Wow, $800 a month is a lot. I have international medical insurance which I thought is high at US$300 a month
But Odammitcare was supposed to fix all that, right?
At least single payer does a better job of hiding what’s really going on.
You can pay around 400 a month but your exposure is higher. Like the first 5000 dollars is on you in the calendar year. And all co pays are much higher. So your first visit to the doc could cost you 5000. At least.
So you are paying 400 a month and your coverage only starts after you spend 5000 US dollars.
800 a month means your co pay is something like 20 to see a doc, 10 for most medicine and 50 for an ambulance ride and 250 for an ER visit and 500 per day if you are hospitalized up to annual max of 9000 dollars.
There are lots of plans with different coverages and co pays. But all are incredibly expensive.
This is all per person. You have 4 people multiply that by 4.
The good news is that you can write off all these medical bills on your taxes from your income before tax. That’s assuming you make the income.
Now if you are homeless or Mexican illegal immigrant they will usually not charge you any money for emergency treatment.
But you get the barebones treatment and are back on the street post haste.
Now older folks with Medicare pay reasonable doc fees because they have been taking Medicare out of your pay check for decades.
And military personnel
And anyone who have served go to VA hospitals which are great and very low cost.
It pays to serve your country.
People like me get to pay for the illegals and the homeless and the 300000 to 800000 dollars per year doc salaries and 150000 per year nurses.
Plus all the hardware and other software.
I was on a diet in Taiwan once and I fainted due to low blood sugar. Passed out for maybe a minute at home hit my head on the floor.
Drove myself to ER in Keelung at a big hospital.
Doc looked me over for a few mins.
I’m ok he says. Bill 50 nt. I had no insurance.
ER visit in California is a minimum of 2400 US dollars and goes up from there.
My friend slipped his hip replacement in Berkeley. I took him to ER at Alta Bates a big hospital there.
They took a few x rays and gave him aspirin and kept him there for observation for 4 hours.
Bill? 17,000 U S dollars. And this was ten years ago !,
In Italy I got insurance for 150 euros a year. But I am assigned only 1 doctor I can go to. I think it covers real emergencies at the emergency room as well.
Dang lucky. It won’t be like that for you in CAlifornia
I think this is the min insurance. I’m not so clear. It’s just what I needed to get to live here. Italy is strange where they also have a bank at the post office like Taiwan from the old days and also you buy insurance there.
I guess I am lucky, when I was working in Southern California the company paid most my health and some other insurance/401K (as do most of relatives/friends in California/Hawaii/NZ ), so now that I pay US$300 a month I think it’s a lot.
In the States still sizable people have no insurance and do not pay (so cost is passed to others). Had a student from China who rented a room from me and did not pay his insurance, so went to UCI (Uni California Irvine)hospital for health problem, need to stay there for about a week but did not pay as do many people there (this hospital also functions as government hospital for low income people in Orange County, and money shortfall is covered by others so it’s part of the reason for high costs for people that do pay.
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Americans spend far more on healthcare than all other countries. In fact the US healthcare industry is almost like a small country GDP. However Americans have lower life expectancy than all other developed countries, higher infant mortalities than other developed countries as well. Americans aren’t getting that much for their money.
Also 70% of all bankruptcy in the US is due to medical bills. Do you know anyone in Taiwan who went bankrupt because they got sick?
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According to data, 91% of the hospitals generate positive revenue. However, hospitals that targets a specific type of disease often loses money.
Although it is true that shops within the hospital often generates more money than the medical services provided. Although, often it’s the healthy friends and relatives spending money at these shops rather than the patients themselves.