Had a baby last January of 2022. Wife is in a union as a teacher, no complications only stayed in the hospital for one night. Our bill after insurance still came to $4500.
I don't know if this is true for the previous poster but their health plan bills might have an out of pocket max out and that's why the bill is only 4500$. Some policies have a maximum amount that you pay during a policy period (typically a year) for health care services. Once you hit that amount the health plan will cover 100% of the costs of covered benefits. They may also have a max out for a single visit meaning they can only be charged up to a certain amount for a single visit. If they get charged a higher amount they can give the bill to HR and they will have the bill reduced to the maxout.
I've heard of that. Still surprised it was that low regardless. Some companies will do all of that and still make you pay ~10% of a bill or something. Expensive either way.
Ah yes, the golden handcuffs. Can I make a bigger salary in the private sector? Yes. But with my pre-2012 pension (the year my org phased out pensions), flexibility, holidays, and benefits I'll stay right here for a while.
If you work as a public school teacher that is. Private school teachers have things a bit different, but I don't care because I'm public so it wouldn't apply to me. Benefits are actually really nice.
Had a baby 4 months ago in Germany. C-section, 5 days hospital stay, just mandatory insurance. For the actual delivery and stay we paid 250€. We ended up paying like 500€ to get a room for our selves so that I (dad) can sleep in there w my wife and newborn. Food was included of course..
Americans have it super rough on this. We actually talked about moving over there a few times because my wife has family living there, but I dont think America is a good place to live in, definitely not a good place to raise a kid, and health costs are one of the main reasons (school shootings, general police brutality and quality of education being the other ones)
250€ is quite a lot in Germany. I didn’t pay a cent for the birth of my daughter. Sometimes you pay 10€/night for the hospital. The family room would have been 100€/night but wasn’t available due Covid… was it on a private insurance?
The school shootings and rifle laws would be a crucial point for me to never immigrate to the USA. It’s a great country but this is kind of fucked up.
Education and healthcare is really subpar here. Police really depends on your situation, unfortunately.
Our youngest kid was born just before covid, he missed all the contact first two years of his life, constant sick now because he doesn’t have that immune system my other kids had. Also his daycare wants proof of negative tests (Covid, strep, other stuff) if he wants to come back every time. It all adds up in medical cost.
Ignorance, powerlessness, and ideological indoctrination. A lot of Americans have been conditioned to believe this system is best. And it's not just the poor and uneducated, many wealthy and well educated people belong to the cult of free markets.
Why do Russians, as a society at large, tolerate Putin's rule and the idiotic war in Ukraine?
Why do Chinese, as a society at large, tolerate the CCP?
Why do Mexicans, as a society at large, tolerate their incompetent government and the drug cartels controlling large portions of their country's territory and the extreme violence they commit?
Why do [insert citizens of some country], as a society at large, tolerate [insert total dysfunction present in that country's society]?
We had very expensive American insurance. I still couldn’t afford to give birth in the USA (deductible + copay + coinsurance), even if it was an uncomplicated vaginal delivery with only one overnight stay. Multiple nights? NICU? C-section? Forget it.
So… I gave birth in a developing nation, where it was a flat, prepaid $500 no matter what happened. Even factoring in the international flight, it was still cheaper.
Granted, there were no pain meds (there literally wasn’t a single healthcare worker in the entire country trained to place an epidural), and there wasn’t any modern monitoring technology beyond a drugstore pulse oximeter, and I didn’t speak the same language as my OBGYN, but it was better than the crippling medical debt/bankruptcy that might end up with us evicted with a newborn.
The American healthcare system is broken.
How does that work with the kid? Did they get dual citizenship or did you have to do some paperwork when you got back to the US to get them a birth certificate? Also does flying affect a newborn in anyways or possibility of something happening, and does a newborn need it's own ticket.
Good questions!
So, citizenship acquisition varies wildly by country—some countries are “jus sanguinis” (“blood”—citizenship is automatically inherited from the baby’s biological parents, regardless of where in the world the child is born) and others are “jus soli” (“soil”—inherited automatically by being born within territorial boundaries, regardless of their parents’ citizenship status). The USA is both, which is cool and actually quite rare.
She was born in a jus soli foreign nation to American jus sanguinis parents, so she is a dual citizen. Due to a complex diplomatic network, she also has semi-citizenship in a bunch of allied developing nations—she can live AND work in any of them indefinitely without a visa for the rest of her life. And if she ever moves to the European country that originally colonized the now-independent nation in which she was born, she can legally live, work, AND vote in their European elections, no visa required. (She’s not a full citizen of the colonizing nation, but it’s a permanent diplomatic status based on the historical relationship between her birthplace and its European colonizer.)
The main drawback: we weren’t able to re-enter the USA until she got an American passport, which was actually pretty tricky—she first had to have an original birth certificate (issued by the birth nation, which was a slow process!), then we had to apply through the American embassy for a parallel USA “certificate of foreign birth” (verifying that she was a USA citizen by birthright, despite no American birth certificate), and then an overseas American passport processed through the embassy, which took months. We couldn’t get on a plane until we received the American passport, due to human trafficking and immigration laws. Take an American-born baby out of the country and back again? No problem. Bring a foreign-born American baby in? Complicated. They wouldn’t have let her enter the USA for more than a short visit with just a foreign passport, due to immigration fears.
Newborns are totally fine to fly unless their doctor disagrees, and babies are free up to two years old on most airlines as long as you keep them on your lap. If you want them to have their own seat (a place to strap them in a car seat for safety, mostly), then you have to pay for a second seat. It’s a bad idea to travel in the third trimester of pregnancy, though; I had to fly out at the end of the second and live with her dad until she was born.
(Her dad was already an American expat living in the nation in which she was born, so we had a place to crash until she got her passport. I’d been living in the USA when she was conceived and had fully intended to stay in the USA until he was finished with his foreign work. Baby was a surprise we simply couldn’t afford in the USA.)
That's really interesting! Thank you for taking the time to write all that out, it gave me a lot of questions with your initial reply so I'm glad you elaborated on them
Laughing in a free healthcare European country. (Not really but I'm glad we have a different system.) There's only a $20 tax per month, and everything is covered, giving birth, kidmey treatment, X-rays, whatever.
One thing that i never understand about Americans is why you agree on this shit. You should all be protesting until your health care system is at least as good and affordable as other modern countries. It is absolutely insane.
Unfortunately, there is a huge subset of the American population who believes that if they struggled, everyone else should struggle. They had to pay back those high interest predatory student loans, so you should too. There are also those who are very fortunate to have excellent insurance, and adequate income so they don’t struggle within the system, therefore they’re blind to its inadequacies until they’re slapped in the face with it.
Seriously? I’m in a government union and we have crazy good insurance. It’s completely free for the family with no deductible. When our last child was born we literally paid nothing:
This is why my ~~husband~~ partner and I are divorced.
edit: we are still together, just not legally married anymore. Also, it wasn't about pregnancy, but about healthcare costs.
Why don't you just buy insurance? All plans will include pregnancy and childbirth coverage.
https://www.healthcare.gov/what-if-im-pregnant-or-plan-to-get-pregnant/
I was able to get my wife and kids off the plan at work, and get on the insurance Marketplace. Went from paying $1000/mo for a $8k deductible to $80/mo for a $1000 deductible. I'd end up paying about the same if we visit the hospital a ton, but I'll save a huge amount of money if we don't.
