Not having health insurance is not an excuse.
In Germany you are required by law to have it.
In Germany you are required by law to have it.
So it doesn't matter if you pay the pemiums or not - you get massive surprise bills.
This is not true. Premiums and coverage are only allowed to vary by age and location, not preexisting conditions.
https://affordablecareactlitigation.files.wordpress.com/2019...
https://affordablecareactlitigation.files.wordpress.com/2019...
here are summary articles explaining trump's DOJ's efforts
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/usc-brookings-schaeffer-on-he...
https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/trump-administrations-a...
so what is your point other than to mislead?
“Out of network” doesn’t mean your health insurance plan doesn’t pay for anything. It usually just changes coinsurance rate. Anyone who has a major expensive hospital event while insured will just hit their maximum annual out of pocket amount and that coinsurance rate won’t matter. That’s not a good thing but it also means that this comment is misleading, implying that being out of network means that the insured person just has to foot the bill and that their insurance company dips out.
The whole point of the insurance network is that your health insurance company is encouraging you to take your routine doctor’s visits and scheduled non-emergency procedures to a place where they negotiate.
And acne and pregnancy aren’t disqualifying. What are you even saying they’re disqualified for? That’s a vast exaggeration.
1. Even in the event of Emergency visits to in network hospitals, one is often charged out of network fees if one of the doctors present is out of network. Which one is not notified of and has no say over, regardless. So going to an in nerwork hospital (which is the best one can do to align to their plan) means nothing.
2. When charged out of network, it most certainly does not mean only the coinsurance rate changes, you are also charged 10 to 50× more. So you are charged say 40% of $5000 rather than 20% of $300. Again, at an in network hospital.
3. Out of pocket max differs dramatically in network to out of network, in some plans going away completely in out of network scenario.
What you are saying above is not just a minimization its completely misleading and wrong.
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...
the person who replied to you is wrong about out-of-network services though. they seem to be describing a ppo plan. my high deductible plan is quite clear on the fact that out-of-network is not covered at all. doesn't even count towards the out-of-pocket max.
Because that's the case in the US.
https://www.cm.be/lid-worden/cm-bijdrage
Eg. Going to a doctor for a blood check costs 1€, 14€ is paid by the insurer
There are upper limits for the national health insurance which is based on a fixed percentage of your monthly income. I've passed that border this year (earning around 66 k€/year) and from now on, I will not have to pay more, so my procentual share actually goes down from now on.
If I'd marry now, my wife and any children would also be covered by my percentage, it's called "family insurance". Pretty fair after all. (Some limitations apply, but if my wife would stop working, she would be covered through my insurance.)
God I wish, it's about double that [0]: 162€ (health insurance) + 32€ (statutory nursing care insurance) for those making ~1k€/month or less. Not counting any gov support. Btw ~870€ seems to be the max, if you earn ~4700€/month or more.
And from what I remember there is a way to opt out of the public system and switch to private insurance, but this is kind of discouraged by being hard to switch back and requiring significant income in the first place.
> (german) https://www.tk.de/techniker/leistungen-und-mitgliedschaft/in...
It is always reasonable and affordable.
Absolutely none of this is true in the US.
Trump getting rid of that mandate is one of the few things I'm grateful for in his presidency. No longer am I forced to pay for terrible insurance that had high copays and ridiculous deductibles.
I'm a low income worker and in exchange for almost 7% of my income I get 1 free doctor checkup a year and catastrophic coverage.
Sorry but $2000 cash is worth a lot more to me than an imaginary $100,000 hospital bill. Anything less than $2000 I spend on my health in a year is cash money in my pocket. Being "rational" about insurance is a luxury for wealthy. I would rather dispute the cost with my hospital and let the debt go to collections where I can reduce it even further.
Not sure how you get 2k?
Look at what other countries are doing, do you hear them having "obamacare?"
Stop comparing your current medical system to worse systems. Start comparing it to other, better systems. Look at Canada and the UK.
You would pay EVEN LESS than you do now.
Obama basically made this happen, but the net result was that all of healthy young adults (the kind that least needed insurance) were forced to start paying for insurance to subsidize the unhealthy older adults (or pay a penalty).
So basically it was just a disguised tax targeting the young and healthy.
Isn’t the whole point of insurance to have everyone (sick and healthy) pay for the few?
To me it sounds very similar to social security tax - the young being forced to pay to subsidize the old.
This is literally insurance.
Obama's plan failed because the public option was removed, employers and states refused to play along, and the Supreme Court undermined even the part you're complaining about. It was also not a great plan begin with, compared to European programs.
(What? Too much?)
Maybe Americans are missing something to understand that, but it's not socialism or communism if you actually care about all people in the state, no matter how healthy or old they are.
Maybe Americans will understand one day.
Someone who is insured in the US is not allowed to negotiate.
This person can call the billing department and say “I can’t pay” and watch that bill plummet.
The 50% or so of Americans who get their healthcare from solid employers will exhaust their deductible but otherwise be generally fine. Then there’s another chunk of people on Medicaid and Medicare (government healthcare for elderly or poor) who would be fine in this situation.
The group of people in the United States who are screwed fall into a few categories: hourly workers who aren’t offered insurance or who are offered bad insurance from their employers, or business owners that have to self insure.
The ACA (Obamacare) attempted to help this situation by making health insurance mandatory and essentially going the route of Germany, but the mandate has been handicapped by numerous compromises in the bill itself, court rulings, and political turmoil. Also the high unregulated cost of drugs doesn’t help. It was not able to defeat the for-profit health insurance industry.
It’s wild to me that these political parties that claim to be pro-business don’t support separating healthcare coverage from employment. This is probably because of status-quo lobbying and a desire to keep people wage enslaved until retirement age.
I don't think it works this way that often. It might just get sent to a debt collector. They might give you a lower fee, but it won't be by that much.
But I can tell you this: there aren’t a lot of ways in which that debt collector can collect. They can’t take your home, they can’t take your car (as if the uninsured person even owns their car outright), and I don’t even think they can garnish wages.
The statue of limitations on debt is as short as 3 years in some states, and it won’t even affect your credit score beyond 7 years.
If that person never answers the phone and never admits to the debt, it basically just goes away on its own from my understanding.
Even if they decide to settle, that debt collector purchased the debt for pennies on the dollar. That person settling is not paying anything close to the full cost. The hospitals know that a bill going to collections is already a lost cause, and is basically written off as charity care.
Many people frame this as a "say this magic phrase to get your bill reduced" and I just don't think it's that simple any more. Some of the consequences from not paying just come back down the road.
The US healthcare system is messed up in a lot of ways.
I’m just saying that many people who are uninsured at the emergency room will end up with a lower total than people who are insured with unsubsidized low quality insurance.