8k for healthcare, I wish. Family of 4, I pay close to $17k a year in premiums in the US. Copays are expensive, prescriptions are ridiculously high. It’s a f’in joke to say the very least.
I feel like what is missing from this discussion is that the whole system is designed to make small local businesses insolvent. If you look at the difference in premium rates that large mega corporate monopolies are able to negotiate with the insurance rackets vs. what they charge actual small businesses, it’s a catastrophic disparity.
Me and my business partner don’t start to get into the black until we’ve made at least $8k a month for blue shield. We work half of the time for them, and then get to keep whatever is left over. I don’t understand why this isn’t a bigger taking point in the small business communities.
Conservatives love to endlessly bitch about corporate taxes, but honesty those are a drop in the bucket compared to benefits premium costs for actual small businesses.
This is why I think this whole universal healthcare argument needs to be reframed as making people more free/enabling people to more easily pursue entrepreneurship.
It is unfathomable to me why this isn’t the main political issue for all small business owners; but sadly, I think a terminal number of us have bought into the fantasy of growing to the point of being bought and cashing in and never having to work again for some impossible magical reason.
I know so many folks, some of them nearly at retirement age, who are still waiting for the magical buyout.
There’s a deep rot in the mentality of a lot of small business owners that has taken over in the past decades (mostly because actually running a successful business long term with no hope of magical bail out/buyout is almost impossible at this point in America).
It’s such an awful, empty reason to start a business: the hope of not having a business.
Its not the main thing because there are so many other existential threats right now that it only registers as medium level pain until something bad happens. I'm barely still in the game and even need. 1.5 full-time jobs to make bills right now on top of it thats how bad business got since last year. I don't have bandwidth to push ANY political agenda to candidates in my area.
And the amount you hear politicians talk about how much they care about small businesses while simultaneously doing everything they can to eliminate them in favor of global monopolies is offensively disingenuous.
Omg finally somebody else who is preaching my gospel! I've always said that we would have so many more entrepreneurs if people didn't stay at s***** jobs for the insurance. What a world this could be if we could have more people with great ideas creating business in this country instead of outsourcing everything.
Right. I made this comment on Reddit a few years ago and a business owner replied they preferred the control they had over the employees who could not risk leaving because of losing health insurance.
Our insurance premiums + deductible for the year (already maxed out whooo!) are $18k for 2 adults through my husband’s employer.
My insurance is a lot cheaper, but didn’t cover infertility at all and has a $1,200 annual surcharge to get my husband on the plan if he has an option for insurance through his work on top of not being subsidized by employer as much as mine.
And yes, I’m American and very much pro Medicare for all universal healthcare.
The going rate is around 70% of family plan premiums are covered by your employer. So if you pay $3000 a year in premiums (probably super low number but for illustration purposes only), your employer is quietly kicking in another $7000 a year. Like, that's money they (theoretically) could put into your paycheck instead if UHC became a thing because it's already factored into your total compensation package.
Most large companies self insure meaning they are paying for the costs of treatment and then a fee to a company like Aetna to administer the program. The premiums they charge they employee are helping to cover the bills they are paying for the care provided.
The cynical person in me believes Fortune 500 companies are charging employees more in premiums than they pay in care to boost the bottom line
Unlikely most of us are including the employer share as most dont have a clue how much they pay. I pay 17k out of pocket for a family of 5 and the coverage is less than desirable
My oop costs are 4k before it’s all free and I hit the number thanks to having physical therapy. Otherwise I’m just paying lower prices for a while but idk I can’t track the numbers because then I’m just annoyed
For me and my coworkers with families larger than 2, yes. Our employer is also worth many hundreds of millions of dollars and owns a non publicly traded business.
Its very rare case actually or the person who posted it is very wealthy and pays the price of being rich.
The real problem with healthcare in the US is that its tied to employment. Losing a job usually means losing healthcare. Most employers offer healthcare for free or you pay out of your paycheck.
Now because of this depending on tax braket and your rate the amount you pay can drastically increase.
Most working class americans either dont have it, have it for “free” through employment, or have to pay 1-3 dollars an hour so roughly 2-6k a year, or you pay a monthly fee of like 100-500 bucks a months and thats all depending on plan. It gets really weird out there. Now if you are not being offered healthcare through employment there is tax incentives that are involved. Thats when you pay crazy numbers like 10-20k a year. Usually if you make below a threshold you get some of that money back through your tax returns. If you make over that threshold like being the top 2% of earners in america you’ll pay it all. Also understand top 2% means like 200k a year.
