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How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.
by popotamonga 6y ago
How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.
- chefkoch 6y agoWhere is that? In Germany i pay 480€ for a top notch private plan.
- znpy 6y agoYou're not accounting for, uhm... freedom. /s
- thespoonbends 6y agoPublic health systems often subsidise private health care, so some of that difference will come from taxes.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- brianwawok 6y agoWhat is your take home pay as a software dev after insurance, vs the US? My math says the US still wins big for the top half of society (and loses for the bottom)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoa) Costs/prices in the US are inflated in the entire industry for a bunch of reasons that basically boil down to half a century of lack of incentive to control costs b) Your cost isn't actually $100. Your cost at the point of service is $100 but you're paying more taxes which subsidize your healthcare (among other things). edit: And before some snarky jerk tries to score some cheap virtue points by saying something to the tune of "well I am perfectly ok paying more taxes for healthcare". I was deliberately avoiding making a value judgement one way of the other and simply explaining why his bill at the point of service is lower.
- fooblat 6y agoI don't think difference in taxes is as much as people think. I have lived and worked in many cities in the US as well as a couple of central European countries. Once you get into a high salary range the taxes aren't much different. The exception being if you have a bunch of kids then you will pay lower taxes in the US. However, you will also have increased costs including medical for the kids.
- marketingPro 6y agoI pay well over half my income between fed, local, state, medicare Medicaid, social security, sales, and property tax. The United States propaganda is that we are capitalistic, when most of my money isn't controlled by me.
- tuna-piano 6y agoWell for many reasons (good and bad) healthcare is more expensive in the US than any other country. But why is healthcare bought individually more expensive than healthcare an employer buys for all their employees? One is real and one is hidden. The hidden price difference is that most employees think they pay $200 per month in health insurance, but actually their employer is paying $600 and chips in $400 so the employee only pays $200. And of course, $200 taken out of a paycheck before you receive it doesn't feel as bad as a monthly $200 charge to your credit card. The other reason is adverse selection: When an entire employee base gets health insurance together, the people needing expensive care and the people not needing any care all average out together. But in the individual market, less healthy people are insured but more sick people are. Healthy people forgo health insurance, so the average cost per person rises.
- baq 6y ago...and changing the situation will make pension funds very unhappy because they invest in a guaranteed recurring income that medical services provide.
- ghaff 6y agoOr, at least, the young healthy people buy the cheapest insurance they can find while people who know they'll have a lot of expenses will tend to buy the gold-plated offerings.
- mgkimsal 6y ago> When an entire employee base gets health insurance together, the people needing expensive care and the people not needing any care all average out together. Often/usually, the people needing very expensive care aren't employed in the first place, as they're often not able to work, or at least not able to work in a company with employer-provided health insurance in the first place.
- kube-system 6y agoThat is sometimes the case, but you also don't have to work a job to be covered under employer-sponsored health insurance -- you could simply be related to someone with a job.
- bpanon 6y agobecause medicine and hospital are big business here and an 2 hour emergency visit costs 3-5k+, overnight 10k+
- martinald 6y agoMost European private health insurance isn't actually 100% private, as well. Often you will have some state provided healthcare in there (especially for major trauma in ER).
- dsr_ 6y agoBecause the USA has a fundamentally broken healthcare system, which it propagandizes as the best in the world despite actual evidence that it is not.
- marketingPro 6y agoI put most blame on the American Medical Association who is a top lobbyist and created the Physician cartel. 300 to 600k per year salaries are not natural, German Physicians don't make that much or go to school for as long yet have similar outcomes.
- mmmmmbop 6y agoWhile the physician salaries in the U.S. are indeed much higher than in Germany, I believe the time to become a fully accredited doctor is roughly the same. In the U.S. it's 8 years of school plus a 3- to 7-year residency program, versus 6.5 years of school plus a 5- to 6-year residency program in Germany.
- deepakhj 6y agoMedical school in Germany is also free.
- JohnJamesRambo 6y agoBut their admission letters all say they want to be a doctor "to help people."
- cbm-vic-20 6y agoAs an American, I do believe that the US has some of the best doctors, research, and medical technology in the world. I also believe it's really, really expensive, and out of reach for too much of our population, largely due to how to tie health insurance plans to employment. That makes sense in industries with a high injury rate, but the US doesn't have that kind of economy anymore.
- 6y ago
- satya71 6y agoMany many reasons. Health care in the US is very expensive because providers have monopolies in most markets. Pharmaceuticals are also the most expensive in the world. The govt spends a lot of money, but in a way that makes market efficiencies impossible to achieve. Ultimately, that results in very high prices. Essentially, no participant in the market has an interest in reducing costs.
