Just so tired of almost every time a doctor submits stuff to insurance, we have to be the ones to make multiple phone calls to both the doctor’s office and insurance to iron everything out, figure out what the issue is (it’s always a different issue), and basically be the go-between for the office and insurance. What am I paying $500+/month for?! It’s like paying for the privilege of having an exhausting part-time job.
And yes, I understand that insurance wants to weasel out of paying anything, but this isn’t even shadiness, just straight up incompetence and lack of communication/following procedures. The amount of emotional energy we have to spend untangling this stuff leaves us drained.
Several decades ago in the USA, healthcare was affordable to working class people. It wasn’t cheap, but it was at least affordable to middle class people. It certainly wasn’t great even back then, because in my view healthcare is a basic human right. And poor people (especially minorities) had limited or no access. But even then, it was still better than the shit show we have today.
Anyway, what happened was some large corporations like IBM and others started offering an executive perk they called “major medical”. This was to help pay for expensive, unexpected medical expenses. It was a nice perk for the country club set. But like anything with money attached to it, some people got together and said, “Gentlemen, how can we weaponize this and take ALL the money?”
So, over time, it became the “standard practice” to tie your health insurance to your employer. This introduced a ton of friction into the system and created an entire ecosystem of rent-seekers who add no value to the patients or providers but charge a fee just because they exist.
Hmmh. I recently learned about that. Seems to be roughly 1980 (Reagan era?) when things started going really sideways and nowadays it’s just bad beyond words…
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_United_States
I’ve seen that graph before. One of the ways I interpret it is that as one ages we contribute less (money) to the system, mainly in taxes, SS, Medicare taxes. When we become old and retire we become a burden on the system that we’ve contributed for decades. The “system “ whoever that may be no longer cares about our health and longevity because they already have their money and the lower our life expectancy the less they have to pay out. Collect for decades only to pay out for a few years and we die up to a decade earlier than other countries on average.
I don’t think that’s what the graph shows at all. It shows what the average person spends on healthcare each year versus what they get out of it (life expectancy.)
It does so for several countries and shows how things changed over the last half a century. The steeper a line of a country is, the more the healthcare system and medicine has improved. The flatter a line is, the more money you’re pumping into the system for less benefit. And medicine should improve. We’ve made quite some progress since the 1970s and found cures to ilnesses that were a death sentence back then.
That people need more treatment if they’re old is a true fact. But it’s not really depicted in this graph. Sure it’s somewhere in the numbers but you’d need a different diagram for that. Keep in mind that also in the 1970s people grew older and there were old people around… People had grandmas back then. And also people nowadays are healthier for a longer period of time and also retire later. These things work against what demographics makes worse. But it also doesn’t cancel out each other. You’d need a more comprehensive study and more number to tell, not just speculation which is most certainly wrong.
But the mere fact that the line for the USA is such an outliar shows that there is something severely wrong with that healthcare system. And you can see when it started and that it steadily continues this way. Either you’re a different species and medicine works differently for US citizens than for Europeans, or you have severely unique circumstances in the country, or you’re just getting ripped off and some people get rich with the billions that don’t contribute towards health.
And that you someday retire and become a burden on the system is how it’s supposed to be. That’s why you paid all the money during the decades you worked, despite not being sick (yet.)
And there are some more pecularities in the graph. For example you can see that life expectancy is actually decreasing(!) in the last years. That could depict the drugs (Fentanyl deaths) and the rise of suicide in the last years. I’m not sure but these could be possible explanations. Also im Germany where I live mortality rises. Especially during the Covid years and somehow it affects people from the eastern parts of Germany more than people from the western part of the country. That’s all not in this graph however and the reasons are complex. I’m not sure what the cause is for the decline shortly before 2018. People speculate it’s influenza waves and things like that.
That graph is depressing and familiar. It’s insane how we think we’re “the greatest country” in the face of cold embarrassing facts.
That was the graph that opened my eyes a bit back in another discussion. I knew that people were dying in the States because they can’t afford insulin/medication/treatment. But I somehow thought they were at least paying less for healthcare and just poor and society didn’t care about people in need. But it’s way worse. They are dying 2 years earlier WHILE paying twice as much for healthcare. And ruined financially if anything happens to them or their loved ones.
And all of that is a scheme to rip off everyone. Sadly a quite successful scheme for decades already. I mean I’m really amazed by the extent. And I wonder if it were possible to adopt another style, give healthcare to everyone plus every citizen an additional $5.000 for free each year. I don’t really see that happening though. Every government in the past decades, no matter their color, has contributed to keep that graph going in this direction.
Edit: And I’d like to see that diagram for a few other countries. Not just against Europe, Japan, Australia, Israel and Korea.
A significant portion of our population is brainwashed into the idea that everything should be privatized for-profit. Even people who are profoundly harmed by this. They have been indoctrinated to despise and be revolted by socialized-anything.