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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> privilege not everyone enjoys

55% of Americans [1], and, I’d guess, a commanding majority of likely voters.

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27...

I am included in that 55% but my deductible and OOP max are too high for my salary so i still can’t go to the doctor because i don’t have an extra $8k per year to spend on it.

You can't go to the doctor for your free annual visit because your OOP max is too high?

What is the point of limiting the scope of discussion to a single visit per year? Am I missing some context from the article that makes this relevant to things like the expense of follow-up visits to confirm/treat complex diagnoses such as secondary hypoaldosteronism, discussed in the article?

In my case, I have multiple conditions that require expensive monthly or annual visits, which I’ve severely lapsed on.

In my city (Pittsburgh) over half of the workers who work at our largest healthcare provider surveyed have some kind of debt to that same entity. My own mother is one of those people and she has been climbing for years. Funny how that works.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/union-raises-c...

I don't see anything in that link about "fully paid" so the number of people with employer-provided health insurance fully paid by the employer is probably much lower.

> In 2019, the percentage of people with employer-provided coverage at the time of interview was slightly higher than in 2018, from 55.2 percent in 2018 to 55.4 percent in 2019

> don't see anything in that link about "fully paid" so the number of people with employer-provided health insurance fully paid by the employer is probably much lower

You’re right. Tough to find statistics, in part because “fully paid” is ambiguous. (Saw this [1].)

The figure I should have referred to is 72% of Americans being happy with their own healthcare [2]. You’re not going to get single payer without convincing them they’re trading up.

[1] https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/what-percent-of-health-insur...

[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/468176/americans-sour-healthcar...

I'm counted in that group but still pay several thousand a year out-of-pocket.

In my experience in the US,”employer-provided” is not the same as “fully paid for by my employer.” Generally there is an employee-paid portion of the monthly premiums.

So 45% do not, and that’s ok?

Or the huge percentage of that 55% where their coverage is high deductible, so it’s functionally just a “you won’t be instantly bankrupted if you have a heart attack” not basic healthcare?

The bizarrely antisocial and frankly sociopathic “I’ve got mine, other people can get fucked” attitude people like you have is sickening.

You are very hostile in this thread. The GP didn't say anywhere that it was ok for people to be uninsured. Neither did they say they were among the 55% figure.

Secondly, it's easy to find some official figures - [0]

From January through June 2023, among people of all ages, 7.4% were uninsured, 40.7% had public coverage, and 60.8% had private coverage at the time of interview

And:

The percentage of adults who were uninsured decreased from 14.7% in 2019 to 10.7% in the first 6 months of 2023. Public coverage increased from 2019 (20.4%) through the first 6 months of 2023 (23.6%). No significant trend in private coverage was observed between 2019 (66.8%) and the first 6 months of 2023 (67.7%)

In other words, the majority of people in the US (> 90%) have insurance -- private, public, or both.

[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur202312....

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