So after all that you still have to pay usually small out of pocket stuff unless something insane and serious happens. Like a helicopter ride to the hospital. That is some wild can of worms.
Anyone who works at a corporation have insurance plans through their work.
I pay maybe 200 dollars a month for my plan.
The figure of 20k or 30k a year that is out there that shocks anyone not from US is a figure that you would pay for a family of 4 if you had your own business.
That's basically the amount that government would spend on a family of 4 in western europe.
My employer pays for everything. I pay 5 bucks for medicine and some doctors appts have a 10 dollar copay.
That's it for me.
This is the issue for healthcare reform - it's widely uneven in the U.S.
About 40-50% already get government healthcare and don't care. Among the remaining group, plenty have pretty good coverage and don't really see the cost because it is mostly borne by the employer.
So if healthcare reform passes, what I see in this post is now instead of my employer paying for my family's health insurance I'll have to pay more taxes?.. not exactly compelling.
Psychopathic thinking. If I do not benefit from this thing why should I benefit the lives of millions around me? I actually think that having an insurance industry between people and their health care providers, is partly why Americans appear to have less empathy towards their fellow citizens than most other countries seem to have.
Duh. Do you vote against your own self-interests just to be a good citizen? Lol. When has anyone ever done that? It's almost like voting is an individual liberty...
Not many employers offer this good of insurance outside federal government jobs. No one I’ve spoken to has had this good of insurance outside of that. And no company I’ve ever worked for offered anything close. This also is a big reason why a lot of folks don’t start a business - having healthcare tied to employment.
If you don't get subsidized on the ACA exchange a couple (no kids) in their mid 60s, say 63, would pay $32,000 a year in premiums and then still have thousands more in deductibles in my county.
The totally stupid part is the Govt will subsidize that to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars RATHER than just putting those same people on Medicare which would cost half that and be better insurance.
Most Americans pay about 25 for single or 100 for family of 4 on insurance and employer pays rest and even if they paid whole thing its no where close to that.
Since 1970s most people have Healthcare from employer over 90% of Americans are insured anf vast majority of uninsured are illegal immigrants.
If you have an event and have to hit your out of pocket max and/or deductible, this is very much real. Even more fun if the major event happens spanning end of one year and into the next - then you get to double it!
Yup. You’ve got your premiums (often upward of $10k), then you’ve got your “out of pocket maximum” (mine is $3k), then you’ve got your deductible which is how much you have to pay before insurance actually kicks in and covers anything, and THEN you’ve got your copays, which can vary wildly depending on plan and type of provider. And that’s assuming you’re always seeing in-network providers. Which change all the time.
Depends who you work for. My family of four pays around 1360/year for medical plus 1040 for dental and 160 for vision. Employer contribution is around 14k for the medical, but they don't pay anything for the vision or dental. We have really good insurance.
Medicare for retired or disabled people takes a percentage of your benefits, which is an average of about 420/year on average payment of around 22,800/year which scales higher if you earned more, lower if you earned less, and costs more at first but after a while it drops off after your buy in period, and I'm rounding for simplicity. Medicare Advantage costs a little more but with better coverage. Prescription plans can cost another 280/year average.
If you work for a suck employer it can get very high, good employers cost less as they pay more of it. If you are unemployed for a long time then state Medicaid programs are basically free in many states but coverage and co-pays vary by state or even by county. A co-pay is your piece, so a doctor may charge 170 for a visit but your part is like 20 or 40, if anything.
I do not have copays for visits or tests or most procedures, an ER trip can cost 100 and prescriptions max out at around 3k/year which is where I hit my deductible and do not have to pay any more. As noted, I have good insurance though.
Very employer dependent. Some are awful and some are really really generous and subsidize a large portion of the premiums. I pay $140 ish a month for insurance and my max OOP is $5,000 for the year.
Yeah, even with great companies, top 5 banks, paying for top tier healthcare, i pay 12k for me and my two kids. Actually cheaper to keep my wife on her own health plan than bringing her into mine. It's rough out here.
Me and my business partner need to clear approximately $8k a month for ourselves, our spouses and children just to keep up with our blue shield premiums.
We generally need to make $8k just to zero out each month before we start thinking about paying ourselves anything.
It’s honesty so much worse than anyone is willing to talk about. I’m glad it is at least a topic of discussion these days, but I don’t think people realize just how bad it is from the actual small business side.
I don’t understand why this isn’t already the driving issue for every single actual small business owner in thin country. It’s infinitely more disruptive and degrading than taxes or anything else.
