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Looking with European lens and reacting to people that think the universal healthcare is the solution to this problem: no, it is not. The universal healthcare

Looking with European lens and reacting to people that think the universal healthcare is the solution to this problem: no, it is not. The universal healthcare solves the insurance problem, not the cost of the hospital. What US needs is not insurance for people that don't pay for it, but reasonable prices at hospitals. We have this in my country: we have both public and private insurance and public and private hospitals. The competition in the system means private hospitals will never have such prices, otherwise there will never be clients. Instead of universal insurance coverage, you need strong competition to hospitals so there is a market price that is closer to the costs. Here the private hospitals cost more, but offer a much better quality; still, the prices are double and most middle class people can afford to pay it without insurance if needed, so these stiches would be maybe $100 while in public hospitals it would be $50-60 and covered by the public insurance. Even here in Europe there is no full, unlimited insurance, emergency care is free but everything else is covered by a mandatory insurance every employee has (paid only by employee, not the employer) and it covers the spouse and kids (under 18 years old or in college) of the insured person. That means there are people without insurance and they receive only emergency care for free, nothing else.

hef19898 5y ago
Every EU country I know of (whch doesn't cover all 27, so...) has covered more than just emergency care. Payment is quite different, in germany so the costs are shared 50/50 between employer and employee, soe for unemployment and social security. Would be nice to know where you live.
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  Romania. It is part of UE since 2007 and this is the way healthcare works here for the past 10+ years. A few years ago the accounting part was changed so all the taxes and any other forms of payments to the state from the payroll appear in the employee payroll, the total amount did not changed but salaries were adjusted (up) to cover former employer part, so now the employee is paying everything (which was always the case everywhere, just differently booked). Some employers offer as a benefit a negotiated private insurance co-payed; for good contracts the private insurance cover all the costs in private hospitals, for my company it covers about 50% of the doctor cost for consultations and about 20% of the hospital costs. I pay about 50% of the cost of this insurance, the benefit is a discount price versus the regular price of the insurance (about 10-15%).

hef19898 5y ago

Every EU country I know of (whch doesn't cover all 27, so...) has covered more than just emergency care. Payment is quite different, in germany so the costs are shared 50/50 between employer and employee, soe for unemployment and social security. Would be nice to know where you live.

AdrianB1 5y ago
Romania. It is part of UE since 2007 and this is the way healthcare works here for the past 10+ years. A few years ago the accounting part was changed so all the taxes and any other forms of payments to the state from the payroll appear in the employee payroll, the total amount did not changed but salaries were adjusted (up) to cover former employer part, so now the employee is paying everything (which was always the case everywhere, just differently booked). Some employers offer as a benefit a negotiated private insurance co-payed; for good contracts the private insurance cover all the costs in private hospitals, for my company it covers about 50% of the doctor cost for consultations and about 20% of the hospital costs. I pay about 50% of the cost of this insurance, the benefit is a discount price versus the regular price of the insurance (about 10-15%).