5 ms·

For information, here in Germany, from where I run my startup which itself is a UK Limited, I provide my employees with full health insurance (teeth, sick days,

by Loic 16y ago

For information, here in Germany, from where I run my startup which itself is a UK Limited, I provide my employees with full health insurance (teeth, sick days, everything), pension, unemployment insurance, etc. for basically €700/month for an after tax salary of about €2500/month. As soon as you start to factor in all the costs of insurance, etc., doing business in the old Europe is pretty cheap. Even in Denmark, where I lived and worked for a while, you get everything included from the state and as a startup founder, this is really great. I believe in free market for a lot of things, but not for health insurance.

dfox 16y ago
what I don't like on european (interpolating from czech, but it's probably quite similar everywhere in europe) health and welfare insurance is that you generally can't opt-out from that. Complete opt-out is probably bad idea, but I would like to pay insurance only when I actually have income, not be obliged by law to pay what equates to half of my other expenses every month. It seems fair to me to roll these "insurances" into income tax, as it is essentially nothing different from income tax (although logic of caps is different on income tax and this "insurances"). I'm perfectly willing to pay significantly more than is obligatory, but only when my income for given period allows that.
- Loic 16y ago
  In Germany, Denmark and France (the only places I was employed for more than 3 years), if you have no incomes, you are automatically covered. Of course as a consultant, if you have no incomes in a given month, you still need to pay. If you do not want, you need to switch to officially unemployed for the month, which is not worth it.
dnautics 16y ago
Why don't you believe in a free market for health insurance? Forcing people to pay into a health insurance is kind of scammy - let's say that I have a genetic condition that is certain to kill me rapidly at age 30. I want to live my life to the fullest, and I'd rather not be forced to buy health insurance that protects me from things like adult onset diabetes, alzheimer's, cancer, parkinson's, etc, that I'm just not going to get. Why should I be forced to pony up for other people's healthcare, too? What do I owe those bastards who get to live twice as long as I am and beat me up and teased me on the playground in middle school? The more insidious thing about universal healthcare is that it really screws over most minorities. Minorities tend to have diseases that are not as well researched as those found in ethnic majorities (or certain minorities which are disproportionately represented in the medical research community). Moreover, drug testing -for safety and efficacy- in minorities is very scant, and it is sometimes the case that adverse reactions to drugs occur in minorities that do not occur in the ethnic or racial majorities. Of course to find that out you need statistically relevant sample sizes, and the way drug safety testing is done is by recruiting on college campuses - you can see the potential problem here - and even still some minorities that are overrepresented on colleges are, for whatever reason, underrepresented in testing pools. So as a minority, one might be paying into a system that disproportionately treats diseases that one would not be getting, or with different pathologies, and for which the treatments may be completely ineffective or even dangerous due to lack of study. Then there is this problem. What if those who decide health coverage decide that heterozygous genetic condition X is covered (and it's expensive). Two parents who are carriers now can decide, hey we can afford to have kids - after all it's their right. So now everyone is saddled with the burden of their selfish choice. Or, we can restrict their liberty by prohibiting all such pairs of parents from reproducing. Whereas if they are responsible for the cost of their children's care, then the simple answer is they might think twice about having children and if they are foolhardy enough to, there is a 1 in 4 chance they get dinged with the cost of coverage. Ultimately, any governmental (i.e. non-free-market) health insurance plan must either explicitly discriminate between individuals or, if universal, implicitly discriminate between individuals. The perverted consequence is, ultimately, going to be a transfer of wealth from the poor (via inflation) to those who have the right genetic predisposition to conditions which are decided to be covered by the powers that be. Keep in mind that 'free market' != 'for-profit'. You can have nonprofit insurance companies, and healthcare charities, in a 'free market' system. What free market means is that the consumer has a choice of where to go for their services. If you are saying that you don't like 'free market healthcare' you are saying that in the aggregate, the population is too stupid to make responsible, cost-effective decisions about their own health. If that is the case, who or what group of people could possibly be so enlightened and all-knowing to correctly orchestrate all those choices from the full society on down to the individual level? And how might we shield society from the hubris of our godlike health chancellor/council?
- icey 16y ago
  > Why should I be forced to pony up for other people's healthcare, too? This entire argument is predicated on the idea that people who decide not to buy insurance will actually stay home when they get so sick that they feel their life is in danger, instead of going to the hospital. History has shown that's not the case; they end up in the emergency room with no insurance, and end up being a cost that hospitals have to recoup via higher rates for the people that have paid for their insurance.
  - dnautics 16y ago
    "History has shown that's not the case; they end up in the emergency room with no insurance, and end up being a cost that hospitals have to recoup via higher rates for the people that have paid for their insurance." No. That is not "history". This is a recent phenomenon. This sort of thing was not generally occurring 30 years ago.
    - icey 16y ago
      The 1990s are history: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-01-31/business/0101310215_1_uninsured-emergency-room-visits-emergency-departments http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-01-31/business/0101310... 2002 is history: http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2002/08/05/story3.html http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2002/08/05/story3... 2003 is history: http://www.healthylivingnyc.com/article/58 http://www.healthylivingnyc.com/article/58 2005 is history: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7995137/ns/health-health_care/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7995137/ns/health-health_care/ 2006 is history: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2009pres/07/20090715b.html http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2009pres/07/20090715b.html Affordability was quite different 30 years ago, perhaps that's why this is a relatively recent phenomenon. It doesn't really matter what the situation was 30 years ago though, because the trend over the past decade has been that uninsured people go to the emergency room when they're very ill. I assume they didn't lay down and die at home 30 years ago either.
      - dnautics 16y ago