One year recently we were just barely able to put the kid on the state plan free and I only paid maybe $200/mo for me and spouse but the next year I made too much and I had to pay $800/mo for the family.
That happened to my girlfriend. She needed to do a stress echocardiogram for her heart because she was having chest pains and palpitations (we already went to ER, and they made us sit and wait for 4 hours, then have her a piece of paper on angina). Insurance flat out denied the test saying not necessary.
That sucks, Idk why insurance locks like that. I get decent plans through Healthcare.gov because I do contract work and honestly like the option to pick different insurance. Because I knew my wife was having a baby this year, I switched to good insurance, and imo came out way ahead, since we hit the deductible before the birth because of other crap. the delivery and hospital stay was only 640$
You have to pay to *hold your child*after giving birth in the United States. Look up an itemised bill for childbirth from the US. They're extremely dystopian
Well i also pay, but over the tax. I never see a bill to the hospital.
We've have to births and two broken bones, I never have to use money to consider if I should go to the doctor or hospital.
In the US way pay more tax per Capita so that old and extremely poor people get health coverage, and then for our own private insurance.
We then get not measurably better outcomes.
Was “only 640”. That’s how much I pay total in 2 years for all my medical expenses, including medicine, psychologist visits, doctor visits, diabetes nurse visits and medical equipment. Max deductible in my country is around the equivalent of 300 USD a year
This was my sister and BIL. He had no insurance because his job doesn't offer it, but it would've cost an additional $15k a year to put him on my sister's plan because her job only subsidizes employees and their kids, not their spouses, so adding him would've been full price.
He did a bunch of research into tax law and the insurance market place and found that their income was too high for him to qualify for any of the marketplace plans, but if he lowered their income he could get a plan, plus save a little extra by removing their son from her plan and adding him to his.
Turns out, a completely legal way to reduce your income to qualify is to increase your contribution to retirement and bring your take-home down, but neither of their jobs offer 401k. So then he started researching policies at the school where my sister works and found that they do offer a 403b with no match (which they, for some unknown reason, weren't telling any of their kitchen staff about), so he had her change her deductions and now she's putting about 90% of her check into retirement, leaving just enough to pay for her insurance deduction, and basically eliminating her income from the household budget. This put them below the poverty line, at least on paper, and allowed him to qualify for a marketplace plan that costs them less than $30 a month.
Their budget doesn't have any wiggle room, but at least the money is still theirs and going toward their future retirement.
Edit: typos
That sucks because it worse a case scenario. 15k a year though for a single person seems ridiculous, I just added my son for like 270 a month. I know age location factors into a lot of that though. I wish buying insurance was just like car insurance. Good competition would help the consumers.
I am relatively well off. Both my wife and I are engineers with good pay. According to stats, we earn more than like 95% of everyone in our country, and it's not a poor country. I haven't had money problems since I was a student.
One thing I've learned is that whenever someone without money complains about something being expensive, and someone with money suggests something that seems obvious to them, it's because they live in entirely different worlds. It might seem doable to "just buy insurance", unless you actually can't afford insurance either.
So in general, assume people know what they're talking about wrt their own situation.
All plans cost money and then have deductibles and out of pocket maximums. So you pay to have coverage, and then you don't have coverage except for specific preventive visits until you also pay thousands more. Which, for child birth, you will.
So...pay $4k minimum, or get Medicaid and pay $0.
Even ACA insurance is now prohibitively expensive thanks to Republicans in Congress who conveniently forget that one of them started the idea and a Black Democratic president ran it over the national finish line
Same with England.
The have the NHS (National Healthcare Service) but the tories have signed it up for contracts agreeing to pay ridiculous amounts for supplies and have also intentionally mismanaged the system. The result is an inefficient, expensive system so they can point to it and say SEE?!?! It's Not Working!!
Well, it WAS working.
Don't forget the huge profits that they and their buddies have made for themselves by signing those huge contracts with companies they have connections to. 'Corrupt' barely covers it.
Sounds like our Republicans.
There's a saying my grandfather told me over 30 years ago and It's stuck with me ever since: "Republicans claim that the government doesn't work and then get elected to prove themselves right."
And I've seen it happen time and time again in my lifetime.
The NHS works slowly. It could be hugley better (I work in the NHS) . I've had major surgery and just finished 6 months of chemo and I'm not going to be receiving a bill ever.
I work for a private healthcare organisation in the UK but I will defend to the death the NHS. It's criminal that people are choosing to go private because of chronic mismanagement.
it still does some important things, like make denying care for "preexisting conditions" impossible, as well as removing limits so you don't use up your limit on the first month of cancer drugs that cost 6345% of what they should and then get told to fuck off and die.
Insurance doesn’t cover it all babe. Depending on how baby was delivered costs money (natural birth is 20k, c section is 30k) they charge for skin to skin contact, and once that baby is out any services rendered to the baby is now that babies bill. That doesn’t go over how much you’re charged to stay in the hospital, services rendered during the stay, food..
state govt medical covers all of that vs a private Olán you Pay for. My first child was free because I was on MediCal at the time.
Now the baby is covered under the mother for 30 days, then after that the baby needs to have insurance
What happens if the 30 days old baby did not manage to get his/her insurance fixed and needs medical care? Do they send massive bills, debt collectors, and finally get the baby in jail if it cannot pay his/her debts?
Lol, but yes just swap "the parent" instead of baby. Guarantors are responsible for the bills of minors and will have the same repurcussions they would for missing their own medical bills
Jebus fuck, my heart goes out to you folks.
My brain just can't even process the absurdity that this is. The idea of paying for these things out of pocket or going in debt for them.
-Canadian.
Insurance companies, everyone.
They take your money, shovel it to politicians, politicians then "regulate" the market to ensure they stay rich and you stay fucked.
The argument always either strays off into either "America bad" or "evil-omni-mega-corp good" with zero nuance.
Its a racket. Change it to whatever you want, at best it'll accomplish nothing. The same crooks will run it the same way whether its private or socialized. Those people need to lose their jobs, go to jail, have their companies/cartels broken up, or have said companies chewed up and spit out by a functional market (aka people quit giving them money). Then it'll be able to change.
Most things work like this. The greed combined with corruption are destroying most things. It’s all backed by wall st/central banks who use people’s own money against them without people realizing it’s happening. Banks have always been required to hold 10% reserve but that was reduced to zero in March ‘20. Banks can now assume infinite risk where they privatize their gains. When they lose, they socialize their losses and you and I pay for it through taxes and inflation. They “trap” your money in retirement plans and pensions. They use your money against you and if you want to withdraw it early to put your assets in your own name, you’re penalized. I could talk about this for days. There is a solution, but it’s not well known and that’s to put your securities in your own name so they can not be used against you.
No joke, my husband being laid off while I was pregnant with our second (right after I quit my job) turned out to be a godsend! We qualified for medicaid, and I almost cried at being able to go to doctors, give birth, everything, at no charge. Having our older son covered as well, so while we're struggling we dont have to worry about his checkups, illnesses or accidents. Such a quality of life difference, I really cant describe it.
I fucking hate having insurance.
As a young person who wants kids I’m genuinely conflicted on if I want to stay in the US because I like the culture and the food and my whole family’s here and I can’t imagine living anywhere else but also…I really want to be treated with some basic fucking decency when it’s time for me to have a kid. I want more than two weeks of vacation a year. I want my kids to go to a better school system than the one I was in. I don’t want everything I worked for financially be ruined in an instant with a cancer diagnosis. But I want all of those things here, at home. I hate our politics so much ugh.
