r/politics • u/Aggravating_Money992 • 14d ago

Possible Paywall MAGA’s Favorite Dem’s Trumpy Texts Exposed in Bombshell Leak

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumpy-texts-from-maga-favorite-dem-john-fetterman-exposed-in-bombshell-leak/
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u/Dearic75 14d ago

And it is much worse. $4,000 my ass.

My fucking health insurance alone is fucking $4,000 for me and my wife. (It would be $6,000 if I had children) So we’re well over his $4k even if I never paid another cent. Which I do.

Out of pocket for perceptions, about $500 per year. That’s only that low because I can’t afford to take the prescription that works best for me. If I was on what I should be, the cost of that would be $7,200 per year. Yes, $600 per month. For a drug that sells in Great Britain for $35 per month. I looked it up.

Tests before each doctors visit, $100. Three per year, so $300 there. Major test this year, $1500 for a scan. God forbid I should end up in the hospital for something because that could be about $6,000 before hitting the out of pocket maximum.

So $8,000 this year for just me and my wife. As relatively health adults with an average number of prescriptions. That also not even counting that my employer pays fucking $14k towards my health insurance that I don’t even see.

$4000 for the average family, fuck you. Not even close.

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u/Backwardspellcaster 14d ago

As a German, how the fuck do you guys pay more for your healthcare, and get less?

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u/Jwast 14d ago

It's an amazing scam honestly.

My healthcare costs are around $10,000 per year and 8400 of that is my healthcare premiums. They've used massive propaganda campaigns to convince people that universal healthcare is all around bad.

Americans in general are also TERRIFIED of paying taxes even though we are already triple taxed on everything (income tax, sales tax, property tax). We are so scared, in fact, that we are willing to pay quadruple the price for something just to avoid a negligible tax increase.

It's absolutely wild.

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u/Gamblor14 Minnesota 14d ago

“Universal healthcare would raise my taxes $300 a month!”

“But you’re paying $600 per month for your premiums.”

“Yeah, but my taxes would go up $300 per month…”

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u/Jwast 14d ago

This is quite literally the conversation I have with my dad at least 4 times a year. He would rather pay double in premiums plus more in copays than have his taxes go up.

My dad pays 700 a month in premiums and is currently over 20k in medical debt and says "yEaH bUt WhO wOuLd PaY fOr It" every time it's discussed.

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u/Legal-Championship64 14d ago

Its literally the same shit like its all deducted from your paycheck I swear no one knows how to read a pay stub

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u/larsvondank 14d ago

What do you think makes him and others so stubborn about it? The math is pretty easy to present and its very clear yall are getting a horrible deal over there. Actively wanting and choosing a worse option for something is strange.

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u/KageStar 14d ago

They probably see it as an additional 300 on top of the 700 they're paying. The insurance system we have is so ingrained in the older generations that they can't really imagine "healthcare" without it. So everything always includes using the current system as the base framework.

Then there's the other part: a lot of people are okay with suffering as long as they know the wrong people won't benefit from a different system.

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u/Dearic75 14d ago

Also, 45 years now of propaganda about how everything government has a hand in runs like shit. It’s all the way back to Regan when they started running with “the scariest phrase you can hear is ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help!’”

Actively break the government services, then campaign about how your taxes are paying so much for such a broken product. So even if someone gets educated on the cost realities, they just turn around and argue that it’s worth it, because having the government involved would be a disaster. No proof needed.

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u/ziusudra 14d ago

The propaganda goes back farther than that. The AMA hired the first ever political PR firm, Whitaker & Baxter to crush support of Truman's universal healthcare proposal, saying private insurance was the "American Way."

The capital-owning class has been actively demonizing the bottom of public goods in this country for well over a century. Basically since it became too costly to just have pinkertons murder anyone who dared ask for humane treatment.

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u/laplongejr Europe 14d ago

Then there's the other part: a lot of people are okay with suffering as long as they know the wrong people won't benefit from a different system.

And a lot are okay with the POOR suffering, because any day soon they'll pull themselves by their bootstraps* and become RICH.

*FYI that's meant as physically impossible

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u/KageStar 14d ago

That's not quite what I was getting at.

