Sticker Shock

[Tchocky]

Similiar-ish here.
If you're on low income or over 70, or receiving welfare, you have a medical card, which means you don't pay medical bills. Doctor visits, drugs, hospital visits, everything free except dental care.
If you're above that threshold, you pay 66 euro per day of hospital stay, no more than 660 in a single year. The care received is free, you're paying for the space you take up, in a sense. Medication costs are your own responsibility, up to 90 per month, after that you qualify for funds.
Private health insurance covers about half the population, usual costs between 5-900 per year, with another third on the medical card.

Healthcare is improving after a log period of underinvestment and stagnation. Think were about halfway down the EU league table.

[clive bradbury]

Note that not everything is free on the NHS, though. You have to pay for prescriptions (although this is soon to change for patients with long-term illnesses), and a proportion towards dental care.

Obviously it is not perfect, as waiting lists can be long, especially for non-urgent cases. Support for serious conditions like cancer, though, is pretty rapid.

Of course for non-urgent stuff there is the private care option. There is also a rather dodgy word-around waiting lists, too. If you pay for a private initial consultation with a surgeon (most do both private and NHS work), which costs about £200, he will then do your operation on the NHS (for free), but bump you up his waiting list. Usually saves you several months of waiting for the sake of £200, which sounds pretty good to me, if a mite corrupt.

[UnderseaLcpl]

I'll stick with my company healthcare plan. $140 a month, $15 copay, price stays the same for an whether I get married or not, and no matter how many kids I might have.

Let's see the government top that!


It's pretty well-known that countries with socialized healthcare don't have the same quality that the U.S. does. Of course, the U.S. spends more on healthcare as a percentage of GNP than other countries do, but a large part of that is the state's fault. About $700 billion a year just for Medicare, Medicaid, and the related administrative and implementation costs.

That's not even counting how excessive "fairness" regulations on insurance companies drive up the costs. Many of those exsist only at the state level, but the Feds do their share. Things like mandatory enrollment of at-risk persons, price controls, policy restrictions and taxation all drive the costs up.

We wouldn't want the government involved in healthcare for the same reason they shouldn't be involved in the retirement system.
If the government were to step in and control the healthcare system, you can bet that in a few years it would end up looking like the social security system.

I wouldn't support mandatory health insurance either. For one thing, it will inevitably lead to the state controlling the healthcare system, and for another, it's none of their damn business.


We're not getting a lot for our 2 trillion dollar health and welfare budget right now, and I doubt we would do much better with a state system that would probably cost at least 3 times that much.


edit- I almost forgot, I hope you're doing well now Frame