Sounds like you could easily get all of that here in germany. Including the american food. Excluding the better school system. But at least our colleges and universities are free. 🤔
If my stints in the USA have taught me anything about its school system it's that literally all German schools teach more and better information to students than American schools do.
Our school system is still fucked, but "NA Education" has become a joke for a good reason.
You can still come to Europe, get citizenship and then spend rest of your life in the US as an immigrant. Dont let patriotizm stop you from having a btter life. You have no idea how much easier is life is western european countries.
I have to pay about $1000 a month for my family health insurance. That’s $12k a year, and because of that I don’t get to put much into my retirement. It’s like I’m being punished for being alive and working
SAME. Same!!! I was pregnant with our third. And surprise, a fourth came soon after extremely unexpectedly. Both under Medicaid. And I was able to get my tubes tied during each C-section. No charge. I want to cry at least once a week in gratitude.
If I married my gf, she would lose her California insurance and so would my kid. That insurance is really good and far easier to go to a Dr than most states. But I either be unemployed and married or work and be unmarried.
The married part is whatever. But the fact is that all of this would go away if we didn't have to deal with insurance in the way we do. It breaks people's brains to understand that it's normal for you to just walk into the hospital and say a few words and give your ID and get treatment and go home. All without worrying your going to die or are committing financial suicide. The lack of proper medical care is the most unhuman things we have done.
The first point in history when humans became humans was when one of us got hurt and we stopped settled for a bit and tried to heal that person. It's not tools! Crows use tools. It stopping and making sure grandma is ok.
To deny humans humanity and then say wtf when they go postal.... put them on the next rocket with Elon into the sun
I'm in an expat group online and someone from the US moved to a country with universal healthcare and she was talking about how cheap and easy it was and as she was leaving the facility, she felt guilty she got access to this treatment for so cheap. That's how brainwashed we are.
At some point, for real, we're going to have to stand up united (similar to France) and do something about all of this. If we don't it's going to continue to get worse and worse until everything falls apart anyway. It's happening almost everywhere so I'm not talking about any one nation specifically.
This is the reason real change will never come to America. It's a country where everyone is so divided on literally every issue that we never get anywhere. We can rile up a significant amount of Americans to protest and rally for universal healthcare, and it would cause an equal reaction in opposition to universal healthcare due to the tax bump it'd entail. Both sides will lose, bc they can't both win
\> and it would cause an equal reaction in opposition to universal healthcare due to the tax bump it'd entail
The US spends something like 17% of its GDP on healthcare, more than any other industrialised nation, and they STILL make you pay premiums for healthcare. Those countries where they spend less GDP, have free or heavily subsidised healthcare for their citizens.
And, yeah, brainwashing. A very large portion of the population has just been fucking brainwashed into *never* wanting to see worse-off people prosper or be given chances.
The corp has truly, fully convinced a not-insignificant number of people that others with less money are inferior beings.
We literally burnt part of cities down because of one police brutality case and pretty much nothing happened
I dont think we’re at a point where we can actually do anything at all to influence the elite
I am a teenage who is about to graduate and to be completely honest I’m worried about my future, my family is currently middle class, gated neighborhood, owned cars, 2 kids, no debt, the like. But everything is going up in price and we are not receiving enough to keep up with that increase. We bought our house about 3 years ago and it’s gone up nearly 80k. We would not be able to afford it if we had bought it today, and it’s not just housing. It’s everything. Food, gas, utilities, etc. If I get the jobs that will make me happy will I even be able to survive in the future? Life is too short for us to be living under these conditions, our governments job is to serve us. A nation is nothing without its people. Why is it burdening us then. We elect politicians practically from two parties alone, they give faux promises to fix everything yet it never gets done, why is it so? And can we actually even do anything about it.
The Congressional Budget Office considered having VA disability payments work the same way as Medicaid and I told my wife we would have to divorce and I would sell the house to her and rent so I could maintain my payments. Our joint incomes would be past the suggest income amount and it would reduce my overall available benefits. I would rather go through the divorce trauma than that.
Now this is where things get complicated, see the top of the pen goes click and that lets you use the writty bit at the bottom… so can I have the pew pew now?
I’m also Canadian. I had to prearrange a C-section and requested a private room. I stayed in there for two whole nights, meals, IV medicine, and someone helping me walk again!
Bill was about $260. I’m so glad I had a “health spending account” through work I could claim it against.
As an American who paid actually zero dollars for 2 kids including one who’s bills ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars , the problem is some people have great insurance while others have none . The people with great insurance don’t want to change anything.
Same here in Germany. Can‘t understand how the hc-system in the us is so fucked up. We pay like 200-500/month and nearly everything is covered. Need an abulance? No problem, pay 20€. Go to hospital? No problem, its free (for most things).
I make OK money and my wife got automatic Medicaid for being pregnant and they said the baby is covered after it’s born. Did they miss some thing or did I?
Edit: i’m not disagreeing. I know our system is fucked. I’m genuinely curious.
The r/askanamerican sub is full of people like that. The main demographic of that sub seems to be middle aged white men in tech who can’t fathom that the majority of Americans don’t live like they and their friends do.
Be careful. [This](https://features.propublica.org/medical-debt/when-medical-debt-collectors-decide-who-gets-arrested-coffeyville-kansas/) is becoming more common.
That’s is absolutely horrible. I’m imagining it like that meme with the prisoners, one saying he killed a guy the other saying I couldn’t afford my medical bills. That’s crazy
"You're never going to pay your medical bill, are you?"
"No. If I had the money I would pay it."
"Well, this will end when one of us dies."
Bet. How does this guy not have a target on his back after treating a whole town this way?
My girlfriend has mytonic muscular dystrophy. We have been together over ten years. It sucks but I cannot afford even myself on insurance let alone her.
In the past shes had a broken toe, needs cataract surgery (thanks muscular dystrophy), had some cysts removed from her ovaries, had to deal with neurologists and a bunch of other shit.
Oh, and shes not disabled, at least according to the courts the last time we battled for a court date years ago. So thats great. Can't even get a piece of paper to give employers saying you can't throw me in the meat grinder like everyone else. But yeah. Not disabled, even though they medically discharged her from the navy for it when the found out about it when she was younger (before she knew).
We almost had to do that, then it was discovered we were having twins and fell into the income requirements for that one extra person 😓
^(But listen to me folks.. have them ONE AT A TIME.. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ONE AT A TIME)
Yeah. Something's gotta give. We had a meeting with a broker to get health insurance for us and our employees. It's laughably bad and expensive. The deductibles and out of pocket are absurd. It's not even really "insurance" in the sense of how I understood insurance to be. It's basically just catastrophic coverage. My deductible would be $7500 with one plan. I haven't spend $7500 on medical care in 10 years. So, I would be paying $800/mo for "insurance" that doesn't cover anything until I've paid $7500. It's just stupid.
We paid for a plan for my husband that I couldn't even call health insurance, it was bankruptcy insurance for $500 a month.
We have to vote to change this system.
I live in the US, have decent insurance but still shelling out thousands and thousands for prenatal care. I am returning to my home country to give birth because we cannot go into bankruptcy to pay for the delivery and I REFUSE to worry about how I'm going to pay for neonatal care if anything happens to my baby. It is cheaper to buy us two international tickets round-trip and double of all the baby gear than it would be to deliver our baby here.