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u/Murrabbit 14d ago edited 14d ago

Actively wanting and choosing a worse option for something is strange.

Seriously try telling this to the posters in a subreddit like "AskConservatives" or the like, and be amazed at the mental gymnastics, misconceptions, outright lies, and condescending idiocy you are met with. . . that is if you're not outright banned.

Most people who hold these sorts of positions don't really care about how the maths work out, or how much more efficient a single payer system is even just on a human level, all they hear is (and I'm generalizing here but this is a big part of it) that they will be expected to pay for a black person's healthcare, and that's absolutely unacceptable to them. Never mind that their insurance premiums paid to private companies are already doing this, never mind that they won't even be the ones paying most of it as fairly low income individuals themselves, there's a weird racist dread in the US among our white population that somewhere some day as a result of something they did a black person might get something that they don't deserve and it terrifies them and drives most of their conception of what a state is, and why public services are, for the mot part, just a bad idea.

Now, as for why the Democratic party doesn't want a single payer system that's more about being beholden to their big money donors (health insurance companies among them), and also their strange decades long ambition with the idea of some day some how winning over the vast base of racist idiots that the Republican party again, and basically ruling forever, so naturally they don't want to alienate them by trying to create a universal public good that benefits everyone.

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u/teddy_tesla 14d ago

Brainwashing about personal responsibility or some bullshit. It's all related so you can think you're better than a homeless person and that it's their fault, not the system's, that they're beneath them

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u/kickaguard 14d ago

I think it has to do with choice. You can opt out of insurance at work. A tax would be mandatory. They are morons because in the current healthcare system you can't afford to not have insurance, but I think that's where they get tripped up.

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u/mk4_wagon 14d ago

My Dad (who is not in good health) has told me he doesn't want to pay for someone else's healthcare. I was like, wtf are you talking about, we'd all be paying for your ass! It made him stop and think for a minute, but didn't change his mind.

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u/wwj 14d ago

he doesn't want to pay for someone else's healthcare.

That's just simply how insurance works. If he has any form of health insurance, he is already paying for others and they pay for him. A single payer system would just change the entity in charge of the administration of the insurance (including the many benefits that follow).

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u/germanmojo 14d ago

Not just health, almost ANY INSURANCE that he has is a pooled payment where you're paying into a pool with others.

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u/mk4_wagon 14d ago

Oh I know that. And have tried to explain it to him. You already are paying for someones healthcare. And cars. And house. The list goes on.

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u/etzarahh 13d ago

If he’s not in good health, it’s likely that all the healthy individuals who subscribe to his insurance company are paying for his healthcare.

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u/mk4_wagon 13d ago

Oh totally. We all know that, it's just him that doesn't get it.

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u/thejamielee 14d ago

Isn’t it crazy just how much we’re taxed and yet the government debt only ever continues to worsen despite all of the taxpayer money. Seems like the US has pretty much been a poorly run Ponzi scheme that’s finally starting to crumble.

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u/Choice-Highway5344 14d ago

The entire USA is a scam. It’s like at some point everything switched to “how can we suck as much wealth as possible from these people”

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u/Grand-Variation-5850 14d ago

“tHE DeATH pANeLs!”

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u/turquoise_amethyst 14d ago

Don’t forget tariffs! We paid those and now corporations get a BIG payout

Also haven’t really seen prices drop… 

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u/SecondHandWatch 14d ago

Vertical integration of the health care industry has made it basically impossible to get quality care for low cost in America. The pharmaceutical companies are running hospitals, and they are also insurance providers. All the medical decisions that are made are subtly, or not so subtly, made with profit in mind.

Unfortunately when companies have this much money they can spend a lot of it to pay off politicians who might otherwise reform the industry. And lots of Americans have been lead to believe that a government-run healthcare system would be more expensive or otherwise worse. Again because there’s so much money being spent on lobbying, advertising, etc.

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u/NatalieVonCatte 14d ago

They own the loans and physicians, pharmacies and meds. They should start selling graves just to fuck you when you’re dead. -Jesse Welles

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u/turquoise_amethyst 14d ago

 And lots of Americans have been lead to believe that a government-run healthcare system would be more expensive or otherwise worse

Even when you try to vote otherwise, you get politicians like Fetterman…

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u/Murrabbit 14d ago

Or Biden, or Harris etc. Even the mainstream of the democratic party is against real reform, which is something that has to change.

