVISIBLE INK!
Now, I'm wondering what was on the other 20K pages after the "$2000 credit a year" page. That was invisible. Eight years ago? Ten? I hate it here
ETA $2000 will be worth $20 by 2027. We should print more money to fix that!
Americans pay more per capita for medicare/Medicaid than sane countries do for universal health care. You can literally afford it.
But won't you think of the poor insurance company ceo's? How will they afford their next yatch if you cut them out of the system?!?!
Ok, I think that if you guys ate just one of them, the rest would fall into line pretty fast.
Art of the steal
Thanks Trump! /s
So we had a strange early insurance change at work. HSA plan went from 6k max out of pocket to 16k.
Can we call it pedo care?
Medicare will be next to go. Don't think for a minute that it's safe
Worst health outcomes than their biggest adversaries, spending more than their biggest adversaries, crying more than their biggest adversaries.... This is America and has been for a long time.
Thanks America for keeping us all down.
Noo, you don't see, you don't understand, everything will be better, in fact everything is already better, in fact everything is perfect, and if you can't see that well then that is because you are deranged. Trump 2029!
🤦♂️
Holy shit, I had no idea it was so expensive.
oxy moron
Oxymoron
He's basically moving the money to the insurance companies, this is stupid.
That's also what Obamacare does. It's just that Obamacare is much, much better.
Wouldn't it be better to subsidize the actual cost?