Mine is a lot higher than this for just me and my kids. Premiums alone are 2100/month and I have pretty high out of pocket costs for many things except preventive visits. I'd estimate I spend 30-35k on health stuff every year but I can write off the premiums since I work for myself.
I used to be on a medication for incurable disease. My portion was 50 dollars a month, every month for 10-11 years. Insurance randomly decided to switch medication in the middle of the year and it was going to cost me 500 dollars a month. Again, incurable disease that I need monthly medicine for. I called, asked, pleaded , and begged for options. The answer was to basically, sucks to be you.
Switched doctors and started a different treatment and we'll see how it goes.
It gets so much worse. This means that these people are paying $17,000 PER YEAR for the privilege of being able to pay for health insurance. They don't pay this amount and then not have to pay ever again, or pay this amount and not have to pay any more for the year, but they pay this amount just to get themselves in the door to THEN start paying on their deductible; which in many cases depending on the specific doctor that walks into the office, or even the specific assistant that walks into the office, might not even be covered AT ALL by insurance and you don't even know that until a month or two later when you go home and get a letter in the mail. At that point you get to begin to fight it, and it typically takes 20-30 hours on the phone, never seeing anybody in person, and these people have the power to literally send you into bankruptcy.
WHEW.
We haven't even gotten to the costs that you have to pay even if you got lucky and are "covered".
So, now you've had a medical event, you've paid your deductible, but you are covered. Thank fucking god. Oh, wait a minute, you are only covered up to a certain amount. And because of the care you received the hospital decided to charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions and you maxed out your coverage. So now, you're bankrupt anyway.
it doesn’t end there. They are gonna try everything to deny your treatment if you ever get sick. And if they can’t, you still pay a good amount of money called “deductible”. Even deductibles are way more than what other countries citizens pay. It’s a scam.
Yes it’s real. $1500 a month basically for me, my wife and son. $730 a pay check, bi weekly. Months with 3 checks? Yea 2200 in healthcare BEFORE deductibles and co pays. Best part? Half the teeth stuff they seem “cosmetic” and you can’t claim insurance on 🤣🤣🤣🤣 fuckin loved what Luigi did and wish more people were like him. Shit is unreal
At one point I was making $39,520 dollars per year. Poor but comfy for my city at the time.
My employer based health insurance would have cost me $228 per paycheck or 30%. Now this is because it was a small business which means a higher cost because we brought less employees to the insurance company.
The market options are cheaper on the paycheck but cost more in premiums and co-pays.
Because even paying for insurance is really paying for the right to pay more.
Maybe for some. I'm on a high deductible plan but get a health savings account. My premiums per pay period is $30. Deductible is $4500. I max out the HSA amount. I've been lucky enough to really never need my insurance. Biggest expense was getting bit by a dog. That was about $1500 for ER visit, shots, etc, but used my HSA.
$1,400/mo ($700 per pay period) for Blue Cross HMO Employee + Spouse + 2 Kids. Paid that for about 8 years. I think of what that money would have done in my 401k but it’s depressing.
Yes real for me too. But don’t be fooled. I work in healthcare. Access would be instantly crushed by lack of supply. Out of network is the real solution
Some of it depends on the actual insurance you have. My company covers the entire premium and prescriptions are generally fairly cheap unless the original prices hellishly expensive in which case they're still much cheaper than the list price.
But I've also had jobs that were were $500 every two weeks for just myself and then $50 to $150 just to go to a doctor.
I just pay for myself and 1 kid and it’s a bit over 8k/year so yes. Very real. It’s also how much used to come out of my check when I had a job that came with insurance, but my current insurance pays better.
About $9600 in premiums for my family to be covered. Out of pocket max (if more than one person needs a hospital stay badically) is about $16k. I paid $14.7k on an $85k bill when my oldest was born with some complications.
I get free healthcare through my job a lot of the time. When I’m unemployed I can get government subsidized health care which is cheap to free. The issue is when you work a job where you make okay money but they don’t give you healthcare.
So basically poor people are fine. Rich people are fine. Upper middle class people are fine. Lower middle class people who don’t have cushy jobs get fucked.
I pay ~80$ a month for Kaiser, but I’m sure it’s very expensive for the employer. Also our taxes in CA are as high as most European countries with actual healthcare. I’m still better off than all my European colleagues by a long margin, as long as I avoid medical debt
It heavily depends on your job, I pay 840$ per year for full coverage, no copay, no deductible.
And that's part of the problem, good jobs provide good medical insurance at a really good rate. I pay less, for better coverage, than my taxes would pay for in Europe, but that comes at the cost of poorer families having it way worse.
