FUCKING Health Insurance (USA)
 

The USA insurance companies, especially health insurance companies, are the biggest grift in history.

We are forced to update or choose health insurance over a 2 week period each year. This year, as every year, premiums went up 5%.

I did the math.

I pay $197 BIWEEKLY for my wife and I's health insurance. My employer pays $595 BIWEEKLY. That totlas over $20,000 a year oaid to the Health Insurance company for NOTHING AT ALL, merely to keep ups on retainer I guess.

Last year, my wife had a kidney stone. a 2hour ER visit, one X-Ray, and 5 minutes with a doctor that told us to just go home and take tylenol until it passed (my wife was in debilitating pain for days). We were billed the full amount of $14,500!!! The hospital (in-network) said our insurance did not cover anything of it (LIES). It took repeated back and forth between my wife and the Insuranc ecompany to have them pay their share, which still left my wife and I a $1200 bill for essentially, one x-ray.

FUCKING NIGHTMARE.

Th Dental Insurance we have only covers one xray a year. If you know ayone with any kind of dental issues, you know they require multiple xrays yearly.


In the USA it is ILLEGAL not to have health insurance.

They will fine you and take it out of your tax refund, if you get one.

dental insurance is optional but if you have a yearly cleanup etc you usually come ahead. i've had oral surgery with no insurance, it's cheap if you skip sedation. but even with insurance i don't need sedation.

health care otoh is a different beast, and those people generally are fuckers, but due to the high cost of health care it's suicidal not to have it. a lot can be done with preventive medicine but one mri or one surgery can cost tons and tons.

$20k for s couple break down to $10k/person/year which is a high average healthcare cost in developed countries but not out of this world. of course you still have to add copays and deductibles which i your wife's case was $1200 to total $11,200.

i will post you more useful info later but first let me comment that whenever possible try going to urgent care over er. if it's not a life and death thing, it's cheaper. the problem with the er is that it's priced for life and death (gunshots, heart attacks, strokes) so an aspirin with be like $200. whereas at the other end preventive stuff like annual visits, blood tests, etc or even video visits (usually a nurse practitioner) will be free at the point of service aka included in the price. but anyway urgent care costs some money but not as much as er. horrible choice to have to make i know but that's how it works. also likely why they saw her so quickly, car accidents and other wounded always pouring in on death's door.

finally your state is pretty horrible about obamacare implementation, which they're trying to destroy and sabotage at every turn.see: https://www.healthline.com/health-ne...k-of-insurance. you really live in a political hellhole.

the large number of uninsured raises prices for all. please don't take this as some asshole's opinion. here is an mit class about the economics of healtchare and it explains why it was meant to be mandatory not like it is now where a lot of people remain uninsured.

in switzerland if you have no health insurance i believe they throw you in jail for being a public burden. insurance there is all private, but very well regulated and subsidized by the state(s) (cantons).

anyway here you go:

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/14-01sc-...are-economics/

it's some mind blowing information. great 39m video is worth many rewatches. the guy explains the economic constraints so well. shit's real.

anyway glad to know you're all well in spite of the pain in the ass deductible. but i swear that video will be eye opening and explain how and why things work the way they do. watch it together and see what you think.

I'm gonna burn the whole thing down

give'em hell

Piece of shit Abbot 8 points above Beto right now according to FiveThirtyEight. :mad:

it's tejass

what did you expect?