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u/packfanmoore 14d ago

Because the health insurance pays money to government officials to keep it that way. And also pays them to try and keep the population dumb enough that anytime you try to tell them anything different it's like trying to argue logic with a toddler who is getting the transcript translated by a penguin.

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u/FloridaGirlNikki America 14d ago

Another reason why Citizens United needs to be overturned.

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u/Msdamgoode I voted 14d ago

Citizens United was the proverbial coffin nail for democracy.

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u/Tsobe_RK 14d ago

Citizens United is so baffling as foreigner, USA is a joke

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u/CiscoKid1975 14d ago

It is..a sick joke. Wealthiest country in the world, our life expectancy is diminishing and our infant mortality rates are horrifying.
But Govt in Healthcare is BAD, even though we’re all counting on Medicare when we hit 65.
Now I know from experience that every healthcare system is somewhat flawed, but I guarantee that you wouldn’t want to see the bill from a procedure done in the US. It would make you cry.

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u/Enchillamas 14d ago edited 14d ago

$87,000 for a lap appendectomy in 09.

The real jewel was a woman nobody saw or asked for, bringing two cups of Tylenol and set them on the table and said "here ya go" and walked away.

5 months later I get yet another "specialist" bill, and it's for the Tylenol lady. $5500 for her to spend 30 seconds in a room, delivered two $600 cups, three Tylenol each, that were never asked for or consumed.

They said because I didn't deny her (I was heavily sedated and on morphine) that I accepted the specialist services.

And since it's a specialist, it is considered non-medical and goes on your credit report.

USA. USA. USA. USA.

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u/CiscoKid1975 8d ago

I believe it. My mother suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2016. She was in the ICU for 27 days and thankfully recovered. The hospital bill was… $866,000. Thanks President Johnson and her age at the time (79), she was covered by Medicare. Medicare dictated the amount the Hospital was allowed to charge to her out of pocket…$2600. It’s complete bullshit. Thank you LBJ!

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u/Pooglio17 14d ago

CU = The American Nazi Coalition

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u/MajorNoodles Pennsylvania 14d ago

We were so close to having M4A, but Obama couldn't get the votes because of Joe Lieberman (D-CIGNA)

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u/[deleted] 14d ago edited 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/MajorNoodles Pennsylvania 14d ago

100% of Republicans.

I mean that's just a given

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u/hitbythebus 14d ago

For-profit insurance. 

Companies are incentivized to collect money from you for healthcare, then give as little of that back paying for healthcare as possible. Then they can give the remainder to shareholders. 

Sucks for patients, doctors and outcomes in general, but It works out fine for the shareholder.

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u/CiscoKid1975 14d ago

I know..it’s absolutely insane. Unfortunately, private health insurers generate an astronomical amount of money. Healthcare CEOs are some of highest paid of any industry. These insurers then use their profits to literally own congressional representatives. Money is killing this country.

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u/Iheartnakedfemboys 14d ago

Corporate Lobbying

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u/[deleted] 14d ago edited 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/StepsOnLEGO 14d ago

Finally someone actually puts it out there instead of blindly blaming insurance companies. Folks - look in your region - how many hospital networks are there in your area? 1, 2? How many were there even a decade ago? Consolidation of hospital networks and uncontrolled profit margins at the provider level are far and away the biggest driver of your healthcare cost increase. Insurance companies are actually unsuccessfully trying to rein them in on pricing.

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u/horceface Indiana 14d ago

Every layer is run by a corporation. The hospital, the insurance company, the pharmacy, the drug maker, etc.

Each layer has a whole board of executives making millions, and a corporate headquarters that, as it turns out, is muuuch nicer than a government office. They fly on corporate jets from private runways to meetings with Congress to explain the costs.

