This topic is very sensitive and there are a lot of different opinions on it from left to right and the truth as always is somewhere in the middle!.
To understand the difference between the American health care system compared to the one in Europe or even in Canada we need to dig down deep.
What has happened in America in the past 30 years time compared to Europe is that while the top tier healthcare in the US is world class and we find the top ranked hospitals in he US the overall healthcare has declined a lot in America while it has improved in Europe.
And in rural America it has never been as bad as it is right now in 2021.
In rural America the local pharmacy’s have to be nurse, doctor and pharmacist all in one.
And many pharmacy’s are now vaccinating people because of the lack of public health care in small towns.
So while Europe has something called universal healthcare(everybody is welcome, even if you can not pay) the cost in Europe is half of what it is in the US per patient.
Because in the US when you can not pay for healthcare and medicade does not cover you or you do not qualify for medicade, you wait until you end in the ER and the cost balloons on from there.
1/5 Americans have medicade and it covers the basic care needs, but not much more than that, and you need to qualify for it and many hard working Americans will not qualify for it, because you make more than the 1500 USD per month where it usually is capped, not always but in most cases.
So then you are in the hands of private health insurance providers, which has to be among the biggest scammers in the world today.
There are roughly 30 million Americans with no health insurance and another 80 million with some kind of basic coverage.
The big issue with the American health care system is that it is based on you being able to cover premiums on a monthly basis or you having an employer who will include that in your benefit package.
The problem with that is that many jobs do not offer any health care benefits, (dental, eye and other issues) that we all have a need for at one point or another during our life time.
So usually what happens is that if you get cancer and you need treatment and you have a health insurance who is supposed to cover that, what the insurance company usually does is that they want you to cover as much as possible from your own contribution(so called out of pocket) and they only want to cover small portions of your bills.
So when you hear people going bankrupt due to medical bills, this what they mean and this does not happen in Europe!, this is unheard of.
The insurance company makes money from paying out as little on claims as possible, and with healthcare the opportunity that the insurance companies use is the word (necessary treatment) so your cancer doctor can say that you need this drug or this treatment, but then the insurance companies in-house doctor says NO!.
They will say that it is not necesarry tratment and then you have to pay out of pocket if you want that treatment.
And this whole concept of insurance companies telling your doctor what treatment is necessary is just insane, when you think about it.
The American system has some very serious problems and one is that the drug cost is sometimes 10 times what it is in Europe or even in Canada for the exact samt drug from the exact same producer.
Take the insulin cost for instance in the US, which is 10 times higher than in Canada, from the same supplier.
And the same things for all the other drugs you need, they are often 10x to 100x in the US compared to Europe and Canada.
The next big problem in America is that many hospitals in the same area are owned by the same large cooperation.
They will then set their list prices on different treatments, and this then raises your health insurance costs.
Just that you can spend 30.000 dollars on having a baby in the US while you spend less than 300 dollars in Europe when you having a baby, says it all
This having a baby and being forced to pay one years salary for many workers says it all
So as a normal income earner you constantly having to choose between groceries or health insurance.
And you need groceries now, and you have to choose that option, but then when you need care you can not afford it!.
So you can dislike Bernie Sanders and AOC and shout socialists at them, but they are 100% right, the American health care system is broken, and it has been broken for a long time.
And the only way you start fixing the US health care system is that you put pressure on politicians to start building a health care system that cost the same as the European systems costs, which is around half of the US spending today.
Because ER care is so expensive and when people are not seeking out treament in time, the human cost and the financial cost becomes much higher than needed.
There has to be a government intervention towards drug manufactures, private hospital groups and insurance companies who all have to much power over us normal hard working citizens.
The America´s healthcare crisis is much deeper than you might think.
When we say deeper we means that there are serious underlying issues with inequality in the care that a person who makes 250.000 dollars a , and person who makes 25.000 dollar a year receives.
And this all very wrong, but very powerful lobby groups wants to keep things status Quo, and this is the big problem with trying to get politicians to do anything about this big problem.
So AOC and her age group will have to fix the broken system, Bernie is to old.
So what can you do from your end if you want to make sure that you have good health coverage for yourself and for your family?.
The American health care crisis will not go away anytime soon.
So either you can make enough money to pay for a 5 star health insurance, or/and you can have an employer who can pay for this in a form of a benefit for you as an employee.
So if you move to Europe and you land a job there, and you pay your taxes which will be pretty much the same as in the US, you will be fully covered and your family will be fully covered also.
And unfortunately there are no quick fixes to this American health care crisis.
One would still hope that the next generation understands that America has to learn from Europe when it comes to how you build a fully functioning health care system that is affordable for the state and for the individual.
And using that model is to be preferred, instead of this broken down model that everybody with a set of eyes will see and agree to is broken at the moment.
And non of this universal healthcare, will hinder private practices to succeed also in the future.
But you need to be able as a country to offer a decent healthcare system for regular hard working Americans , and letting insurance companies to play god is just insane!.
And Americans are dying left and right because they can not afford the right type of cancer treatment, because the insurance company says no.
So let us hope that the younger generation can push true a change in the American healthcare system before we lose any more lives because of greed and mismanagement.
And as always if you need advice, you can always become a client to Mrlifeadvise, see the link below here.
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Take care out there.
Mrlifeadvise.
