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Relative recently had their baby come several months early. The baby needed intensive care for a couple of months, and breathing support (CPAP) for another two.

• ksclarke 1y ago
  The whole time I was reading this, as someone from the U.S., I was wondering what country the writer was from, because it sure as #$@! wasn't written by someone in the U.S. When I got to that part, I was, "Oh. Okay. That makes sense."
  • thatfrenchguy 1y ago
    In the US, you'll be billed the maximum out of pocket for your health insurance whether your little one is in the ICU for months or whether it was a easy delivery though, so at least birth is a predictable medical expense.
    • t0mas88 1y ago
      If you have health insurance... Which is not automatically a thing for many Americans, and it seems even more with current political trends.
      • trollbridge 1y ago
        If someone doesn’t have health insurance in my state, they get sent to financial counselling/assistance and signed up for Medicaid, CHIP, or HCAP. I asked one of their counsellors once if they ever have any ultra wealthy people who don’t have insurance and also don’t qualify for any assistance. (This was at a children’s hospital with a Level IV NICU.) She said she was unaware of that ever happening, other than very wealthy foreigners who would prepare in advance, arrange payment in advance, fly in, and have a special procedure done. Overall, in many states, it is logistically impossible to have an unaffordable bill and also not qualify for assistance. The worst situation actually is the person who has insurance but has high deductibles and copays.
      • fooker 1y ago
        Ah you don’t seem to understand the depravity of the modern American medical system. It’s not as bad in the way you think, and significantly fucked up in a different way. If you do not have insurance, you tell them you don’t. They’ll give you a bill lower than what you’d pay as deductible if you had insurance. Or you just don’t pay… This raises insurance premiums and reduces the quality of healthcare in a dystopian AF feedback loop.
    • chrisgeleven 1y ago
      Yeah in my case, for two years in a row now we've maxed out my kid's out of pocket expense within ~30 days of the year starting...that's not fun.
  • hattmall 1y ago
    Realistically it's much more likely that someone in the US would be telling this story vs someone from Norway. Norway has only 50k births a year. The US has 3.6 Million, and >40% of those are 100% free to Medicaid recipients. So 1.4 million each year, meaning a story like this is about 28 times more likely to be told from someone in the US than Norway.
    • heavyset_go 1y ago
      Medicaid isn't paying parents to not work. New parents will still have to worry about paying bills and the economy. When those parents die, any potential generational wealth for their children will be taken by the state to pay back the benefits they received from Medicaid.
      • terminalshort 1y ago
        Well of course it will because medicaid is healthcare for poor people, not people with generational wealth. If you are rich and use medicaid that's fraud, and medicaid should take double for that.
      • hattmall 1y ago
        >Medicaid isn't paying parents to not work. New parents will still have to worry about paying bills and the economy. That would be up to their job if they had one of course, but Medicaid does have some cash benefits and if you have a baby on Medicaid you typically get auto-qualified for TANF so that covers a lot of bills. >When those parents die, any potential generational wealth for their children will be taken by the state to pay back the benefits they received from Medicaid. This would only be true if the parents received long-term care or something. And this happens to TONS of people who have otherwise been financially well off, they have to exhaust their assets before Medicaid starts paying for a nursing home. It's got nothing to do with pregnancy benefits.
        • heavyset_go 1y ago
          I just looked it up and I'm wrong, estate recovery is for anyone at any age who is institutionalized and/or anyone over 55 receiving care. States can additionally choose care and populations from which they do estate recovery for their Medicaid programs. All I know is a family member would get the Medicaid warnings about their estate each month in the mail.
• diob 1y ago
  A lot of folks are looking at the higher US comp but aren't correctly pricing in the long-term risk. You can be fine for years, but a single, major medical event can zero out those salary gains and lead directly to bankruptcy. It's a systemic flaw that isn't obvious until it's your turn to deal with it.
  • jmspring 1y ago
    If one lives in a state like CA, the taxes (income, sales, etc) basically are equal to that of Norway/etc. The downside, we don't get any real benefit from those taxes paid out.
  • kamaal 1y ago
    I know of Indian immigrants who suffered for decades/years on H1B, endless anxiety and tensions, eventually make it to GC, then a passport. Then all of a sudden fall ill, lose everything and return back to India. People keep forgetting the US society is a giant stack/pyramid ranking system, the structure keeps getting narrow as you move upwards. You get pushed off the sides, in the ever narrowing funnel, and you need increasing levels of luck at every level to survive. BTW, this is not just with regards to health care. You could lose your job, suffer from ageism. Lose your home, run out of money. A million different things can happen, that can cause the above said phenomenon.
    • mothballed 1y ago
      [flagged]
      • para_parolu 1y ago
        I’m honestly surprised to see a comment like this on HN. You’re making a pretty negative assumption about someone you only know from a single comment, and nothing in that comment actually supports the assumption.
        • mothballed 1y ago
• necovek 1y ago
  > too much oxygen in the blood can lead to problems with the cornea or something You are likely thinking of ROP (retinopathy of prematurity, where retina starts detaching due to prolonged stay in the incubator).
• seethedeaduu 1y ago
  The norwegian healthcare is really bad at specific sectors if they deem you as a 2nd class citizen (for example trans healthcare, where there is a lot of malicious gatekeeping and multi-year long waitlists)
  • Yiin 1y ago
    that sounds like 0.0001% of sectors
    • seethedeaduu 1y ago
      Where did you pull this number from? And even if so, what is your point? Seeing how a nation treats its minorities helps judge whether they have any humanity left.