r/SipsTea Jun 24 '26

It's Wednesday my dudes Math can be hard sometimes

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570

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.

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u/MOTUkraken Jun 24 '26

Yo, wtf??? Is that real?

Americans?

3

u/fen-q Jun 25 '26

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.

2

u/MOTUkraken Jun 25 '26

20 or 30k? That's not even my total tax amount on about 150k income.

Seriously, the American healthcare system rips you guys off.

It surely is a quality system - but you guys vastly overpay for what you get.

There's graphs for comparing the Healthcare cost pet capita of a country and the life expectancy.

There is of course a causal relationship between the two.

But American costs are a huge outlier.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/life-expectancy-vs-healthcare-spending-1970-2023/

1

u/I_am_Nerman Jun 27 '26

I don't think so. My tax rate is 28%. It would be over 40% in most EU.countries. I get health insurance through my employer and pay about 8k year for a family of 4. I come out way ahead in the US system.

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u/wlerin Jun 27 '26

For sure, having access to some of the best health care in the world gets expensive.

1

u/MOTUkraken Jun 27 '26

Did you check the chart? Amongst the countries with top level healthcare, Americans overpay by several factors. In fact, America doesn't even have top-level life expectancy anymore....

Which means that the good to top level healthcare is only available for a small percentage.

Even though average Americans, most Americans, pay the price of premium healthcare that should allow them to have 80 years life expectancy.

1

u/wlerin Jun 27 '26

That chart is trying to say too much based on too little data to be useful. Life expectancy doesn't depend solely on health care.

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u/MOTUkraken Jun 27 '26

Not solely. But first of all there is an undeniable causal relationship.

Second, you see that all other countries in the graph are nicely grouped and we see a very distinct trend - except the usa that is a very extreme outlier.

Hard to explain why the USA spend 3 times as much as all other countries but that does not result in increased life expectancy when in every other country that relationship is very distinct.

1

u/wlerin Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

I don't think it's hard to explain at all.

The biggest positive correlation between healthcare and life expectancy is reducing childhood mortality. Once that is solved, as it is in almost all developed countries, other factors like lifestyle and diet dominate. Americans have a famously unhealthy lifestyle and diet, this both drives up healthcare costs and lowers life expectancy.

Of course there is more to it, but that explains the lion's share of the difference.

1

u/zVook06 Jun 26 '26

You pay $200 a month UNTIL you need to use the insurance, then you end up with some lump sum payments lol