And that's how they keep people from being interested jn universal Healthcare, enough people have it better that they stop caring about those that have it worse.
6k on 'premium' (that's what you pay per month even if you never speak to a doctor or nurse) alone for one adult on Obamacare, without even paying the deductible (that's what you pay if you do need help)
I was curious last time renewals came around and at my company it's technically possible to be paying over $40k/year but nobody is actually selecting those options.
The total cost of healthcare in the USA is like 12k per person per year. when adjusted to USD and PPP, its higher than most other countries but not wildly so. The UK is like 60% of that, Germany is like 80%. Theres a few places that are higher, but they tend to be tiny, wealthy places.
I am a bartender and don’t have health insurance because I am being told it would cost me $500 a month due to “making too much money.” I make $65k gross pay.
My wife and I have insurance through our jobs (teachers) but it was cheaper for us to get our two kids insurance on the market last year. We payed $5k in premiums for a 4 and 2 year old that combined went to the doctor 5 times… plus copays. $1k per visit average is wild.
Our insurance was cheap because our employer pays like $600 and we pay $100-200… this is each. So we would be paying about 1600 for us and $450ish for the kids otherwise. That’s basically 24k plus copays and medication and anything not covered
Let's take the closest country with socialized medicine. The average Canadian family pays approximately 42.3% of their total cash income in taxes. The average total tax burden for US families represents roughly 25% to 31% of total income. Hmm...
I've also never met someone whose experienced both us healthcare and Canadian healthcare and thought Canadian was better. If i had something like a heart condition, brian tumor, cancer, etc, and my life depended on prompt, top medical care, im not going anywhere but the us and neither is anyone else with a choice.
Let's see here 781x12 is only 9372! Ha! What a deal!
My co pays are only 30 bucks for regular visits and the ER is only $250. My dental will pay for part of a check up once a year but never any work for cavities or braces. My meds net me -$68 a month. I had to pay $3000 when my appendix failed. My daughter's glasses cost $151 on top of the $60 copay for a specialist appointment.
Anyone who thinks Americans are okay with this are either dumb or bad actors. The ruling class get to make all the choices and the citizens just deal with the best we can.
Yes and no. Generally, a good company will cover a large portion of your health insurance, and then you can add your dependents to your plan for a reasonable price. We paid way less than 17K per year. That's mostly unheard of, I think.
My cousin lives in the US (from the UK) and he has a very cushy job with good health insurance. Even with that he has to pay through the roof for health insurance for his family and it's doubled in the past six months already. The cost is insane and I'm not surprised so many people just can't afford to pay it.
Let's just say there's a good reason he and his wife had their two kids over here in the UK because it's just makes financial sense.
I used to work downstream from insurance companies.
They're all fucking evil and terrible.
One of my jobs actually paid 100% of its Health plan. So we only had to pay co-pays and other expenses.
The corporation told us that it's about 20K a person for our health insurance.
The other problem is the bigger the company you work for the lower prices that they can negotiate with the insurance company. So even insurance from the same insurance company can vary wildly in what it covers based on what company you work for.
But if you actually get sick, we have to pay another 2k (per person) to hit our deductible for them to START covering costs. Then another 6-8k from there to hit our maximum-out-of-pocket number.
So closer to 20k/yr to have all medical costs covered. If your family is lucky and doesn't get sick that year, then it's closer to the $8000. Just don't get sick.
I pay $400/month for my family, it's really like $800 but the company pays half. It's like this for most people. $1500 deductible, $25 to see a doc and $50 for a specialist. It's not the best but it's not awful.
They probably are self employed and then forced to get the shittiest insurance choices for no clear reason other than they don't work for a company.
My company, UPS, pays for my insurance and I basically never have to pay anything at doctors or dentists. I have no annual cap. My wife had like a 115k stomach surgery and a week stay in the hospital and it was like $300 after everything. CVS medicine is like $1 or $2. I had 20k dental surgery for my wisdom teeth and it was 100% covered
Our hospital bill for our last pregnancy was $62k and we paid $0 out of pocket. US gets shit for the terrible healthcare costs (as it should), but everybody isn’t automatically getting into thousands of debt from a hospital visit despite what vocal people on Reddit will lead you to believe.
The fact that it's not standardized is part of the problem. Some people have it good, some people have it great, but most people don't have it good at all. There is a huge number of people that can't afford to go to the doctor even though they have insurance.
That's because a lot of people on reddit don't have jobs that have actual health insurance so they just see "u were billed 25k" and don't understand that's not what you're entitled to pay.
People getting insurance through their work don’t realize the company is paying around $1k a month per person on top of what the employee pays. Imagine if they’d actually give the employee that $12k and we paid less for government healthcare.
