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As an entrepreneur still trying to make it I don’t the extra cash for insurance right now so I just pushed it off thinking it would take care of itself. - ...a
by rubyrescue 15y ago
As an entrepreneur still trying to make it I don’t the extra cash for insurance right now so I just pushed it off thinking it would take care of itself. -
...and that's why i can't support candidates who want to repeal universal healthcare in the US, most of whom are Republicans, and ironically, in their opposition to reasonable universal healthcare are adopting a policy that is incredibly anti-small-business.
- jfruh 15y agoI don't disagree with you, but I wonder if this situation would be covered by the law as AFAIK dental coverage isn't part of the plan. It boggles my mind that medical conditions that arise your teeth and gums (which, as this anecdote illustrates, are fully capable of killing you) are treated as an entirely different thing as diseases that happen elsewhere in the body.
- kennu 15y agoThat sounds just silly. Here in Finland, we can actually choose to either use free public dental care, or go to a more expensive private doctor and pay the difference. Dental care is essential. Even if you don't have pain, constant inflammation can cause you all sorts of problems.
- _delirium 15y agoOddly enough, here in Denmark, which otherwise has very strong social services, dentists for adults aren't covered, though their cost is partly subsidized (dental care for children is covered).
- mwilcox 15y agoSame in New Zealand. Free for under 18, but after that you have to pay. However, if you have an accident and need medical care, it's covered under the government. If it's due to negligence, then, well, you're responsible. When I was a child (8 or 9, can't remember) I chipped my front tooth on a trampoline. All my checkups, x-rays, caps, etc., and eventually a root canal and crown were covered, even 10 years afterwards.
- megablast 15y agoDentists are not covered in Australia, but are in the UK. I had to go to a free Dental Hospital, which does emergency work for free.
- justincormack 15y agoAgain not all dental work is free in the uk either.
- bobwebb 15y agoI think it depends. There are NHS dentists and private dentists. I think the private ones' main advantage is that they have shorter waiting lists.
- DanBC 15y agoPeople pay for treatment under the NHS. The cost is very much less than private dentists. Some people (limited income) get free treatment. Children get free treatment. Finding an NHS dentist can be tricky.
- bjornsing 15y agoSame in Sweden. There's even been some scandals about local governments refusing to pay for (more expensive) treatments for people who cannot afford them and are on welfare, instead having their teeth pulled out. Rather sad for a country with a 45-50% total tax burden. :/
- itmag 15y agoYeah, I always thought it was odd that I had to get a special insurance for dental work. This is supposed to be a socialist land of milk & honey, not cold-hearted America :p Sweden used to be all about reaping the benefits of both capitalism and socialism, but now our gov't seems to take a perverse joy in making it a "worst of both worlds" type of country. I would be curious to know what countries today offer what Sweden used to offer. New Zeeland? Canada? Denmark?
- cybertron 15y agoSame goes for america if you are on medicaid. They only cover up to 21 years and then they drop you, as if dentist work is merely cosmetic. And even with private insurance, across the board, only 50% is covered, so that root canal is still going to cost you about $750 out of pocket. It's a total joke.
- hpaavola 15y agoDental care in Finland is not free, only heavily subsidized. The prices vary a bit from district to district, here are the prices for Helsinki http://www.hel.fi/hki/terke/en/Patient+Fees/Table+of+patient+fees%202012 http://www.hel.fi/hki/terke/en/Patient+Fees/Table+of+patient... So for example removal of tooth would be: dentist 9.60 € /visit + tooth removal 13.80 – 27.50 €
- kennu 15y agoYou are right of course, I just count it as "free" when the payment is pretty much symbolic compared to the real cost.
- click170 15y ago"dental coverage isn't part of the plan" Healthcare, at least where I'm from, doesn't cover preventative dentistry, but it does include anything life threatening which includes the situation from the article. I would sincerely hope the US system would behave similarly.
- bdonlan 15y agoThe problem is, the average person can't tell whether a toothache is a minor, non-covered issue, or a life-threatening problem that would be eligible for coverage - without going to see a dentist out-of-pocket, that is.
- dedward 15y agomost people with impacted, rotting, painful wisdom teeth know damn well they need to have it taken out. some just decide not to because nobody likes the dentist and they think it will just go away.
- hobin 15y agoTruth be told, in most cases, it will 'just go away'. (Read: said tooth will fall out, and it will HURT.) Though it's better not to take these kind of chances.
- hobin 15y agoThat's not too hard. Having a minor or even a somewhat annoying toothache for a day won't kill you. As can be seen in the article, such infections don't develop overnight. Just wait a few days, and if you still need to use ibuprofen or what have you to make it go away, then you can be sure you need to go visit a dentist. Making it a habit to use painkillers to deal with toothache = bad.