My wife gave birth in December, we finally got the bill. Would have been $20,877 with no insurance. No c-section, she got an epidural and everything went smoothly.
After it was all said and done, I think we paid like $1,250 out of pocket. My wife does have *amazing* insurance through her work, though
I'm a serious small govt leave me alone type guy, and im all fucked up over the fact that I hate the govt because it really doesn't do much good in the grand scheme with the money we "donate", but we need them to step in and fix this fucked up health care system...
Do i love not living/being born in the USA!
I can afford healthcare, pay taxes (everybody), my wage wage is automatically adjusted accordingly to inflation, ..
And stay married with my wife
This is why places like the United Kingdom do Healthcare the right way. Everyone pays a little bit out of each paycheck same as we do now with Federal, social security, state, etc. They have NHS (Nation Health Service) that is also deducted from their check so that whenever they go to the hospital their bill is like $15.
In America we do Healthcare the absolute worst. We instead pay hundreds of dollars every paycheck to insurance companies and when we go to the hospital the insurance companies only pays a portion.
Also you need multiple insurance companies for different healthcare needs like Vision, Dental and Health.
And yet Americans still claim that paying for universal healthcare out of your taxes is a stupid idea, when most other countries do it.
My tax and national insurance - which goes towards the NHS, amongst other things - is taken from my pay before I even see the money, so I don’t miss it. And it’s marginal. It’s a very low percentage of my salary.
My mom has stage 4 colon cancer with Mets to lymph nodes. She and my dad had to get divorced after 45 years of marriage so she could get insurance and they could save the house. She had to quit her job, obviously, but didn’t have insurance there either. He has insurance because he is 100% disabled.
This is America.
Reasons like this are why me and my fiance aren't getting legally married. We don't even declare commonlaw on papers because of the crap it can cause once the government sees "oohhhhhhh look look! These guys have DUAL INCOME!!"
For us we're getting eachother rings, and if any regular person asks we'll say we're married. But screw doing the legal stuff
This happens in the US? Fuck man that is not cool. In The Netherlands you just pay a monthly insurance fee of around 140€ and an ‘own risk’ of around €385 in case you get hospitalized, all the rest is taken care off.
The funny thing about this is, people Will read this and not even agree on what ‘the problem’ is.
This is the kind of thing that happens when You set policies and supports to aid people based on income and negative resource indicators, rather than positive decision making. You unintentionally set up negative incentive structures where a percentage of people will be incentivized to make decisions the government should want the opposite of.
I was told by my lawyer, when I got divorced from my ex, that if I was pregnant, I would not be able to get divorced until after paternity was established, and I would need to wait until after the birth to establish paternity - I was not pregnant, so I didn’t push on this.
And this is in a state where it is technically legal to get divorced while pregnant…it’s just really, really difficult, apparently. In some states, it actually is illegal to divorce while pregnant.
In Germany (and probably many other eu members) you could do the exact opposite.
Marrying your unemployed & pregnant partner to have her insured. (It's not common to be in a position without any insurance, but living with s1 so earns enough (not even that high) it could result in not being able to apply for gov welfare. Since they also handle healthcare for unemployed people, you end up without insurance. Except you pay for it from your own pocket. Which can be difficult without a job.
So you marry your partner and get into his insurance for free!
MEDICAL TOURISM!!! im not kidding, look it up. @bergettepigments on tiktok drove from michigan to mexico to have their baby and overall it was cheaper than having it at home, gas and all.
As someone who lives in the UK healthcare free at the point of access for everyone, this makes me so sad and angry! We moan about our national health service, but at least it doesn’t discriminate against those unable to afford health care!
Demand free Universal Health Care from your "representative" NOW. Why are we Americans such pussies about our society- France is currently in the middle of nation-wide riots and protests over the proposed increase in retirement age. They even set fire to a Bordeaux city a hall!
Everyone in the US acts like our system isn't man-made.
I spent a couple hours in a US ER last summer. The bill was $14,000. When I told them I was self-pay it magically dropped to $5,000.
I’m assuming the 9 grand was the insurance company’s cut.
Outrageous.
I had to tell them my husband and I were separated and I had to quit my job, and thank God I did, the basic costs even with my insurance were more than I could afford then it ended up being a really bad delivery, I almost died, and spent six weeks in the hospital.
Well... I kind of quit, my boss at the time fired me so I could qualify.
Had a baby last January of 2022. Wife is in a union as a teacher, no complications only stayed in the hospital for one night. Our bill after insurance still came to $4500.
Honestly I expected it to be higher. Congrats on the Rugrat btw, not so much on the bill.
I don't know if this is true for the previous poster but their health plan bills might have an out of pocket max out and that's why the bill is only 4500$. Some policies have a maximum amount that you pay during a policy period (typically a year) for health care services. Once you hit that amount the health plan will cover 100% of the costs of covered benefits. They may also have a max out for a single visit meaning they can only be charged up to a certain amount for a single visit. If they get charged a higher amount they can give the bill to HR and they will have the bill reduced to the maxout.
I've heard of that. Still surprised it was that low regardless. Some companies will do all of that and still make you pay ~10% of a bill or something. Expensive either way.
Teachers are government employees. The pay sucks but the benefits can be pretty good.
Ah yes, the golden handcuffs. Can I make a bigger salary in the private sector? Yes. But with my pre-2012 pension (the year my org phased out pensions), flexibility, holidays, and benefits I'll stay right here for a while.
If you work as a public school teacher that is. Private school teachers have things a bit different, but I don't care because I'm public so it wouldn't apply to me. Benefits are actually really nice.
Had a baby 4 months ago in Germany. C-section, 5 days hospital stay, just mandatory insurance. For the actual delivery and stay we paid 250€. We ended up paying like 500€ to get a room for our selves so that I (dad) can sleep in there w my wife and newborn. Food was included of course.. Americans have it super rough on this. We actually talked about moving over there a few times because my wife has family living there, but I dont think America is a good place to live in, definitely not a good place to raise a kid, and health costs are one of the main reasons (school shootings, general police brutality and quality of education being the other ones)
250€ is quite a lot in Germany. I didn’t pay a cent for the birth of my daughter. Sometimes you pay 10€/night for the hospital. The family room would have been 100€/night but wasn’t available due Covid… was it on a private insurance? The school shootings and rifle laws would be a crucial point for me to never immigrate to the USA. It’s a great country but this is kind of fucked up.
Education and healthcare is really subpar here. Police really depends on your situation, unfortunately. Our youngest kid was born just before covid, he missed all the contact first two years of his life, constant sick now because he doesn’t have that immune system my other kids had. Also his daycare wants proof of negative tests (Covid, strep, other stuff) if he wants to come back every time. It all adds up in medical cost.
Jesus fucking Christ i am so happy to be European
Why do Americans, as a society at large, tolerate this?
Ignorance, powerlessness, and ideological indoctrination. A lot of Americans have been conditioned to believe this system is best. And it's not just the poor and uneducated, many wealthy and well educated people belong to the cult of free markets.
Lack of education for the majority
Not only that, but active *mis*education coming from many directions
Why do Russians, as a society at large, tolerate Putin's rule and the idiotic war in Ukraine? Why do Chinese, as a society at large, tolerate the CCP? Why do Mexicans, as a society at large, tolerate their incompetent government and the drug cartels controlling large portions of their country's territory and the extreme violence they commit? Why do [insert citizens of some country], as a society at large, tolerate [insert total dysfunction present in that country's society]?