by Loic 16y ago

dfox 16y ago

what I don't like on european (interpolating from czech, but it's probably quite similar everywhere in europe) health and welfare insurance is that you generally can't opt-out from that. Complete opt-out is probably bad idea, but I would like to pay insurance only when I actually have income, not be obliged by law to pay what equates to half of my other expenses every month. It seems fair to me to roll these "insurances" into income tax, as it is essentially nothing different from income tax (although logic of caps is different on income tax and this "insurances"). I'm perfectly willing to pay significantly more than is obligatory, but only when my income for given period allows that.

Loic 16y ago
In Germany, Denmark and France (the only places I was employed for more than 3 years), if you have no incomes, you are automatically covered. Of course as a consultant, if you have no incomes in a given month, you still need to pay. If you do not want, you need to switch to officially unemployed for the month, which is not worth it.

dnautics 16y ago

Why don't you believe in a free market for health insurance? Forcing people to pay into a health insurance is kind of scammy - let's say that I have a genetic condition that is certain to kill me rapidly at age 30. I want to live my life to the fullest, and I'd rather not be forced to buy health insurance that protects me from things like adult onset diabetes, alzheimer's, cancer, parkinson's, etc, that I'm just not going to get. Why should I be forced to pony up for other people's healthcare, too? What do I owe those bastards who get to live twice as long as I am and beat me up and teased me on the playground in middle school? The more insidious thing about universal healthcare is that it really screws over most minorities. Minorities tend to have diseases that are not as well researched as those found in ethnic majorities (or certain minorities which are disproportionately represented in the medical research community). Moreover, drug testing -for safety and efficacy- in minorities is very scant, and it is sometimes the case that adverse reactions to drugs occur in minorities that do not occur in the ethnic or racial majorities. Of course to find that out you need statistically relevant sample sizes, and the way drug safety testing is done is by recruiting on college campuses - you can see the potential problem here - and even still some minorities that are overrepresented on colleges are, for whatever reason, underrepresented in testing pools. So as a minority, one might be paying into a system that disproportionately treats diseases that one would not be getting, or with different pathologies, and for which the treatments may be completely ineffective or even dangerous due to lack of study. Then there is this problem. What if those who decide health coverage decide that heterozygous genetic condition X is covered (and it's expensive). Two parents who are carriers now can decide, hey we can afford to have kids - after all it's their right. So now everyone is saddled with the burden of their selfish choice. Or, we can restrict their liberty by prohibiting all such pairs of parents from reproducing. Whereas if they are responsible for the cost of their children's care, then the simple answer is they might think twice about having children and if they are foolhardy enough to, there is a 1 in 4 chance they get dinged with the cost of coverage. Ultimately, any governmental (i.e. non-free-market) health insurance plan must either explicitly discriminate between individuals or, if universal, implicitly discriminate between individuals. The perverted consequence is, ultimately, going to be a transfer of wealth from the poor (via inflation) to those who have the right genetic predisposition to conditions which are decided to be covered by the powers that be. Keep in mind that 'free market' != 'for-profit'. You can have nonprofit insurance companies, and healthcare charities, in a 'free market' system. What free market means is that the consumer has a choice of where to go for their services. If you are saying that you don't like 'free market healthcare' you are saying that in the aggregate, the population is too stupid to make responsible, cost-effective decisions about their own health. If that is the case, who or what group of people could possibly be so enlightened and all-knowing to correctly orchestrate all those choices from the full society on down to the individual level? And how might we shield society from the hubris of our godlike health chancellor/council?

icey 16y ago
> Why should I be forced to pony up for other people's healthcare, too? This entire argument is predicated on the idea that people who decide not to buy insurance will actually stay home when they get so sick that they feel their life is in danger, instead of going to the hospital. History has shown that's not the case; they end up in the emergency room with no insurance, and end up being a cost that hospitals have to recoup via higher rates for the people that have paid for their insurance.
- dnautics 16y ago
  "History has shown that's not the case; they end up in the emergency room with no insurance, and end up being a cost that hospitals have to recoup via higher rates for the people that have paid for their insurance." No. That is not "history". This is a recent phenomenon. This sort of thing was not generally occurring 30 years ago.
  - icey 16y ago
    The 1990s are history: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-01-31/business/0101310215_1_uninsured-emergency-room-visits-emergency-departments http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-01-31/business/0101310... 2002 is history: http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2002/08/05/story3.html http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2002/08/05/story3... 2003 is history: http://www.healthylivingnyc.com/article/58 http://www.healthylivingnyc.com/article/58 2005 is history: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7995137/ns/health-health_care/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7995137/ns/health-health_care/ 2006 is history: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2009pres/07/20090715b.html http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2009pres/07/20090715b.html Affordability was quite different 30 years ago, perhaps that's why this is a relatively recent phenomenon. It doesn't really matter what the situation was 30 years ago though, because the trend over the past decade has been that uninsured people go to the emergency room when they're very ill. I assume they didn't lay down and die at home 30 years ago either.
    - dnautics 16y ago