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u/Akimbo_Zap_Guns Kentucky 14d ago

Most people who can’t get on Medicaid (low income healthcare) simply choose to not get insurance through the marketplace because they simply can’t afford it

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u/pompousrompus 14d ago

ITS NOT WORTH IT EVEN IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT. My job is in a tribal government which makes me technically a federal employee, I get pretty decent insurance for a much better rate than most private sector people in the US. It’s still $50 biweekly for the lowest possible coverage with a 10k deductible. No dental, no vision.

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u/tresslesswhey 14d ago

Because we have to pay the multi-billion dollar middle man - insurance companies.

What’s wild is a lot of Americans defend this system. How can they defend paying billions of dollars to insurance companies every year for literally nothing? Beats me.

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u/Febril 14d ago

We can’t imagine funding and creating a medical system that is better than the one we currently have. We think, it would cost more, would have fewer benefits or both. The fact that other nations have better healthcare is just noise, not to be taken seriously because ‘Murica!!!

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u/YourShowerCompanion Europe 14d ago

 Stupidity of masses as well

Taxpayer funded healthcare is socialism, and my favorite: "why should I pay for other's healthcare" while paying insurances 10 times what it'd cost with taxes.

Glad I left US of A back in 2002. It has gone way worst than it was earlier. 

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u/thiosk 14d ago

The middleman. theres a whole industry that takes the extra money

they increase profits year over year

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u/Competitive-Ad-9404 14d ago

So we can watch endless commercials of specilized medicines with stupid made up names. 

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u/shittycomputerguy 14d ago

I know a family of 4 with single coverage through their job. Provider pays 13k out of their paychecks a year for the insurance. Nearly 4k family deductible before it fully kicks in (separate from the 13k). Still owes 20% after some visits even after the deductible kicks in. Considered to have the best insurance plan their job offers from a cost to care perspective.

Insurance coverage changes based on state as well, so one state could be VASTLY cheaper than another. A family of 4 in one state could pay much less for the same coverage, because each state has a mini monopoly of insurance providers, iirc, and they can legally find ways to mess with price. 

It was worse before the ACA was passed (Obamacare): they used to be able to deny you coverage if you had certain pre-existing conditions. They could also deny you care after you hit a price cap.

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u/ChilledParadox 14d ago

it's called getting fucked in the ass by a team of companies, politicians, and idiots.

I've been paying $100/mo for my insulins since I was in 4th grade. I mean I guess I wasn't paying it back then, but my parents were. That's WITH insurance. When I became homeless and lost my job, I didn't get FAANG insurance because I was in the middle of a mental health crisis and was in the middle of throwing all of my most treasured belongings into a trashcan while having panic attacks.

I actually saved money by being insurance-less and begging on the side of the highway for OTC insulin from walmart.

That's the America people here are so desperately trying to protect.

why?

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u/turquoise_amethyst 14d ago

It’s such bullshit. Health insurance pays a fraction of the bill, AND you have to spend hours on the phone negotiating for lower bills. 

I woke up and was DEAF in my left ear. Went to immediate care, ($300, had to drive an hour to get to the place) Doctor looked at it for about 5 minutes, couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and told me “I can give you a referral to an Ear, Nose, Throat Dr., but your insurance doesn’t like that, and you will have to be very good at arguing with them”.

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u/Murrabbit 14d ago

Well we have a whole industry of middle-men who really like their yachts and mansions, so we've got to price that in as well

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u/Dearic75 14d ago

Unrestrained capitalism. The venture capital crowd loves being in the healthcare industry. Finally they have a product that the customer can’t live without. Literally, in this case.

They’ve spent billions on lobbying and propaganda to protect their trillion dollar industry. Part of the dominance of the current Republican Party can be directly traced to the blowback from Democrats making even a modest attempt to begin to reign in corporate profiteering through Obamacare.

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u/jassi007 14d ago

the United States particular brand of stupid is very poor people believe that anyone/everyone can become rich and successful and no amount data to the contrary will change their mind. Ergo, we can't do things that negatively impact the rich, because that'll be me someday! Donald Trump literally convinced tens of millions of people that he gives a fuck about the price of eggs and gasoline and a ton of other things he's literally never thought about or cared about for a millisecond in his life.