- _delirium 15y agoUS health insurance tends to distinguish based on the location whether it's "dental" or "medical": if an infection sends you to the hospital, then it's medical, but if you go to the dentist to get it fixed, then it's dental. Typically the latter wouldn't get covered by health insurance regardless of severity. There are some miscellaneous oddities; for example, if you visit a dentist and have antibiotics prescribed, typically the visit won't be covered (it's a dentist so counts as dental), but the antibiotics will be covered (they're a medical prescription).
- mahyarm 15y agoIn BC, Canada at least, dental services are not covered. But it might be if it's something life threatening as this. And doctor's visits for non-residents are about $40 in Ontario.
- andrewpi 15y agoHealth insurance doesn't normally cover dental work. Dental plans are generally a separate offering, and typically aren't a good deal for younger people who take decent care of their teeth. Even Medicare doesn't pay for dental work.
- jrockway 15y agoIndeed. I avoided dental work a while back when I didn't have dental insurance. Instead of getting a cavity filled for $150, I ended up needing a $1000 root canal. But even then, not that expensive. Dental procedures are generally simpler than medical procedures, and cost less as a result. (Getting three wisdom teeth removed did not appear to cost that much either, but my insurance paid for that.)
- pasbesoin 15y agoWhat bothers me is that many of the so-called dental "insurance" plans I've seen in the U.S. have quite low caps. Essentially, they work out more as a kind of "payment plan" against average expenses when measured over multiple years. I'd rather pay for those, myself, but have "real" dental insurance for the quite expensive, unexpected stuff. Infections. Complications from non-routine extractions (particularly notable with some wisdom tooth extractions). Etc. Things where a $1000 or $2500 cap may hardly make a dent in the final expense.
- jrockway 15y agoWhen I was looking at individual dental plans (actually, "group plans" from the ACM or IEEE), it seemed to me that it was basically the cost of two dental visits amortized out over 12 months, with a small discount on other procedures. With a "real" group plan, the only things I've had to pay was a $300 deductible on the wisdom teeth removal and $25 for a flouride treatment that insurance doesn't cover. (Presumably because most adults don't have braces.)
- aiscott 15y agoHealthcare is a scarce resource. You can hardly legislate it into existence. All "universal" healthcare does is trade price for waiting in line.
- yequalsx 15y agoHealthcare is a scarce resource but what you say isn't all that universal healthcare provides. All healthcare systems must ration care. The goal is to ration care in the most ethical/moral way. The present system in the U.S. rationalizes care in a more unethical way that Finland and other similar healthcare systems.
- wisty 15y agoIf healthcare is an inelastic resource, the private sector won't make any more if you throw more money at it, and will just re-allocate it to those who can pay the most.
- rayiner 15y agoThis sort of hyper-simplistic modeling of real world problems is a pretty common trait among real academics, not just HN posters. In my own field of interest (spectrum management) the papers written by ostensibly reputable people are shockingly bad in their reductionist thinking and plain glossing-over of important caveats and assumptions in the applied theories.
- asmithmd1 15y ago
- protomyth 15y agoCertain segments of the USA have universal health care. As part of the treaties one of these groups is Native Americans through IHS. Google "don't get sick after June" for how the USA approaches universal health care. I support any candidate that would repeal what was passed and try to come up with something different. If they cannot get it right for 7 million then they won't for the rest. A story that ties both together. My dad was visiting me. He was going to go golfing with my brother, but had too painful of a headache and was just going to lay down then drive the 7 hours home. It was so painful that we convinced him to go to a hospital. I just happened to pick one that had a neurologist in emergency. He was bleeding from the brain because of poorly prescribed blood pressure meds. The doctor in the ER was not happy. He was in surgery that day and took a week in the hospital. Don't ignore the unusual pains.
- rayiner 15y ago> If they cannot get it right for 7 million then they won't for the rest. That's a pretty bullshit example. Native American services are an entirely different planet within the government.* The lost billions of dollars in indian trust funds, etc. Pretty much every service for native Americans is monumentally dysfunctional, yet the equivalent services for non-Indians often work quite adequately. *) This state of affairs is the product of a lack of political will to do better (who cares about the poorest constituency in the country?) and certain Constitutional insulation from the rest of the government.
- protomyth 15y agoI don't think it is a "bullshit" example. Past performance of an entity tends to predicate future performance. The equivalent service is also provided to our veterans. The VA is also a failure. Just because white people will be serviced doesn't mean it will be any better. The legislation sets up the same pattern of control. The currently passed bill fits all of the fiscal and regulatory issues of IHS.