- redler 6y agoFurthermore, the business goal of health insurance companies is to not pay for health care, to the greatest extent possible, given regulations and market dynamics. They even call it "medical loss". It's right on the tin.
- ma2rten 6y agoI think there are two parts to the answer. Firstly, health care in the US is extremely expensive. There are long articles written about this but IMO a main reason is market failure. The US, especially republicans, place a lot of value on free markets but people are willing to pay almost anything not to die. The second part of the story is that the US is richer than Europe. I moved to the US from Western Europe. Before I moved here I didn't expect how much more everything is more expensive here, but at the same time salaries are also higher. The US's GDP per capita is $62k, Germany's is $47k. But that doesn't tell full story. In the US there is a big difference between low paying and high paying jobs, rural and urban areas.
- animationwill 6y ago> but people are willing to pay almost anything not to die. No, not really. This is a narrow picture of reality. People are often willing to sabotage their own bodies and drive their bodies toward obesity, clogged arteries, and liver disease while not spending the money to go to a doctor for annual checkups or flu shots. The dollar menu is cheaper & tastier option than buying a salad and people consistently choose the cheaper, tastier option
- ghthor 6y agoNo offense meant but, before Obamacare was enacted I had an excellent healthcare premium of $77 per month. Now comparable care is $400 per month. However Obamacare changed the scene, I dont support it.
- ahelwer 6y agoWell it got rid of insurers denying coverage or charging more for pre-existing conditions, which is obviously the morally right thing to do, but is roughly like being able to buy fire insurance while your house is already half burned down. IMO the conclusion is just that insurance is a bad model for healthcare coverage.
- ma2rten 6y agoWhich is why it had the individual mandate to prevent people from doing that.
- maxerickson 6y agoHealthcare spending in the US averages out to about $11,000 a person: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NHE-Fact-Sheet https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta... Insurance is expensive because medical care is expensive. Medical care is expensive because of a litany of policy failures.
- iso1631 6y agoHealthcare is provided for everyone in my country from central taxation - same as police, education, defence. You can top it up with private care which can offer you things like more convenient appointments, quicker appointments for non-urgent cases, nicer accommodation if you do have to stay in, etc. For a healthy, non-smoking 35-year-old you're looking around $80 a month. For a healthy, non-smoking 70-year-old you're looking at 3 times that. A family with a couple c. 40 and a couple of 10 year old kids is around $200-$300 a month (with no excess). With a $1300 excess that drops to $120 a month.
- rrdharan 6y agoThe Us subsidizes European drug prices: https://www.ibtimes.com/how-us-subsidizes-cheap-drugs-europe-2112662 https://www.ibtimes.com/how-us-subsidizes-cheap-drugs-europe... Though there are lots of other ways to frame this of course since most of that is eaten up by US marketing expenses: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050001 https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
- hackbinary 6y agoHealthcare is actually a macro economic industry that Americans have been fooled in to believing that it is micro economic. The USA spends 20% of GDP on healthcare. All other advanced economies spend about 10%.
- JauntTrooper 6y agoTo add another US data point, for my family of 4 I pay $770 per month for health insurance and my employer pays an additional $1,370 per month. My health insurance is through my employer, a large publicly-traded company. My insurer is one of the large well known providers. Our insurance is very mediocre. We pay the first $3,000 out of pocket and 20% of the cost beyond that, but that's only if a doctor is "in network" (which is sometimes hard to find). Out of network doctors have a separate deductible. I also pay 1.45% of my paycheck to Medicare, and my employer pays another 1.45% on my behalf. Plus my wife and I pay an extra 0.9% of our paychecks for all combined wages above $250,000. But I won't be eligible for Medicare until I'm 65 years old.
- JoblessWonder 6y agoThis is kind of off topic... but if something were to happen and you were unable to work for a medical reason (disability), you would be able to claim Medicare at any age, correct? [I am a US citizen and also have the ability to google this, but just wanted to ask another human being...]
- JauntTrooper 6y agoYes, I think so, but after a 2 year waiting period. You don't have that wait for Social Security disability benefits though.
- luckylion 6y ago> Plus my wife and I pay an extra 0.9% of our paychecks for all combined wages above $250,000. Calculate how much taxes you'd pay in e.g. Germany or Belgium, and put half of that towards health expenditures. I think you'll still come out ahead by a large margin.