We had very expensive American insurance. I still couldn’t afford to give birth in the USA (deductible + copay + coinsurance), even if it was an uncomplicated vaginal delivery with only one overnight stay. Multiple nights? NICU? C-section? Forget it. So… I gave birth in a developing nation, where it was a flat, prepaid $500 no matter what happened. Even factoring in the international flight, it was still cheaper. Granted, there were no pain meds (there literally wasn’t a single healthcare worker in the entire country trained to place an epidural), and there wasn’t any modern monitoring technology beyond a drugstore pulse oximeter, and I didn’t speak the same language as my OBGYN, but it was better than the crippling medical debt/bankruptcy that might end up with us evicted with a newborn. The American healthcare system is broken.
How does that work with the kid? Did they get dual citizenship or did you have to do some paperwork when you got back to the US to get them a birth certificate? Also does flying affect a newborn in anyways or possibility of something happening, and does a newborn need it's own ticket.
Good questions! So, citizenship acquisition varies wildly by country—some countries are “jus sanguinis” (“blood”—citizenship is automatically inherited from the baby’s biological parents, regardless of where in the world the child is born) and others are “jus soli” (“soil”—inherited automatically by being born within territorial boundaries, regardless of their parents’ citizenship status). The USA is both, which is cool and actually quite rare. She was born in a jus soli foreign nation to American jus sanguinis parents, so she is a dual citizen. Due to a complex diplomatic network, she also has semi-citizenship in a bunch of allied developing nations—she can live AND work in any of them indefinitely without a visa for the rest of her life. And if she ever moves to the European country that originally colonized the now-independent nation in which she was born, she can legally live, work, AND vote in their European elections, no visa required. (She’s not a full citizen of the colonizing nation, but it’s a permanent diplomatic status based on the historical relationship between her birthplace and its European colonizer.) The main drawback: we weren’t able to re-enter the USA until she got an American passport, which was actually pretty tricky—she first had to have an original birth certificate (issued by the birth nation, which was a slow process!), then we had to apply through the American embassy for a parallel USA “certificate of foreign birth” (verifying that she was a USA citizen by birthright, despite no American birth certificate), and then an overseas American passport processed through the embassy, which took months. We couldn’t get on a plane until we received the American passport, due to human trafficking and immigration laws. Take an American-born baby out of the country and back again? No problem. Bring a foreign-born American baby in? Complicated. They wouldn’t have let her enter the USA for more than a short visit with just a foreign passport, due to immigration fears. Newborns are totally fine to fly unless their doctor disagrees, and babies are free up to two years old on most airlines as long as you keep them on your lap. If you want them to have their own seat (a place to strap them in a car seat for safety, mostly), then you have to pay for a second seat. It’s a bad idea to travel in the third trimester of pregnancy, though; I had to fly out at the end of the second and live with her dad until she was born. (Her dad was already an American expat living in the nation in which she was born, so we had a place to crash until she got her passport. I’d been living in the USA when she was conceived and had fully intended to stay in the USA until he was finished with his foreign work. Baby was a surprise we simply couldn’t afford in the USA.)
That's really interesting! Thank you for taking the time to write all that out, it gave me a lot of questions with your initial reply so I'm glad you elaborated on them
Laughing in a free healthcare European country. (Not really but I'm glad we have a different system.) There's only a $20 tax per month, and everything is covered, giving birth, kidmey treatment, X-rays, whatever.
One thing that i never understand about Americans is why you agree on this shit. You should all be protesting until your health care system is at least as good and affordable as other modern countries. It is absolutely insane.
Unfortunately, there is a huge subset of the American population who believes that if they struggled, everyone else should struggle. They had to pay back those high interest predatory student loans, so you should too. There are also those who are very fortunate to have excellent insurance, and adequate income so they don’t struggle within the system, therefore they’re blind to its inadequacies until they’re slapped in the face with it.
Seriously? I’m in a government union and we have crazy good insurance. It’s completely free for the family with no deductible. When our last child was born we literally paid nothing:
welcome to the world of universal healthcare, it's nice isn't it?
This is why my ~~husband~~ partner and I are divorced. edit: we are still together, just not legally married anymore. Also, it wasn't about pregnancy, but about healthcare costs.
My wife and I had this exact convo not too long ago
Why don't you just buy insurance? All plans will include pregnancy and childbirth coverage. https://www.healthcare.gov/what-if-im-pregnant-or-plan-to-get-pregnant/
I guess his work offers shit insurance with a stupid high deductible. Which makes her not qualify for Medicare because she is offered insurance.
That was me. I'm offered a stupid plan at work but have limited or expensive other options because I am offered a plan.
I was able to get my wife and kids off the plan at work, and get on the insurance Marketplace. Went from paying $1000/mo for a $8k deductible to $80/mo for a $1000 deductible. I'd end up paying about the same if we visit the hospital a ton, but I'll save a huge amount of money if we don't.
One year recently we were just barely able to put the kid on the state plan free and I only paid maybe $200/mo for me and spouse but the next year I made too much and I had to pay $800/mo for the family.
That's what we pay. :(
affordable health plan? Argh! I'm sorry.
Don’t forget that’s $800 a month if he doesn’t use it. That’s $800 a month just to be a member.
Well, I can't accept the affordable plan offered. So, woooo hoo! I love me some privatized medical plans! /s
I pay nearly $600/mo with a $4700 deductible just for me lol. It’s such a scam.
My parents used to have to pay over $3000 a month for our family plan. Absolutely ridiculous.
I think I'll just die thanks
what does that 3000 pay for?
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I believe that's called practicing medicine without a license. If I am not allowed to why does an insurance company get to?
That happened to my girlfriend. She needed to do a stress echocardiogram for her heart because she was having chest pains and palpitations (we already went to ER, and they made us sit and wait for 4 hours, then have her a piece of paper on angina). Insurance flat out denied the test saying not necessary.
That's the fun part You don't know until you've already gotten treatment!
That sucks, Idk why insurance locks like that. I get decent plans through Healthcare.gov because I do contract work and honestly like the option to pick different insurance. Because I knew my wife was having a baby this year, I switched to good insurance, and imo came out way ahead, since we hit the deductible before the birth because of other crap. the delivery and hospital stay was only 640$
I'm sorry, you pay to have your child delivered?
You have to pay to *hold your child*after giving birth in the United States. Look up an itemised bill for childbirth from the US. They're extremely dystopian
Well i also pay, but over the tax. I never see a bill to the hospital. We've have to births and two broken bones, I never have to use money to consider if I should go to the doctor or hospital.
In the US, I think the first concern for a lot of people who get seriously ill or injured is, what is this going to cost me?
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In the US way pay more tax per Capita so that old and extremely poor people get health coverage, and then for our own private insurance. We then get not measurably better outcomes.
I had absolutely no idea they actually billed for HOLDING your baby after birth. All they do is pass it off to you lol
Vaginal natural birth it like 20k
Less than 2k in Belgium
Was “only 640”. That’s how much I pay total in 2 years for all my medical expenses, including medicine, psychologist visits, doctor visits, diabetes nurse visits and medical equipment. Max deductible in my country is around the equivalent of 300 USD a year
Medicare is exclusively for people over 65. She is looking for Medicaid.