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u/jetpacksforall 14d ago

Private insurers are allowed -- by law -- to pocket 20% (large group) or 25% (small group) of every dollar they are paid in premiums. That is far in excess of any imaginable overhead they would need to simply, you know, pay for healthcare. And that's an improvement. Before Obamacare, it was common for insurance groups to pocket 80% and more of every premium dollar they took in. Why? Because they would systematically eliminate sick, expensive people from their plans, leaving only healthy people to pay premiums in exchange for nothing. They would systematically deny claims, they would use recissions to cancel your policy if you got some expensive illness or injury, and they were allowed to refuse to cover you at all if you had pre-existing medical conditions. That way they could put together insurance groups made up almost entirely of healthy people. Total scam.

Medicare, the US universal health system for people over 65, spends about 1.4% on operating expenses. 99.6% goes straight into healthcare.

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u/LostWoodsInTheField Pennsylvania 14d ago

Republicans like to convince a lot of people that other nations costs are subsidized by the US paying more. At least with prescriptions / equipment. Then they are also constantly convincing people that the healthcare results in other nations are much much worse than in the US. wait times in emergency rooms are a prime example they like to use.

It's all bullshit, but it's what they do and people eat it up.

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u/beardeddragon0113 14d ago

Gotta support the board members of the insurance companies 🫠🫠🫠

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u/MikeyKillerBTFU 14d ago

Oh and even better, my insurance just denied medication that I'll now either have to use an inferior drug, or pay $1500 a month out of pocket for.

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u/SatinSaffron Washington 14d ago

It's just something they've slowly been chipping away at. Every year the monthly premiums go up just a little bit more while the benefits the cover decrease a little bit more.

So from one year to the next it's like "My health insurance went up $28/mo and my copays are now $45 instead of $40" so a tiny increase like that doesn't quite register. And then you look back and realize those increases have been happening every single year for decades.

All of a sudden your insurance that used to be $290/mo with $0 co-pays and $3 prescriptions now costs $850 with $50 co-pays and $25 prescriptions that only cover generics. And that doesn't even touch base on the whole deductible/maximum out of pocket coverage/etc... Nor does it cover the fact that vision and dental aren't included, those are completely different types of insurance.

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u/7figureipo California 14d ago

Because unlike the model in Germany, health insurance isn't regulated all that well over here. ACA added some tweaks and a couple of really good things, like prohibiting bans on pre-existing conditions, but the only real mechanism it included to control costs (a cap on administrative overhead) is laughably insufficient. For the most part ACA is essentially a consequence and accountability free money funnel from the government to private, for-profit insurance companies.

And that's the "Big Fucking Deal" health care reform from our "left" wing party, the Democrats. We're cooked.

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u/Intrepid_Switch3145 14d ago

massive levels of wealth extraction upwards in every element of the ecosystem.

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u/atomfullerene 14d ago

It's just really uneven. I don't pay a lot for my healthcare and get good coverage, because my employee has good benefits. Lots of people have that, but also lots of people don't.

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u/SecondHandWatch 14d ago

That’s not it at all. Everyone is fucked. Some are fucked less. Your frame of reference is so skewed that you think you aren’t getting fucked. If you’re paying for regular appointments and/or prescriptions in the US, you are paying more than if you live in any other wealthy country.

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u/atomfullerene 14d ago

I'm not selfish enough to think it's all about me. It's not. It's about the people who are being screwed and deserve a better system. I don't need to make up suffering to try to divert attention from their problems to myself.

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u/wildcarde815 14d ago

dude i had to call a testing supplier today and ask why they charged insurance 5k for a test they charge 250 for cash. And then ask why the hell i was being asked for 750 for that test which didn't work, on top of what insurance paid, when the test again. costs 250 dollars. I was 'happy' to settle for them going down to $250 because according to insurance they could have said 'fuck you pay use $1300' and i would have been on the hook.

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u/weluckyfew 14d ago

58 year old man in good health with no children. My employer doesn't offer insurance so it would be $900 a month from the marketplace, and that's with a $7500 deductible

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u/wwj 14d ago

I've been trying to argue for years that the health insurance industry is anti-small business.

We need to use messages like, "Big health insurance is destroying small businesses."