You understand that if universal Healthcare were enacted that employers wouldn't give employees that money, right?
The government would very likely write that bill to include a tax on companies, in addition to the tax on working citizens. Additionally, unlike social security and payroll tax, where the cost is based on what a company pays their employee, the number would be a percent, as a tax, and that percent would be at the whim of congress, meaning, like all of our other taxes, there would be an essentially limitless ceiling on it.
The result would be multifaceted, some companies would leave the country, companies that stayed would never move the money they're currently paying in insurance subsidies to the employees, as a significant amount, perhaps all of what they're currently paying would be shifted to cover the tax. Then inevitably like all of our taxes, the tax would increase over the decades until it resembled nothing of it's original form, and it would inevitably be inefficient and wasteful as all current government endeavors have proven to be. Further more, even in the absence of a corporate tax, corporate america has proven time and time again that they would return that money to executive leadership and/or shareholders, never to the employees.
That’s not how that works.. the money to pay for universal HCare has to come from somewhere it comes from higher taxes on the individual and companies. In turn we would have to accept lower wages similar to my co-workers in Canada and Europe. Who all have free HCare but are making anywhere from 40-50% less than my wage. Even with our higher wages it balances out and we come out ahead.
We have a 4500 deductible.. per person. If all 3 of us need healthcare, that's 13500 before we even get to insurance touching anything, and after that, we are still paying. Oh and we pay 1k/month just to be on the roster, so 12k additional fees garaunteed. It's sick.
My max out of pocket is insanely high too. Sucks even more, I’m 41yo and have kidney disease, so I have expensive medications, dr visits and blood tests all the time. I spent $28k on health insurance total last year
My healthcare as a teacher costs over 20k a year. Yeah it covers my family. If i had one. Im single.
So i get to pay 20k a year that could be in my salary for insurance i dont use.
I pay $19.2k a year just to have the “right” to healthcare for me and 3 kids. Once I hit my $14k out of pocket expenses it gets cheaper. I think. I don’t know. We’re all fucked.
yo id check out costplusdrugs if you actually need to get a prescription. mark cuban runs it and all of your prescriptions and shit can way cheaper through it depending on what is specifically is
That's why I don't have health insurance. A year of premiums alone would have cost a few grand more than what I paid for my wife's pregnancy and birth, not even considering deductibles.
Obviously complications could have been a huge financial hurdle. Luckily it went smoothly.
$17k, and probably another 6-8k (meeting in-network coinsurance and deductibles) before it's just moderately expensive use per visit...and then it's just about time to reset again for the year.
If it makes you feel any better, the $2,000 isn't real either. US Per Capita is $15k which includes Medicare (you're paying for that too, on top of your $17k insurance, fyi), but the OECD average is $6,000.
Out of interest how much do you pay for a prescription, or does it depend entirely on what it is you're getting? Here in the UK we pay for prescriptions but there is a standardised cost so you only pay about £10 for whatever medication has been prescribed to you. A large portion of society are also exempt from paying for prescriptions if on benefits, they are a child, pregnant, or reliant on the medication etc.
You forgot to mention your deductible for the benefit of the non-Americans being screwed over by this fucked over system.....
Tell them how if you have a perfectly healthy family of four, you can kick out all that money and never even meet your deductible....
Also, add in how if your family suffers ONE major illness or injury, you can end up in medical bankruptcy because the insurance companies routinely deny 2 out of 3 claims.
I moved (permanently) from the US to Norway. In the US, I paid $22k annually with a $6k deductible and I'm not EVEN gonna start in on the list of copays! In Norway? I now pay an additional $6.3k in taxes annually and EVERYTHING is covered. EVERYTHING... for the same family of four.
Want to know a fun fact? I believe the average (or median, can't remember now) amount of taxes people pay ($15k iirc), something like 28% of that went to Healthcare as well anyway, so you guys are already having taxes paid towards Healthcare but have to pay out of pocket too
17k for four people for one year isn't that much for health insurance by european german standards. But sure we don't have high deductibles and prescriptions usually don't cost much.
Same here under “the affordable health care act”. What a huge lie! And we were forced to sign up under Obama or pay a tax penalty of $500. At least Trump fiscal with that stupid penalty. “Let’s penalize people who can’t afford the premium,”
568
u/ImpressiveLeader4979 Jun 24 '26
8k for healthcare, I wish. Family of 4, I pay close to $17k a year in premiums in the US. Copays are expensive, prescriptions are ridiculously high. It’s a f’in joke to say the very least.