Comment by odysseus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by odysseus | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting that your NHS fees are at £7k for the year. That's about the amount I pay for my family's annual insurance premiums + deductible.

I'm no fan of insurance/hospital bureaucracy, but at least I can go to any specialist doctor I want without having to see a GP first. And I pick the job and insurance provider I want to reduce the amount my family pays each year.

Emergency situations like the last one you mentioned, if they are out of network, are still covered at in network rates, thanks to my insurance plan specifically stating that in their plan documentation. I feel bad for your sister-in-law and am glad she survived, but she did have a not so great insurance plan. I would strongly consider getting a different job or lobbying hard with my workplace HR if I had a plan that would only pay 10% in true emergency situations.

> That's about the amount I pay for my family's annual insurance premiums + deductible.

Look at what it would cost to cover you and your family on the individual market without government or employer subsidies. As a contractor, I pay double what you do on the individual market, and that is only coverage for myself.

Your employer must be paying for a portion of your health insurance premiums, so you have to include that if you’re going to compare to the $7k GBP figure.

And everyone would get a different job with nice health insurance offerings, if they could.

Not to disprove my original point about how affordable the NHS is compared to my Made in America insurance, but the £7k is only the employee side, the employers also pay a bit (though much less), but a common benefit of most employers is private insurance on top of national insurance.

If my math is correct, employer + employee national health fee for £140k salaried employee is a few quid short of £10k which is still half of my annual health care expense, so my original point still stands.

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