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Comment by nyamada | Hacker News Reader

My daughter here in France had a bike accident two months ago which requires 14 stitches in her foot.

We received 3 follow-up visits from nurses to clean and redress her wounds --

We pay about 100€ a month for supplemental private insurance on top of the public health insurance here --

Total cost for us? about 40€. We would have had to pay about 100€ more for the nurses' visits, but the mutuelle covered it.

These are some of the reasons why my wife and I moved from the US to France -- she's French, I'm American; but I can't imagine returning to the nightmare complexity of billings and profiteering that the US system has become...

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I'm American and live in Norway. I feel the same. My out of pocket here is around $300, after which a lot of things simply become free. I don't have to consider whether or not I can afford to take care of something, and I have trouble explaining how much lower my stress levels are because of it.

My taxes aren't higher than in the US: IN fact, they might be lower than taxes plus insurance premiums - and that doesn't even touch on the deductibles.

> My taxes aren't higher than in the US: IN fact, they might be lower than taxes plus insurance premiums - and that doesn't even touch on the deductibles.

I start to think that some people aren't really concerned by the amount they are paying. What they deplore is the idea that some "freeloader" could benefit from their taxes. Even if the net result is that they're spending less.

>What they deplore is the idea that some "freeloader" could benefit from their taxes.

But the ironic thing is that private insurance also works through "freeloading": you pay your premiums so that somebody else in the insurance pool can get treatment. It's just that some people prefer their intermediary be a private company which will also skim profits off top than their government.

Exorbitant health insurance premiums and healthcare bills was the primary reason our family of 3 (now 4) left the USA (we're all American citizens). It's such a relief knowing that we all have the option to go to the ER without emptying our bank accounts. My tax rate is higher here in Europe, but I'm actually saving significant money compared to the USA, when factoring in healthcare costs.

On the topic of Mutuelle - I'm still to find a reason to pay one, at all. Maybe you could explain, but the hospitalization costs after 31 days seem to be fully covered by the social security (Ameli), if you ever get to be so unlucky to get there, so some doctor visits and an incident requiring hospitalization may be better addressed by "paying yourself" insurance, e.g. saving $4k/year, in case you ever need it. It would be the HSA of the US, with the healthcare higher quality and lower cost of France.

I live in the US and my employer pays for my very excellent health insurance.

For my family of 4 the most I will pay in any one year is $750.

About 1/3 of people in the US have excellent healthcare and benefits. You don’t often hear from us.

Even with 'excellent insurance' (which I think I have as well), you still deal with deductibles, non-covered procedures, inability to choose and shop for prescriptions, limited choice of providers, HSAs, massively inflated prices... the list goes on. To the point of another commenter, just having to reason and think about the costs of necessary healthcare in one of the wealthiest countries in the world is a complete joke. Some people having OK experiences in the US still pales in comparison to the majority having good experiences in most other developed countries.

Edit: Also having your health tied to your employer is also a joke. I've read enough stories about people getting screwed by employers who know they need the insurance and get away with abusing employees.

Family members have experienced absurdly long waits despite “excellent insurance”. Sometimes the bill isn’t the problem, you simply don’t get treated.

If you’re dealing with an HSA that means you have a HDHP which I would not consider excellent insurance.

There really are a third of us out there with really great plans. I’m getting downvoted to oblivion but it doesn’t change facts.

Don’t forget your employer doesn’t ‘pay for your healthcare’, they have a budget set aside from your annual salary - if they didn’t have to pay as much for your healthcare they’d be able to pay you more (and capitalism suggests if a competing employer did and yours didn’t, the former would win long term).

And you get into an accident (fall in the bathtub/stairs) cannot work for few weeks, your boss fire you easily... Where you is excellent health insurance coming from now? COBRA? That will not be $750/year.

This is completely wrong for many people. In the US we have something called FMLA and then I also have short term disability and long term disability.

I have seen coworkers with cancer or even their family members with cancer and they take six months off with pay and come back like nothing happened.

Be a valued employee at a large company. It’s a completely different situation in the US. It’s actually really good from my experience and as you can tell by my username I’m actually pretty old.

It is impossible for everyone to "be a valued employee at a large company". We could all be 'valued residents/citizens of a large country', but we're not.

Your "great health insurance" is provided by an employer who is factoring the costs of that in to the price they're charging others for goods/services. Other people are bearing the cost of your privilege. I have little doubt that most folks in your position and companies like yours will generally shop for the lower cost services/products, which will necessarily mean those other companies you're buying from will not be able to provide the "great health insurance" and similar benefits you enjoy.

If everyone is a valued employee at a big company, who:

Handles trash

Landscapes

Makes our shit dissappear

Maintains society

Digs ditches,,makes roads

Prepares food

Etc...

Do those people just not deserve health care?

Reconsider your own life. Picture it with you, yourself doing those things. When I look at mine, the worth of those people is obvious and I am happy to have them doing what they do so I can do what I do and we all meet at the park and let our kids play together.

1) you’re right that social programs in EU is great but there’s a hidden cost. It’s all derived from centuries of imperialism/colonialism and the wealth accrued as a direct result. You’re effectively reaping the benefit (and this will likely persist for centuries more).

2) similarly, most drug developments and research are done in the US. EU is effectively leeching off of the US policies. I’d say even Japan by itself contributes more to that end, per capita and in aggregate, than EU as a whole.

3) whenever people marvel at quality of life in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, etc, you have to ask yourself how they got there. None of that is free and other people are indirectly paying for those privileges. In most cases, it’s third world countries that Europeans pillaged for centuries. And in modern times, it’s on the backs of American taxpayers and soldiers who fought to save EU on multiple occasions from their own selfish and inept policies.

- If US companies do research is because they make profit of it. They don’t give the drugs to Europeans

- What the hell has to do imperialism with 2021 healthcare systems?

- Healthcare is not a privilege

I regularly travel back to Brazil when I need to do something more involved that’s not an emergency, because the healthcare I get there is MUCH better than what I get in the US (I pay $800/y to keep a health insurance plan there). That’s one of the Third World Countries for you.

I have friends who also live in the US, and went through chemo and surgeries there. I did LASIK myself. None of us paid a dollar on top of the annual insurance, for any of it.

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