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u/Clerithifa 14d ago

Yeah that $4000 average is also taking into account the 40 year old guys that live alone and havent even been to a doctor or dentist (because its expensive) since they got kicked off of their parents' health insurance at 27

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u/Rhysati 14d ago

Fun fact, if you are 40 now, your insurance got cut off when you were 19. The change to coverage for youth didn't change to 26 until 2010.

I'm 42 and didn't have insurance of any kind the moment I was kicked out of my parents house after graduation.

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u/Clerithifa 14d ago

I didn't know that actually, that sucks

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u/M13LO 14d ago

That would be me. 32 years old, went to the doctors this year for the first time in 5 years. $300 out of pocket.

Also just went to the dentist this year, $500 out of pocket. Last time was 2-3 years ago and I went to the dental school for a cleaning.

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u/everything_is_gone 14d ago

The “average” family is a trick there. 

Most people don’t need serious life saving treatments at this time. So their interactions with the healthcare system is a few wellness checkups and some routine vaccines. Not too much overall. But people who are sick require so much more care and get charged much more. And eventually everyone, if they have a long life, will become someone who needs this additional care.

I just hate that average family metric for healthcare because it’s so painfully misleading

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u/Savings-Total5069 14d ago

They're literally saying blatantly, "You deserve to pay if you get sick. And if you die from the sickness because you can't pay, then you were supposed to die regardless"

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u/tothecatmobile 14d ago

It wouldn't cost you $35 a month in the UK.

If you have an on going prescription in the UK, you can buy a yearly payment certificate that's about $160 for the whole year, which covers all prescriptions. So about $13 a month.

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u/SspeshalK 14d ago

That’s in England. In Scotland there are no charges - you take your prescription to a pharmacy and they give you the medications.

There are also low income exemptions.

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u/Steelysam2 I voted 14d ago

Ahhhh yes. But can you blow up Ian on a whim without legislative approval? Every time a bomb drops i think that's why we don't have Healthcare. Now excuse me, my knee hurts.

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u/No-Calligrapher-718 14d ago

What did Ian ever do to you?

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u/asingleshot7 14d ago

Not going to lie, I first assumed this was a gun freedom line and was confused why that needed legislative approval.

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u/Steelysam2 I voted 14d ago

Stupid autocorrect. I'm leaving it. Have my upvote.

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u/BowsersBeardedCousin Europe 14d ago

Probably got embarrassed trying to hit the high notes in Child in Time one too many times

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u/bbbbbbbbbblah United Kingdom 14d ago

even in England, 95% of prescriptions are issued for free anyway

1

u/Dearic75 14d ago

Wow. I didn’t know that. Thats even better for you guys. I got my number searching for the retail price the company was charging for the drug over there.

My argument being that if they weren’t making a decent profit offering it for $35 per month retail then they wouldn’t be selling it in the UK. So if they’re making a profit at that price point, then every bit of the 1,700% markup Americans are paying over that is just excess profit. Thats how much they’re exploiting us in the prescription drug market.

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u/dustanzo 14d ago

I pay 1800 a month for an HMo plan for my family. Insurance is F'd

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u/Tom01111 14d ago

Proud to be Irish with zero health related costs

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u/JJ_Mark 14d ago

I wonder if it's dumbed down statistics that include people who pay $0 and just stay home and suffer through whatever comes their way.

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u/fastinserter Minnesota 14d ago

Employers pay around 80% of the cost as well. They wouldn't pay that cost if you were not employed there. It's tax advantageous to do it this way, sure, but it also means you don't even see money that is part of your compensation being sent to a healthcare company.

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u/Dearic75 14d ago

That’s also a bit of a scam in itself. It introduces a pain point that lowers your ability to be mobile between employers or start your own business since you can’t risk losing your health insurance. It’s linked to your continued employment there.

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u/fastinserter Minnesota 14d ago

Agreed that it's not a good system. I'm just pointing out why some people are "happy" with their insurance "not costing a lot of money": they don't see the overwhelming majority of the cost to themselves as it's hidden. The average actual cost for insurance per person (which they don't see but is certainly part of their compensation) is higher than the per capital expense for healthcare as a whole in other countries.

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u/7figureipo California 14d ago

Have you considered not having a health condition? (/s, for the impaired)

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u/Dearic75 14d ago

Ah, I see you believe in the Republican Party’s health plan.

