Medical Insurance

[Angela Harlem]

I just cannot believe how much you guys have to pay. I'm gobsmacked.
We have Medicare here and that covers all your basic needs, not the cost of medication but doctors visits and a lot of procedures etc. Medicare doesn't help with any elective surgery or anything that has a waiting list. If you need a transplant for eg, you just gotta wait in line. We have private health cover and that sounds much the same as what you all have and if you choose that you gotta pay. Its a trade off. A lot of people still choose to have private cover which asks the question of whether government assisted medical cover is really better for some people. Obviously we have problems in ours that lead some people to make a choice to go private as they will never be in such a situation where either have to find a crap load of cash or pray if something serious pops up.
I gotta agree with both Danospano and bammo2, the taxes (here at least) dont seem as high as the premiums, but we pay one lot of income tax and that covers among other things Medicare. But we still whinge about our taxes. We forget how fortunate we are when we look at our payslips. We also dont think of all this when we wait 2 years for an operation that will quite probably save our lives. We however will never be turned away if we are laying dying in the emergency room because we dont have the right cover.
You guys dont even get a choice. Its terrible really.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

that is the one thing that pisses me off about america. someone less fortunate can be turned away from a hospital because they don't have medical insurance. if they don't want to reform the system, fine. make it up to each citizen to get it. but it's just so damn expensive to get third-party insurance, that unless you were going to have an operation, it'd make more sense to pay for your visits in full yourself, which most places won't even let you do anymore! i can understand why, but even my own general doctor won't accept anyone without insurance. he's been threatened with lawsuits in the past. someone without insurance comes in, and has something life threatening, say cancer. of course, they don't have the money to afford the treatments, so they die. the family tries to sue the doctor as if it's their fault!