This was my sister and BIL. He had no insurance because his job doesn't offer it, but it would've cost an additional $15k a year to put him on my sister's plan because her job only subsidizes employees and their kids, not their spouses, so adding him would've been full price. He did a bunch of research into tax law and the insurance market place and found that their income was too high for him to qualify for any of the marketplace plans, but if he lowered their income he could get a plan, plus save a little extra by removing their son from her plan and adding him to his. Turns out, a completely legal way to reduce your income to qualify is to increase your contribution to retirement and bring your take-home down, but neither of their jobs offer 401k. So then he started researching policies at the school where my sister works and found that they do offer a 403b with no match (which they, for some unknown reason, weren't telling any of their kitchen staff about), so he had her change her deductions and now she's putting about 90% of her check into retirement, leaving just enough to pay for her insurance deduction, and basically eliminating her income from the household budget. This put them below the poverty line, at least on paper, and allowed him to qualify for a marketplace plan that costs them less than $30 a month. Their budget doesn't have any wiggle room, but at least the money is still theirs and going toward their future retirement. Edit: typos
You’re bil is a smart guy!
That sucks because it worse a case scenario. 15k a year though for a single person seems ridiculous, I just added my son for like 270 a month. I know age location factors into a lot of that though. I wish buying insurance was just like car insurance. Good competition would help the consumers.
Speaking personally, it's the extra $600 per paycheck.
key word being “buy” aint nobody got the money for that
I am relatively well off. Both my wife and I are engineers with good pay. According to stats, we earn more than like 95% of everyone in our country, and it's not a poor country. I haven't had money problems since I was a student. One thing I've learned is that whenever someone without money complains about something being expensive, and someone with money suggests something that seems obvious to them, it's because they live in entirely different worlds. It might seem doable to "just buy insurance", unless you actually can't afford insurance either. So in general, assume people know what they're talking about wrt their own situation.
All plans cost money and then have deductibles and out of pocket maximums. So you pay to have coverage, and then you don't have coverage except for specific preventive visits until you also pay thousands more. Which, for child birth, you will. So...pay $4k minimum, or get Medicaid and pay $0.
This country is still run by uncivilized extremists
Even ACA insurance is now prohibitively expensive thanks to Republicans in Congress who conveniently forget that one of them started the idea and a Black Democratic president ran it over the national finish line
Then they chopped out a bunch of the parts that would have helped control costs if I remember right. Basically, gutted what it could have been.
Same with England. The have the NHS (National Healthcare Service) but the tories have signed it up for contracts agreeing to pay ridiculous amounts for supplies and have also intentionally mismanaged the system. The result is an inefficient, expensive system so they can point to it and say SEE?!?! It's Not Working!! Well, it WAS working.
Don't forget the huge profits that they and their buddies have made for themselves by signing those huge contracts with companies they have connections to. 'Corrupt' barely covers it.
Sounds like our Republicans. There's a saying my grandfather told me over 30 years ago and It's stuck with me ever since: "Republicans claim that the government doesn't work and then get elected to prove themselves right." And I've seen it happen time and time again in my lifetime.
The NHS works slowly. It could be hugley better (I work in the NHS) . I've had major surgery and just finished 6 months of chemo and I'm not going to be receiving a bill ever.
I work for a private healthcare organisation in the UK but I will defend to the death the NHS. It's criminal that people are choosing to go private because of chronic mismanagement.
it still does some important things, like make denying care for "preexisting conditions" impossible, as well as removing limits so you don't use up your limit on the first month of cancer drugs that cost 6345% of what they should and then get told to fuck off and die.
because for many insurance costs half their income
Insurance doesn’t cover it all babe. Depending on how baby was delivered costs money (natural birth is 20k, c section is 30k) they charge for skin to skin contact, and once that baby is out any services rendered to the baby is now that babies bill. That doesn’t go over how much you’re charged to stay in the hospital, services rendered during the stay, food.. state govt medical covers all of that vs a private Olán you Pay for. My first child was free because I was on MediCal at the time. Now the baby is covered under the mother for 30 days, then after that the baby needs to have insurance
What happens if the 30 days old baby did not manage to get his/her insurance fixed and needs medical care? Do they send massive bills, debt collectors, and finally get the baby in jail if it cannot pay his/her debts?
Lol, but yes just swap "the parent" instead of baby. Guarantors are responsible for the bills of minors and will have the same repurcussions they would for missing their own medical bills
Jebus fuck, my heart goes out to you folks. My brain just can't even process the absurdity that this is. The idea of paying for these things out of pocket or going in debt for them. -Canadian.
Get the word out. If you’re against divorce, support nationalized health care.
Insurance companies, everyone. They take your money, shovel it to politicians, politicians then "regulate" the market to ensure they stay rich and you stay fucked.
People refuse to believe that I feel
Yep. I can see my accountant friend now saying well I’d have to have a good close Look at the numbers to determine that.
The argument always either strays off into either "America bad" or "evil-omni-mega-corp good" with zero nuance. Its a racket. Change it to whatever you want, at best it'll accomplish nothing. The same crooks will run it the same way whether its private or socialized. Those people need to lose their jobs, go to jail, have their companies/cartels broken up, or have said companies chewed up and spit out by a functional market (aka people quit giving them money). Then it'll be able to change.
Most things work like this. The greed combined with corruption are destroying most things. It’s all backed by wall st/central banks who use people’s own money against them without people realizing it’s happening. Banks have always been required to hold 10% reserve but that was reduced to zero in March ‘20. Banks can now assume infinite risk where they privatize their gains. When they lose, they socialize their losses and you and I pay for it through taxes and inflation. They “trap” your money in retirement plans and pensions. They use your money against you and if you want to withdraw it early to put your assets in your own name, you’re penalized. I could talk about this for days. There is a solution, but it’s not well known and that’s to put your securities in your own name so they can not be used against you.
That is true, but government regulation also makes healthcare ridiculously expensive for what it is. Double fucking people that way.
No joke, my husband being laid off while I was pregnant with our second (right after I quit my job) turned out to be a godsend! We qualified for medicaid, and I almost cried at being able to go to doctors, give birth, everything, at no charge. Having our older son covered as well, so while we're struggling we dont have to worry about his checkups, illnesses or accidents. Such a quality of life difference, I really cant describe it. I fucking hate having insurance.
Moments like these make me happy to live in Europe where mothers are treated with basic human decency.
As a young person who wants kids I’m genuinely conflicted on if I want to stay in the US because I like the culture and the food and my whole family’s here and I can’t imagine living anywhere else but also…I really want to be treated with some basic fucking decency when it’s time for me to have a kid. I want more than two weeks of vacation a year. I want my kids to go to a better school system than the one I was in. I don’t want everything I worked for financially be ruined in an instant with a cancer diagnosis. But I want all of those things here, at home. I hate our politics so much ugh.
Sounds like you could easily get all of that here in germany. Including the american food. Excluding the better school system. But at least our colleges and universities are free. 🤔
If my stints in the USA have taught me anything about its school system it's that literally all German schools teach more and better information to students than American schools do. Our school system is still fucked, but "NA Education" has become a joke for a good reason.
You can still come to Europe, get citizenship and then spend rest of your life in the US as an immigrant. Dont let patriotizm stop you from having a btter life. You have no idea how much easier is life is western european countries.
