I had a max out of network out of pocket of $5k and insurance told me after my surgery that it didn't count because they didn't have a contract with where I went. So basically they needed to be in network to count towards out of network? $28k later they said they miscalculated and I owed another $14k I told them I'm living in a different country now so try and get it and they dropped the extra amount

I'm not from the US. Do you know how much of your income tax goes to the health care system?

I live in the Netherlands and we actually have a pretty weird system of private insurance companies, but they're not allowed to make a profit and it's mandatory to have insurance. Anyway, my partner and I together pay about €300 per month, which actually doubled is about what you pay for 4 people (though for kids here it's free).

Copay is not a thing here. The legal minimum deductible is €385 per year. You can raise it to max €885 and then you pay less for insurance every month. I have the max deductible, my partner has the lowest.

$4500 seems like an insane amount! I have never reached that or even gotten close. The government here sets the limit for deductibles and that's always a big political discussion. There's some talks now of removing the deductible altogether, though that would mean raising taxes elsewhere.

How do deductibles even work in the US? I had my appendix removed and here you then never pay anything because it's like a life threatening thing. I think you do pay for things like medicine and the ambulance ride until you reach your deductible, but for things like going to the GP or life saving surgery it's just covered.

And here if you're not working or earn less than certain thresholds it becomes cheaper or free. But isn't that similar in the US, like medicaid or something?

I pay quite a lot of income tax too of course which also partially goes to the health care system. I think it's actually quite expensive here for people who have a reasonable income. If you don't earn anything it's mostly free but you still have plenty of health related costs like the deductible but also stuff that isn't automatically included with insurance like dental care.

Last question: what do you mean by "max out of pocket $15000"? Is that like your combined max deductible for your family?

Who do you have? I pay that much for just myself in FL marketplace (bronze plan, high deductible)

as a single person no, but if you earn enough to pay that its feasible. also different insurance have different types of coverage. employee seems superior to individually bought plans(often dont cover much for major stuff like emergencies, or surgeries)

about 15+million and many more or underinsured. dental care is another problem too(only recently like in the last 7ish years they started covering for basic dental surgeries and partialy for major work(like root canals) and only for select dentists that actually accept medical, most dont.

As an also-Canadian I’ll chime in here to say that there are definitely people in this country without health insurance coverage. If you’re here as a non-resident, you typically don’t have government insurance and are subject to out-of-pocket billing. I believe there are about half a million people in Ontario in this situation, not sure about other provinces.

I know the OP was supposed to be rhetorical, and I agree that the American healthcare is an embarrassment — but the reality of healthcare administration is complicated, and I’m not sure dumbing it down like this is all that helpful.

Plenty are laughing and cheering at all the suffering because we "deserve it"

You see it plenty in comments here on lemmy.

Political reform is tough, no doubt but it can be done and has been elsewhere. Also no better time than the present while the worst problems are so clearly visible.

also theres a "limbo" in between medicaid and decent insurance, too much income for eligible medicaid insurance and not enough for decent insurance(enough where you do pay out the behind for emergencies, surgeries and hospitals, the largest cost)

What? Paying a mortgage payment monthly for the privilege of having a $10,000 deductible isn't good enough?

That should not be the message. Socialized health care is cheaper by far than the premium-on-health model that you're using in the United States.

It's the same argument that Republicans have been using to extract concessions from Canada and Europe: "look at these freeloaders, they won't pay their fair share for defense (read: they don't buy enough American weapons) and they use the money for socialized health care, we ought to teach them a lesson."

The truth is that defense or foreign aid isn't in the same league as health care. You're giving Israel about 7 billion a year, and don't get me wrong - that's a lot and you should stop it. But you're spending 5.3 trillion on health care. Meanwhile, the record-setting defense budget for 2026 is 718 billion - and interestingly the vast majority of that budget is actually socialized health care! It's 441 billion going to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

With socialized health care, you could pay a lot less. And I hope you'd use the money for literally anything other than war.

they get alot more from us than just military aid

loads and loads of tax breaks/special exceptions to make doing business with them more lucrative than anywhere else.

special exceptions that make it incredibly easy for them to tap into the wild west that is US financial markets etc.

Bro seeing Israel when they're not even in the post lol

UK, Germany, Canada and France have high homelessness rates. Partly because disability pay is low and healthcare costs are minimally made up for. Those in ill health may not be able to find work and land on the streets. These countries do nothing substantial like building housing and implementing pro-tenant reforms to stop it. This is not to say that healthcare is bad, I think healthcare must be socialised like postal services and the fire brigade, but it's not at all straight forward.

The Netherlands has a solution to that free-rider problem. You can "opt out" of healthcare, but if you do so, you must pay every month to a fund for yourself; and if you get injured, all costs are on you, unreimbursed. If it's empty, your problem.

So in practice, you're still required to be covered, but if you "opt out", all costs are on you. And you also will get lower priority in treatment compared to others that are normally covered. Last I recall there are very few people that do so.

They def are Republicans, we just call them RINOs because they're so far off the deep end that they lick the billionnaire's boots instead.