this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
331 points (92.5% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35904 readers
1169 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I'd like to know other non-US citizen's opinions on your health care system are when you read a story like this. I know there are worse places in the world to receive health care, and better. What runs through your heads when you have a medical emergency?

A little background on my question:

My son was having trouble breathing after having a cold for a couple of days and we needed to stop and take the time to see if our insurance would be accepted at the closest emergency room so we didn't end up with a huge bill (like 2000$-5000$). This was a pretty involved ~10 minute process of logging into our insurance carrier, and unsuccessfully finding the answer there. Then calling the hospital and having them tell us to look it up by scrolling through some links using the local search tool on their website. This gave me some serious pause, what if it was a real emergency, like the kind where you have no time to call and see if the closest hospital takes your insurance.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works 6 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Everytime, I read a horror story about US healthcare, I am like can't be the norm, it should be a made up clickbait article based on an exception

Please US friends, tell me you have a decent coverage.

Moreover, everytime I read about before insurance prices it doesn't compute. How can an US doctor charge like 10 times the prices on our side of the pond ?

[–] FollyDolly@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It is the norm. I worked with a man who had seizeres and no health insurance. The first time he was introduced to me he said "Hi, I'm Tony. Listen, I have seizures. If I have one, DO NOT call an ambulance, no matter what. I can't afford it." He told us even if it looked like he was dying, to just let him go because he could never afford the bills if he lived.

This wasn't some crappy part time job, this was my first big girl real job after graduating college. Like welcome to adulthood, you might have to helplessly watch your coworker die at your place of employment!

[–] Kadaj21@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I pay about $220 every two weeks for my HSA “High Deductible” Plan. Twisted my ankle pretty bad last November and after a visit to the urgent care, 3 visits to a podiatrist including 2 x-rays, and the.a boot and a support wrap that were purchased with the HSA, my funds in it are now depleted and put my $600 bill on a payment plan. My wife had some extra dental visits that resulted in a root canal that wiped most of it.

I have no idea how we’re gonna pay if we have something else come up.

I make 2x the median income in my area. But between the bills, $600(!) credit card payment, student loans from 10 years ago that just don’t want to go away, I feel I’d have to find some way to add another multiplier to my income. And that’s not including worrying about my 16yo car or my wife’s 10yo one. Was hoping my promotion last year would have gave me enough leeway to replace mine, but too much debt.

[–] Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I pay about $220 every two weeks for my HSA “High Deductible” Plan

Which is actually not that much, based on my January payslip, 680 EUR have been removed from my paycheck to fund the government health/retirement/unemployment system (Which is based on my income, and I have a decent salary). There is also a part which is paid directly by the employer (and not visible on my payslip) so let's say 1000 EUR a month. However, I keep coverage if I loose my job, and my highest left to pay was around 70 EUR for some imaging test (If I remember well total cost of the scan was 700 EUR with a 10% copay, and to answer the other question, got an appointment within 2 weeks). Note that the coverage would be the same (but way cheaper) for a minimal wage worker, and that I could get a private insurance to cover the deductible.

US conservative are right when say that Universal healthcare is expensive but I am rather having 700 EUR out of my pay check every month and not worry about getting medical care when I need it.

[–] Kadaj21@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Yeah my employer luckily pays most of the premiums. If I lost my job and “had” to get COBRA, then what I’d have to pay would jump drastically to keep my employer based coverage or I could look at whats on the marketplace/exchange which would likely cover bare minimums, if it was even worth it at all.

It’d be worth considering dropping insurance altogether at that point as I would not have that kind of cash to continue insurance plan I’ve had.

I would rather pay higher taxes out of my paycheck if it meant EVERYONE could get healthcare, regardless if they had a job or were “legal”. Everyone’s gonna need it someday, no exceptions.

I try to vote for the candidates that have as close of values as I do, but realize not everyone running will be a 100% match.

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 4 points 9 months ago

How can an US doctor charge like 10 times the prices on our side of the pond ?

There's an unspoken assumption that when doctors quote a price, the insurance companies will widdle that down to a fraction of that amount when they pay out, so if a procedure actually costs $X.00, doctors will bill the insurance for $X * Y, so insurance actually ends up paying what it actually costs.

The side effect is that we pay co-pays or deductibles or non-100% coverage amounts based on what insurance was billed, not what the procedure actually cost. It's actually cheaper in some cases (especially with regards to medications) to not use insurance because then, we'll get billed what it actually cost, not the grossly inflated amount, and if our coverage is only, say, 50% for a given procedure, or if we have a co-pay on medication, we end up paying less. Meanwhile we're still paying the insurance companies for the coverage we're not taking advantage of. The whole system is fucked beyond belief. We know it, we just can't do anything about it.

"Vote for the politicians who want to fix it!" only works if they actually do want to fix it, and will follow through if elected.

[–] wellee@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

No, it's not clickbait, sorry :/ I just paid $800 for a mole removal ontop of my $150 monthly bill and premiums. Emergency care is scary expensive, and for the love of God don't use an ambulance.