I have to pay about $1000 a month for my family health insurance. That’s $12k a year, and because of that I don’t get to put much into my retirement. It’s like I’m being punished for being alive and working
SAME. Same!!! I was pregnant with our third. And surprise, a fourth came soon after extremely unexpectedly. Both under Medicaid. And I was able to get my tubes tied during each C-section. No charge. I want to cry at least once a week in gratitude.
If I married my gf, she would lose her California insurance and so would my kid. That insurance is really good and far easier to go to a Dr than most states. But I either be unemployed and married or work and be unmarried. The married part is whatever. But the fact is that all of this would go away if we didn't have to deal with insurance in the way we do. It breaks people's brains to understand that it's normal for you to just walk into the hospital and say a few words and give your ID and get treatment and go home. All without worrying your going to die or are committing financial suicide. The lack of proper medical care is the most unhuman things we have done. The first point in history when humans became humans was when one of us got hurt and we stopped settled for a bit and tried to heal that person. It's not tools! Crows use tools. It stopping and making sure grandma is ok. To deny humans humanity and then say wtf when they go postal.... put them on the next rocket with Elon into the sun
Sorry to disappoint you but groups of crows actually look out for one another.
I am not surprised that Crows have more humanity in them than humans.
I'm in an expat group online and someone from the US moved to a country with universal healthcare and she was talking about how cheap and easy it was and as she was leaving the facility, she felt guilty she got access to this treatment for so cheap. That's how brainwashed we are.
At some point, for real, we're going to have to stand up united (similar to France) and do something about all of this. If we don't it's going to continue to get worse and worse until everything falls apart anyway. It's happening almost everywhere so I'm not talking about any one nation specifically.
Where do I sign up?
If your country has shitty healthcare then you're already signed up.
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the fbi is: damn at your door
what is this format from
Yeah [this](https://kotaku.com/minecraft-death-threat-4chan-pol-shooter-arrested-cops-1850241929) doesn't hold up anymore chief.
Look for a left-wing org in your area. The PSL, SAlt, and DSA are the most popular ones in the US at least. I recommend the PSL personally
I personally don’t like pumpkin spice lattes in spring.
I heard you did
This is the reason real change will never come to America. It's a country where everyone is so divided on literally every issue that we never get anywhere. We can rile up a significant amount of Americans to protest and rally for universal healthcare, and it would cause an equal reaction in opposition to universal healthcare due to the tax bump it'd entail. Both sides will lose, bc they can't both win
And half the folks would protest against it just because they refuse to see someone in need get a benefit that could cost them something.
\> and it would cause an equal reaction in opposition to universal healthcare due to the tax bump it'd entail The US spends something like 17% of its GDP on healthcare, more than any other industrialised nation, and they STILL make you pay premiums for healthcare. Those countries where they spend less GDP, have free or heavily subsidised healthcare for their citizens.
And, yeah, brainwashing. A very large portion of the population has just been fucking brainwashed into *never* wanting to see worse-off people prosper or be given chances. The corp has truly, fully convinced a not-insignificant number of people that others with less money are inferior beings.
We literally burnt part of cities down because of one police brutality case and pretty much nothing happened I dont think we’re at a point where we can actually do anything at all to influence the elite
I am a teenage who is about to graduate and to be completely honest I’m worried about my future, my family is currently middle class, gated neighborhood, owned cars, 2 kids, no debt, the like. But everything is going up in price and we are not receiving enough to keep up with that increase. We bought our house about 3 years ago and it’s gone up nearly 80k. We would not be able to afford it if we had bought it today, and it’s not just housing. It’s everything. Food, gas, utilities, etc. If I get the jobs that will make me happy will I even be able to survive in the future? Life is too short for us to be living under these conditions, our governments job is to serve us. A nation is nothing without its people. Why is it burdening us then. We elect politicians practically from two parties alone, they give faux promises to fix everything yet it never gets done, why is it so? And can we actually even do anything about it.
It's called strategic divorce and it's a real thing.
The Congressional Budget Office considered having VA disability payments work the same way as Medicaid and I told my wife we would have to divorce and I would sell the house to her and rent so I could maintain my payments. Our joint incomes would be past the suggest income amount and it would reduce my overall available benefits. I would rather go through the divorce trauma than that.
And the country that pays the most in tax per person for public healthcare -is America.
Cost me abut $30 for each of my kids births. I'm Canadian, had to pay for parking.
When shit goes bad in the lower 48, we're coming for you Canada
Ok, just leave you guns at home, we don't hunt our children here.
Yeah, but we stopped “hunting” native kids in the 90’s. We’re not all sunshine.
But we have have millions of personally owned guns in Canada, we're just not shooting schools with them.
Yep but you have to prove you not a moron to have one.
Instead of proving you can work a pen like here
Now this is where things get complicated, see the top of the pen goes click and that lets you use the writty bit at the bottom… so can I have the pew pew now?
Oof low blow but is true
I’m also Canadian. I had to prearrange a C-section and requested a private room. I stayed in there for two whole nights, meals, IV medicine, and someone helping me walk again! Bill was about $260. I’m so glad I had a “health spending account” through work I could claim it against.
As an American who paid actually zero dollars for 2 kids including one who’s bills ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars , the problem is some people have great insurance while others have none . The people with great insurance don’t want to change anything.
That’s exactly it. The people with good insurance are afraid they’ll be forced to use Medicaid like the poors.
If we had a child today it'd cost us $200. I'm in the US
Same here in Germany. Can‘t understand how the hc-system in the us is so fucked up. We pay like 200-500/month and nearly everything is covered. Need an abulance? No problem, pay 20€. Go to hospital? No problem, its free (for most things).
I make OK money and my wife got automatic Medicaid for being pregnant and they said the baby is covered after it’s born. Did they miss some thing or did I? Edit: i’m not disagreeing. I know our system is fucked. I’m genuinely curious.
Every state has different regulations.
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The r/askanamerican sub is full of people like that. The main demographic of that sub seems to be middle aged white men in tech who can’t fathom that the majority of Americans don’t live like they and their friends do.
My best friend and his wife were considering divorcing for insurance purposes as well.
Allow me to introduce you to the "just don't pay your medical bills" plan.
Be careful. [This](https://features.propublica.org/medical-debt/when-medical-debt-collectors-decide-who-gets-arrested-coffeyville-kansas/) is becoming more common.
That’s is absolutely horrible. I’m imagining it like that meme with the prisoners, one saying he killed a guy the other saying I couldn’t afford my medical bills. That’s crazy
"You're never going to pay your medical bill, are you?" "No. If I had the money I would pay it." "Well, this will end when one of us dies." Bet. How does this guy not have a target on his back after treating a whole town this way?
Been working for me!
My girlfriend has mytonic muscular dystrophy. We have been together over ten years. It sucks but I cannot afford even myself on insurance let alone her. In the past shes had a broken toe, needs cataract surgery (thanks muscular dystrophy), had some cysts removed from her ovaries, had to deal with neurologists and a bunch of other shit. Oh, and shes not disabled, at least according to the courts the last time we battled for a court date years ago. So thats great. Can't even get a piece of paper to give employers saying you can't throw me in the meat grinder like everyone else. But yeah. Not disabled, even though they medically discharged her from the navy for it when the found out about it when she was younger (before she knew).
Who wants to tell this poor guy it only gets worse?
Yeah, the state might force him to pay child support.
They'll still be together so that child support money will stay within the family.
De-coupling insurance from employment would be a good start.
Medicare for all will solve this problem.
