When going to a doctor for a simple diagnosis or bloodwork can easily cost $400 to $1000, many put off doctor visits unless it's an emergency. It can easily become a choice between a doctor visit or a car repair. Preventative checkups are gone and insurance is only something one uses with an emergency room visit or major health issue.
A perfect example is vitamin deficiency and the very serious effects such deficiencies can have, and how inexpensive the preventative care is.
Generally necessary pathology/radiology or routine blood tests are covered by medicare which is paid for by a levy of about 1% on income.
Likewise pharmaceuticals are generally fairly low cost (there are exceptions), being subsidised by the government and for low income or people with ongoing requirements can be free.
Private health insurance is available and encouraged by a decrease in your medicare levy, but a lot of people are finding that it doesn't provide any financial benefit and as we have a very good public health system, does not provide any better health outcome.
Health Insurance is not a major concern in Australia. It certainly is not tied to an employer and doesn't rate on the list of things to worry about when getting a job.
So you won't seek medical treatment at a hospital if you get injured or become severely ill? Or do you plan to go to the hospital and pay out of pocket? Or, like some other voluntarily uninsured people, will you ask for medical treatment and then just not pay?
> than work a low waged job and pay for Obamacare.
Why would a "low waged" job be a requirement, unless that's the only job you can get? You can pay for Obamacare with a middle or high wage job too. You can also pay for it if you are self employed (which is a lot of people on Obamacare).
This is where it gets uncomfortable, isn't it? That their lives are so miserable, that they would gladly trade away years and years of expected lifespan for higher quality of life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_...
It isn’t the way we should want this to work, but it is certainly something that people actually do.
I'm saying low waged as in I make $14/hr or less. I mean it boggles my mind that you'd even say that because there frankly, is a large portion of the US who don't make Silicon Valley salaries.
It’s factually correct. For example [0]:
Life expectancy increases with age as the individual survives the higher mortality rates associated with childhood. For instance, the table above listed the life expectancy at birth among 13th-century English nobles at 30. Having survived until the age of 21, a male member of the English aristocracy in this period could expect to live:
1200–1300: to age 64
1300–1400: to age 45 (because of the bubonic plague)
1400–1500: to age 69
1500–1550: to age 71
17th-century English life expectancy was only about 35 years, largely because infant and child mortality remained high. Life expectancy was under 25 years in the early Colony of Virginia, and in seventeenth-century New England, about 40 percent died before reaching adulthood.
During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The under-5 mortality rate in London decreased from 74.5% in 1730–1749 to 31.8% in 1810–1829.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_over...
Someone making $15/hr is likely does not have any assets that would be surrendered in chapter 7 bankruptcy. A lot of people would gladly crater their credit score for a few years to delete an $80,000 bill. Plenty of people crater their credit scores over dumber stuff.
This is the life I have in capitalist America. I'm afraid to do basic things like ride a bicycle in fear of it financially crippling me to the point that I'm incapable of paying rent and becoming homeless
Tax incidence doesn’t not depend on who writes the actual check to the government.
When you get your monthly paycheck, your employer had already withheld the income tax and sent it to the government treasury. Does that mean that you pay no income tax, and the employer kindly covers it for you? No, of course not.
When you buy a new phone, 19% VAT tax is paid. Who pays it? The retailer is responsible to send the money to government, does it mean that he pays full tax, and consumers pay no VAT? Of course not, VAT is reflected in price, and if there was no VAT, the prices would fall down. Suppose that government said that half of VAT is paid by buyer, and half by seller. Would that make any difference at all to anyone involved? No, the final price paid by the customer would be the same, the amount of revenue received by the seller after VAT would be the same, and the government would receive the exact same amount of money. Of course, the outcome would be exactly the same for any other government mandated “split” in who pays VAT.
Similarly, any split in who nominally pays healthcare tax does not in fact matter in the slightest with respect to who actually bears the burden of the tax. Government cannot mandate that half of the burden is on employer and half on employee, because it simply has no power to do so: tax incidence depends on relative elasticities of supply and demand, and not at all on what the government claims the incidence to be. In case of taxing labor, almost all of the incidence is on the seller, that is, on the worker. So, government might say that half of tax is paid by the employer, but the only result of it is that some people are tricked in actually believing that.