- zopa 15y agoActually, the VA is one of the best providers in the country on most standard-of-care measures. Used to suck, doesn't suck any more.
- rkischuk 15y agoIndividual dental plans typically aren't available. Even with insurance, the co-pay on wisdom tooth extraction is typically 50%, because such procedures are typically (not always) preventable by proper dental care. So even with insurance, he'd be paying 50% (and probably could negotiate 20% off with a cash payment without insurance, so insurance only costs 30% less). Did he have 50%, or would he still have put it off due to the expense. Is asking him to pay for it a "failing" of society? If so, consider the cost of dental insurance that provides 100% coverage for procedures that are generally preventable. Insurance is about math. Because truly catastrophic dental care is rare, dental self-insurance is generally a matter of cash management, and you usually can come out ahead, even with an issue like this during a year. Context: I am an entrepreneur "still trying to make it". I have a wife and 2 kids. We don't have some magic source of easy income. Planning for the cost of insurance was part of planning to start a company. So was planning to self-insure dental. It is possible. I don't understand why any of this planning should be anyone's responsibility other than my own. I don't believe I should be asking someone else to pay for my insurance as some sort of societal debt, and I wish the feds would quit adding mandatory coverages and regulatory overhead that makes buying insurance more expensive. If either party REALLY cared about small business, they would have taken the simple, obvious step of making individually purchased health insurance tax-deductible long ago. But that didn't fit their agenda.
- sliverstorm 15y agoAmen! The concept that your own health is somebody else's job to take care of & protect has always seemed strange to me.
- tptacek 15y agoThis is probably true for dental, for a lot of reasons, including the routinization of dental care, the degree to which dental expenses are preventable, the fact that fewer people have dental insurance than health insurance (and so the market for dental care is less distorted), and the extent to which dental care can be cosmetic. The same isn't true of health care. The health care market is totally distorted by insurers, who collude with providers to set prices. Services fall into two buckets: routine "checkup" type stuff that costs so little it's not worth arguing about, and hospital/specialist services for which there is no pricing transparency and which, purchased by anyone other than an insurance company, is catastrophically expensive. It is perfectly reasonable to advocate for single-payer health care even if one believes firmly in moral hazard. There are other interventions one could advocate for instead. But any way you slice it, the "market" we currently have is busted.
- lutorm 15y ago... candidates who want to repeal universal healthcare in the US Wait! The US has universal healthcare?
- jdminhbg 15y agoExactly. Nothing about Obamacare absolves him of his responsibility to purchase health insurance; it only adds a penalty if he doesn't (and tries to make it cheaper/easier to do so if he does). You still have the responsibility to purchase/maintain it.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- bremac 15y agoAs someone who has had an infection requiring dental care: dental surgery is covered by the Canadian provinces if it is medically necessary. On the other hand, preventative care and cosmetic surgeries are not covered.
- loopdoend 15y agoThey have dental setups in the hospitals here for emergencies but generally it's not taken seriously enough. Poor dental care can have a tremendous impact on a persons physical and mental health.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- VMG 15y agoHow much exactly does health insurance cost now in the US? In Germany, I have to pay 65 Euros (87 Dollars) for health insurance as a university student if I earn more than ~400 Euros a month. It's not free here either, it's just mandatory.
- DougWebb 15y agoI pay $370/month to cover my wife and I, and that's on a company-subsidized plan. The actual cost is at least twice that much on a group plan. If you try to buy insurance as an individual, the cost is even higher. And my plan requires me to spend $10-$75 for prescription medicine, and doesn't cover more than basic care from eye doctors or dentists.
- travisp 15y agoI am 27, so my case might not apply to older people. However, for me in the US, I pay approximately $85/month for a high deductible plan as an individual. I am stuck with the first $5,000/year of medical expenses, of which in most years I only spend around $100-$200 for a checkup and labs, but I am covered 100% after that. However, I can put $3,100/year into a HSA account. I immediately get to deduct the amount I put in from my taxes (which for someone with an income just about pays for the insurance), and I can grow it in the HSA and not pay any taxes on withdrawal if I use it for medical expenses (works kind of like a super IRA).
- Jacquass12321 15y agoIs your employer covering part of the cost? My insurance for just myself is 70-80 a month, while my employer covers another 250 a month. If I had a full family plan it would be 250 a month for me and 750 for the company. This is for a relatively standard 2000(individual)/4000(family) high deductible plan. I wouldn't think our different deductibles would save you that much money, but perhaps.
- travisp 15y agoNo, I don't have an employer covering my cost. The full cost for my $5000 high deductible individual plan is $85/month. Perhaps the difference is that my plan was purchased in Illinois (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois). I know state mandates can significantly change the cost of insurance.