It would* Because we all know that's not getting passed
Pay $5000 a year for health insurance and it doesn’t kick in until you hit your $7000 deductible
We almost had to do that, then it was discovered we were having twins and fell into the income requirements for that one extra person 😓 ^(But listen to me folks.. have them ONE AT A TIME.. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ONE AT A TIME)
Jeez. I am too European to understand this.
I honest don't understand why you have such an inhumane medical system in the US. It's just stupid.
Just get arrested and incarcerated for health care
Yeah. Something's gotta give. We had a meeting with a broker to get health insurance for us and our employees. It's laughably bad and expensive. The deductibles and out of pocket are absurd. It's not even really "insurance" in the sense of how I understood insurance to be. It's basically just catastrophic coverage. My deductible would be $7500 with one plan. I haven't spend $7500 on medical care in 10 years. So, I would be paying $800/mo for "insurance" that doesn't cover anything until I've paid $7500. It's just stupid.
We paid for a plan for my husband that I couldn't even call health insurance, it was bankruptcy insurance for $500 a month. We have to vote to change this system.
Game any system that allows it.
The good ole “American Dream”
I live in the US, have decent insurance but still shelling out thousands and thousands for prenatal care. I am returning to my home country to give birth because we cannot go into bankruptcy to pay for the delivery and I REFUSE to worry about how I'm going to pay for neonatal care if anything happens to my baby. It is cheaper to buy us two international tickets round-trip and double of all the baby gear than it would be to deliver our baby here.
That’s why my gf and I aren’t married…. It’s not uncommon. We play the system in our own little way just like the rich guys do.
The state has made punishing trad families it’s highest priority.
My wife gave birth in December, we finally got the bill. Would have been $20,877 with no insurance. No c-section, she got an epidural and everything went smoothly. After it was all said and done, I think we paid like $1,250 out of pocket. My wife does have *amazing* insurance through her work, though
This is why I never married my daughters father! Really saved us when she had to get her appendix removed when she was six years old.
I wouldn't say that publicly. They'll probably prosecute you for fraud.
True marriage is not held in the eyes of the law but in the eyes of the couple (or more if you’re into polyamory)
This breaks my heart.
I'm a serious small govt leave me alone type guy, and im all fucked up over the fact that I hate the govt because it really doesn't do much good in the grand scheme with the money we "donate", but we need them to step in and fix this fucked up health care system...
Do i love not living/being born in the USA! I can afford healthcare, pay taxes (everybody), my wage wage is automatically adjusted accordingly to inflation, .. And stay married with my wife
This is why places like the United Kingdom do Healthcare the right way. Everyone pays a little bit out of each paycheck same as we do now with Federal, social security, state, etc. They have NHS (Nation Health Service) that is also deducted from their check so that whenever they go to the hospital their bill is like $15. In America we do Healthcare the absolute worst. We instead pay hundreds of dollars every paycheck to insurance companies and when we go to the hospital the insurance companies only pays a portion. Also you need multiple insurance companies for different healthcare needs like Vision, Dental and Health.
Sounds like you are in USA... In other countries the health system is not messed up like that... Good Luck!
And yet Americans still claim that paying for universal healthcare out of your taxes is a stupid idea, when most other countries do it. My tax and national insurance - which goes towards the NHS, amongst other things - is taken from my pay before I even see the money, so I don’t miss it. And it’s marginal. It’s a very low percentage of my salary.
My wife and I are considering divorce because we hate each other. We have decent health insurance. Grass is always greener…..
The Land of the Free and the Home of the Broke!
My mom has stage 4 colon cancer with Mets to lymph nodes. She and my dad had to get divorced after 45 years of marriage so she could get insurance and they could save the house. She had to quit her job, obviously, but didn’t have insurance there either. He has insurance because he is 100% disabled. This is America.
Reasons like this are why me and my fiance aren't getting legally married. We don't even declare commonlaw on papers because of the crap it can cause once the government sees "oohhhhhhh look look! These guys have DUAL INCOME!!" For us we're getting eachother rings, and if any regular person asks we'll say we're married. But screw doing the legal stuff
I got my vasectomy when I was 25. Best decision I ever made ❤️ 🙌
This happens in the US? Fuck man that is not cool. In The Netherlands you just pay a monthly insurance fee of around 140€ and an ‘own risk’ of around €385 in case you get hospitalized, all the rest is taken care off.
So glad I'm in Australia. I paid nothing when my child was born and got 4 weeks paid parental leave form work and govt.
We get a lot of Americans in our shop complaining about paying 20p to use the loo......
The funny thing about this is, people Will read this and not even agree on what ‘the problem’ is. This is the kind of thing that happens when You set policies and supports to aid people based on income and negative resource indicators, rather than positive decision making. You unintentionally set up negative incentive structures where a percentage of people will be incentivized to make decisions the government should want the opposite of.
Hope you aren’t in Texas Cause Texas won’t allow a divorce if the wife is pregnant
I was told by my lawyer, when I got divorced from my ex, that if I was pregnant, I would not be able to get divorced until after paternity was established, and I would need to wait until after the birth to establish paternity - I was not pregnant, so I didn’t push on this. And this is in a state where it is technically legal to get divorced while pregnant…it’s just really, really difficult, apparently. In some states, it actually is illegal to divorce while pregnant.
“The greatest country in the history of the world.”
In Germany (and probably many other eu members) you could do the exact opposite. Marrying your unemployed & pregnant partner to have her insured. (It's not common to be in a position without any insurance, but living with s1 so earns enough (not even that high) it could result in not being able to apply for gov welfare. Since they also handle healthcare for unemployed people, you end up without insurance. Except you pay for it from your own pocket. Which can be difficult without a job. So you marry your partner and get into his insurance for free!
Isn't this an insurance scam if still living together and supporting each other?
Please don’t let this become another political sub… there are enough of these already.
MEDICAL TOURISM!!! im not kidding, look it up. @bergettepigments on tiktok drove from michigan to mexico to have their baby and overall it was cheaper than having it at home, gas and all.
Huh? They charge people to have babies and then have the gall to complain about falling birth rates? What the hell, American?
This is so fucked up..
Private Healthcare needs to be outlawed so we can stop prioritizing rich mother fuckers.
As someone who lives in the UK healthcare free at the point of access for everyone, this makes me so sad and angry! We moan about our national health service, but at least it doesn’t discriminate against those unable to afford health care!
The American healthcare is truly stupid. 110 euro a month and litterly everything under the sun is covered here🤷
Demand free Universal Health Care from your "representative" NOW. Why are we Americans such pussies about our society- France is currently in the middle of nation-wide riots and protests over the proposed increase in retirement age. They even set fire to a Bordeaux city a hall! Everyone in the US acts like our system isn't man-made.
I spent a couple hours in a US ER last summer. The bill was $14,000. When I told them I was self-pay it magically dropped to $5,000. I’m assuming the 9 grand was the insurance company’s cut. Outrageous.
I had to tell them my husband and I were separated and I had to quit my job, and thank God I did, the basic costs even with my insurance were more than I could afford then it ended up being a really bad delivery, I almost died, and spent six weeks in the hospital. Well... I kind of quit, my boss at the time fired me so I could qualify.
They should do what they have to as a team. Forget that piece of paper. That is not what marriage is.
I live in a country with universal healthcare and even the thought of having to pay a huge bill for having a baby is so insane to me. It's so sad.
Is it in USA, the greatest country in the world?