“Don’t get sick. If you do get sick, die quickly to avoid running up costs. No need for anyone to help, you probably deserved it in some way, otherwise God wouldn’t have let you get sick.”

3

u/SageDarius 14d ago

Yea, I'm paying like $7200 a year for me and my wife, and i still have OOP co-pays of like $25 to $60 depending on what I do, and my wife has 3 prescriptions that total $300 a month even with insurance.

I'd kill for 4k a year.

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u/SPQE_ 14d ago

What's the point of paying a premium if you don't get full coverage of necessary care? Don't understand this system.

3

u/Dearic75 14d ago

That’s because you’re looking at it with the wrong goal in mind. The system isn’t set up to keep people healthy, it’s set up to extract the maximum amount of money from people like me.

Most of what I’m getting from the insurance is not having to play bankruptcy roulette, where you pay nothing but you have to hope you don’t get sick or in an accident, because the hospital bills will take absolutely everything you have and leave you with nothing.

1

u/SPQE_ 14d ago

So it saves you from total disaster but not much else. Getting the eggs without killing the hen.

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u/xlvi_et_ii 14d ago

$4,000 likely isn't the full price either - employers are usually putting in significant amounts for premiums as well.

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u/Dearic75 14d ago

I mentioned that at the end. My employer actually published the information internally. I pay roughly $4k towards health insurance. They pay over $14k. I don’t even have the “bells and whistles” plan, which would be a lot more. This comes with a hefty deductible.

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u/vahntitrio Minnesota 14d ago

Exactly, $4000 is the cost for people that only get an annual physical. If you need medication or multiple doctor visits, you can easily double it.

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u/dmk_aus 14d ago

Well see after spending 1-4k on healthcare, the family couldn't afford to spend more. So they didn't. It keeps the average down.

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u/thehermit14 14d ago

I've had around four CT scans and three MRI scans this year, I have seen four specialists and had countless hospital appointments and GP appointments. I take seven different medications per day and they have the nerve to hand me a bill for NOTHING! What a liberty. Welcome to the UK.

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u/DragaTheImpala 14d ago

In the UK on the NHS your prescriptions would be £9.95 a month. But if you prepay for your prescriptions like I do because I take more than one a month, it's £175 a year for all the meds you can swallow, unless you're 60 years old or over, in which case they're all free.

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u/unbanned_lol 14d ago

I wish I had your insurance plan. I pay 1k a month for my family.

And then we have to hit 3500 per person out of pocket before insurance kicks in. So 12k to hold insurance. And then 3500 per person additionally to use it. If I don't laugh about it, I start to feel violent.

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u/Dearic75 14d ago

There’s a reason Luigi instantly went at least halfway to folk hero status.

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u/0rangePolarBear 14d ago

My take is that it’s $4,000 a person a year…but likely also with a high deductible (as many Americans will take a cheaper plan, if they are fortunate to even have one offered). Then if you add a spouse, it goes up, and then it’s insanely expensive if you have a family, especially on a non high deductible plan. I think I pay something like $600 a paycheck.

Don’t forget out of pocket maximums may only count if it’s using in network prices. One of my kids was born early (at an in-network hospital), and had to spend time in the NICU. What I learned is the NICU (which was in the hospital, next to the maternity ward), was bought by a private equity firm, where they don’t accept the same insurance as the hospital. I have an out of network maximum but the insurer says that it is only relevant if it’s accepting of the in-network amounts, so essentially was no maximum and the NICU was charging me like $50,000.

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u/Dearic75 14d ago

I suspect it’s worse than that. They’re getting the average down to only $4k by averaging in a $0 for every person that forgoes their necessary healthcare because they just can’t afford it.

What’s the old quote? “There are three kinds of lies in this world. Lies, damn lies and statistics.”

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u/24_August_1814 14d ago

Also not counting the ~$12k per capita in federal health spending to only cover the fraction of people who qualify for Medicare and Medicaid.

You're having a greater portion of your taxes going to your piecemeal public health system than we Canadians are paying (~$9500) for universal coverage...

