7 ms·
>"Health insurance To me this was the biggest sticker shock, which I didn't mention at all in my old post as I wasn't paying it yet, as I was still tax resident
by aphextron 9y ago
>"Health insurance
To me this was the biggest sticker shock, which I didn't mention at all in my old post as I wasn't paying it yet, as I was still tax resident in Finland. Now I'm currently paying 508 EUR or 569 USD for my health insurance here [for a family of 3]. That's not a typo or a yearly cost, that's what it costs every single month."
Sounds like a bargain
- gambiting 9y agoUK here, sounds expensive to me. I mean, it's calculated as a percentage of your salary - so if you don't work at all, or earn below the taxable threshold, you never pay anything and still have full coverage. Earn loads of money = pay loads towards health insurance. As someone on a moderate salary, ~569USD/month sounds like a lot to me, but I can only assume that with his profits, it's not bad at all.
- wu_tang_chris 9y ago$6/gallon gasoline sounds expensive to me. I'd much rather live here on a moderate salary. Enjoy paying VAT taxes!
- vidarh 9y agoVAT adds up to a very low percentage of what a typical family spends, as firstly, most people only spends a small proportion of their salary on things that VAT are due on. E.g. if you pay 25% in tax + national insurance, then your net salary is 75% of your gross. If you spend 1/3 of that on mortage/rent, you're left with half of your gross salary. This leaves you with VAT adding a theoretical maximum of 10 percentage points to your taxes. But of course, in reality you have a bunch of other costs that VAT aren't charged on, and a number of essential goods such as most food are zero rated, and a number of additional goods are charged at reduced rates. Last time I did the maths for myself (earning well beyond average), despite the headline VAT rate for the UK of 20%, I paid less than 4% of my salary towards VAT. Overall my tax level was comparable to e.g. California (and if factoring in health insurance etc., California would have been much more expensive if I wanted to ensure equivalent coverage). Your mileage will vary depending on what you spend your money on. Now, if you spend a lot of your income on gasoline, you have a point - it will drive up the taxes you pay a lot. And also, there certainly are US states that would be cheaper. But a comparison like that is pretty meaningless without factoring in cost of living and salary levels as well.
- kgwgk 9y agoWhat was the amount of Finnish taxes going to healthcare? Probably a few thousand euros per year.
- skizm 9y agoOnce your income passes a certain point, America has some of the cheapest health care in the world.
- have_faith 9y agoVery funny, even if not intentionally so.
- raverbashing 9y agoA certain point around 7 digits I'd say
- Spivak 9y agoNot even close. Let's pick Canada as an example. If you make $95k USD (household) you're better off in the US. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/heres-how-much-the-average-american-spends-on-health-care.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/heres-how-much-the-average-a... We spend a little more than $10k USD on medical expenses or $13k CAD. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/price-of-public-health-care-insurance-2016.pdf https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/price-of... Around $120k CAD is the tipping point where you spend more than the average person in the US which is about $95k USD.
- mahyarm 9y agoIncome tax load in Canada is pretty close to California / NYC, but your also paying for health insurance on top of the tax load. So living in Canada is cheaper than the USA for healthcare costs if your paying similar tax rates. It only starts becoming an extra cost if you live in an area of the USA with lower taxes than Canada, and you have to add a $9k credit for the Canadian side to account for the out of pocket healthcare expense they would be paying for in the USA.
- will_brown 9y agoIt doesn't seem like an expensive premium for a family of 3 compared to what's on the federal exchange (what people ignorantly call Obamacare, as it were an insurance plan in and of itself) for the State of Florida. Still the premium means relatively little, what matters is what kind of network coverage he/his family gets as well as the deductible and copay. As many have found especially with some of these fly by night insurance companies that initially popped up on the exchange in Florida and after two years are no longer in business, there is no point in claiming people are insured just because they are paying premiums, if the have relatively limited access to care and/or can't afford the deductible.
- BartSaM 9y agoI am paying $50 for a single person per month for premium health insurance, no lines service, priority entry, private cliniques, private hospitals, accident insurance, over 200 diseases included, free checkups, worldwide coverage, up to 6 months in a hospital during the year covered, money payments for each accident/sickness that forced me to the hospital, emergency transportation, blood tests etc. on demand and so on, and so on. I love Europe.
- shubb 9y agoAh, but you are paying for the items you listed. Presumably the core of your cover is hidden in your taxes?
- tekromancr 9y agoPresumably the single government-run insurance system is in a much stronger negotiation position with the healthcare providers, forcing healthcare providers to operate more efficiently.
- pfisch 9y agoSo we are about to have net neutrality repealed over the objection of everyone except ISPs basically. Medicare isn't even allowed to negotiate drug prices, but our govt run single payer system will definitely be immune from regulatory capture. Right? Why would you presume these things that are almost certainly false for the US.
- BartSaM 9y agoYes. It is $50. Private insurance company. One of the largest in the world.