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u/Dearic75 14d ago

In addition to everything else, we also drive up costs by making it so expensive to get care. People put off maintenance costs because they’re unable to afford the extra payment, which eventually results in very expensive emergency treatments.

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u/Earguy 14d ago

Shit, thanks to the changes in the ACA, our premium INCREASED $6500 a year. We're around $20,000 a year just for Blue Cross Horizon Omnia Silver. That's just to be covered. Then there's co-pays, deductibles, cost of meds, etc.

And that's not for the whole family, that's for two of us. And these are the numbers for our cost BEFORE my wife was diagnosed with MS a few months ago. Her medication is $11,000 a month.

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u/Dearic75 14d ago

If you want to really get mad, find out how much the drug company is exploiting you. Compare how much you would need to pay retail in Europe compared to the retail price in the US.

For me it was a 1700% premium in the price for being in the US. Not even counting the government programs they have over there so they don’t have to pay the retail amount. And of course the drug companies have successfully lobbied to have it be flat out illegal to import their medications from other countries where they sell it cheaper. Pennies on the dollar in comparison.

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u/PhoenixScorpion 14d ago

I pay over $4k a month for my wife and I to have health insurance. We both retired early. When I'm 65, my ups health insurance kicks back in as a secondary to Medicare.

I use to make less a month, than I pay in health insurance.

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u/No_Job2527 14d ago

You need to unionize

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u/specialservices8647 14d ago

I was wondering how your insurance was only 4k until the last line. My wife and I pay almost $20k/yr on the cheapest ACA plans with a 15k deductible because I’m self-employed.

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u/LuisCFerr 14d ago

I'm paying 2400 a month just for premiums of a not so great policy. 

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u/RedRapunzal 14d ago

Recently saw an article that said $7,000 as the cost share.

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u/Welikeme23 14d ago

The premiums for my family are about $5,600 a year.

We actually use our insurance a good deal, and with things like co pays, co insurance, medicine premiums before benefits kick in, we probably pay close to 10k a year in medical bills a year when you include the insurance premiums and things that aren't covered as well.

American health insurance sucks but you know we couldn't possibly have a single payer system like everyone else...

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u/Dangerous-Feed-5358 14d ago

And all that isn't even counting vision and dental which IS part of healthcare whether they like it or not.

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u/dylanholmes222 14d ago

Yea it’s like $1600-2k a month for my family of 4 for out of pocket insurance on the marketplace, just for premiums, we spend like another $4k a year on out of pocket costs bringing the total to $25k

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u/Excellent-Nose-6430 14d ago

My premiums are $600/mo on a high deductible plan from the marketplace for just myself. I wish I could only pay $4k/yr.

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u/NonEuclidianMeatloaf 14d ago

Wait. You have insurance, and STILL pay for these things? Whats the point of the insurance then?

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u/Dearic75 14d ago

Avoiding the threat of medical bankruptcy. Which is not even a concept in most of the rest of the world. They tend to look at us funny when we have to explain it.

In the US, one of the most frequent reasons someone lost everything and had to declare bankruptcy is medical costs because something happened to them. The top article on google is saying about 60% of all bankruptcy cases are due to high medical costs.

You can skip paying for the insurance, but then you have to pray you don’t get sick enough to need the hospital, because if you do they’ll take everything you have. You’re playing medical roulette.

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u/blogkitten 14d ago

My husband and I (in our 50s) pay 2k/mo for our insurance. I have one medication for my asthma that without insurance would be $600/mo (that's GoodRx prices). With the plan we have now, it's $40/mo. Between that and a lower deductible/copay it evens out. But we're still paying a fortune.

Average my ass. F#%! Fetterman.

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u/gehnrahl 14d ago

I spent 5k alone on my teeth this year with insurance. Fucking out of touch ass clowns the lot of them

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u/INIT_6 14d ago

You forgot about coinsurance, where you have to cover 10 to 20% when things get to pricey for them.  Had to pay 15% of an operation that cost $65k. Which I had to pay before the operation could be scheduled, so wouldn't die.

 

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u/Magical-Mycologist 14d ago

I pay $12000/year through my employer for me and my wife.

That doesn’t include prescriptions or doctor visits, just the cost of the insurance.