- NicoJuicy 9y agoWe pay much taxes, but then again. Everyone does here. If you get sick. A doctor can cost 5€ for a visit, we go to the dentist because we can easily. Our medicine is 10x as cheap easily and if we lose our jobs, we still have a home. But yeah, if we earn a lot. We pay a lot. No reason to be sarcastic about it. I've always had a job and I'm never ill and I hope it never happens. The system works though, even if we have the largest taxes in the world ( Belgium)
- pryelluw 9y agoI pay 700ish USD a month for 3 healthy people.
- YorickPeterse 9y agoIn The Netherlands this would be quite expensive, though it depends a bit on what your insurance would cover. For example, my health insurance plan (covering just me, not a family of 3) costs around €110 / month ($130) but is a fairly basic plan and requires that I pay the first €300 myself (which is stupid if you ask me) per year, anything after that is covered. You can get cheaper or more expensive plans depending on the amount of value you pay yourself (known as the "eigen risico" or "own risk"), but the cheapest I could find was around €80 / month.
- davedx 9y agoFamily insurance plans in NL can be pretty good though. Can't remember what my wife pays for her and our 3 kids but it's less than 4x one person.
- chesterc 9y agoIIRC it's exactly 1X. Children are covered by their parents' insurance.
- avar 9y agoYeah I pay around €80 / month but my "own risk" is around €885. That there's an "own risk" is not stupid, insurance that protects you from every little thing is necessarily more expensive than insurance that only protects you from an unlikely catastrophe. I save €17.50/month by setting the "own risk" to €885 instead of €385, a difference of €500. This means that if I don't use the health insurance for around 2.5 years I make up that difference and then get a "free" €17.50/month. I would set it even higher than €885 if I could, but at least with CZ that's the maximum they seem to offer. The difference in premiums is probably artificially low in The Netherlands since the market is so heavily regulated. I.e. if I expect to get "sick" I can just adjust the premiums yearly, e.g. women expecting to be pregnant do that, so it distorts the market. The insurer needs to eat the cost of your premium adjustment, even if you adjusted it because of a pre-existing condition or expected future medical cost. Also, you should be careful when bragging about the price of health insurance in The Netherlands. It's a hybrid privately paid & publicly paid system, so most of what you're paying for it is probably coming out of your taxes, not the premiums you pay to the insurer.
- adbachman 9y agoFor sure. 1200 per month to cover my family at the same level I had when I was a W2 employee.
- danbruc 9y agoGermany: For employees in the national health insurance 7.6 % of your gross salary capped at currently 4350,- Euro per month and the employer has to pay the same again.
- technics256 9y agoSo you mean 7.6% of 4350 correct? Not 4350 max?
- danbruc 9y agoYes, but I got the number slightly wrong, 7.3 %, not 7.6 %. So a maximum of 317.55 Euro per month, at least roughly, insurance companies can and do charge an varying additional premium from employees of up to about 2 %. I, for example, currently pay additional 1.4 %, so 8.7 % in the end, my employer pays 7.3 % on top of that.
- okreallywtf 9y agoAs a 32 y/o m with no preconditions my silver-ish plan in the US is $500/mo though I get reimbursed some of that by my employer (while the ACA is in place at least).
- SeoxyS 9y agoI'm on COBRA in SF and pay close to $1000/mo. Ridiculously expensive.
- cm2012 9y agoI pay $1200 on cobra for me and my wife. It's a pretty good plan though.
- SeoxyS 9y agoConsidering I'm a single healthy guy in SF and have gone to the doctor maybe twice in the past ten years… this is straight up highway robbery! I should just ditch health insurance altogether…
- easytiger 9y agoI used to work for a NY based startup as their first employee in London. As part of the package they simply put an extra £1000 a month in my wage under the line "item health insurance contribution". At the time I too went to the Dr approx once a year for something routine and of course in the UK there is a completely free at the point of access healthcare i pocketed the fee.
- superhans2 9y agoGermany, self-employed, single: I pay about 760 EUR/month for the statutory health insurance. This is the max, it can get cheaper if you make less revenue. Price increases about 2% every year. Can be fully deducted from taxes though. I think the system is kind of fair. I paid 80 EUR/month when I was a student.
- jv22222 9y agoI'm in the US and my health insurance costs $1600/month for a family of three. Luckily, my employer picks up half of that tab. Even with that amount of expense we still have a $2000 deductible each!
- zeep 9y agoIn the US, if you are insured, you end up paying about the same as an uninsured for health expenses (if you don't include the insurance costs)....
- grillwork 9y agono kidding.. mine is $1800/mo for a family of 4..
- chrischen 9y agoAm I doing something wrong? I'm paying about ~$300 a month for minimal coverage for a single under 30 year old person here in the US.
- smokey_the_bear 9y agoNo. I pay 900/month for a family of 4 with a 12,000 dollar deductible.