[morsma]

For me it's the opposite. I moved from Denmark to the US, and I pay around $400 in health insurance premiums (health, eye, and dental) for a whole family. In Denmark, only health is covered, so for eye and dental many go out-of-country to get it cheap.

The US is much cheaper for all health insurances, except if your poor. Obama tried to fix that, but made it worse and more expensive for everyone (socialism).

[kradroy]

If you're employed and your employer is generous, then your insurance premiums can be inexpensive (low double digits per month if you're single, low triple digits if you have dependents) . My wild speculation is that most employers aren't as generous as they could be.

If you're "poor", insurance is actually cheap, because that's when you get public insurance. However, if you're just middle income, health care is a non-trivial portion of your income. One major health incident will bankrupt you and you're likely to become poor. But once you're poor, hey, you can get cheap health insurance.

The critical problem is that obtaining reasonable health insurance requires you to be employed full time at a large company. This must stop. Obamacare was a first step toward cutting the employer out of the picture.

[rxhernandez]

When I made less than $30k/year in Los Angeles and had Obamacare, I was paying $144/month to see a nurse associated with a second rate doctor (I also went to a couple urgent care facilities with nearly the same level of quality). The wait times were an average of two hours and I paid at least $75 /visit without any real resolution to my allergy problems. I probably had 10 visits without that needed resolution.

When I became a salaried employee in the Bay area I went to an urgent care recommended by Cigna and my allergy problems were resolved inside of 15 minutes with a $20 copay.

Obamacare is anything but cheap when you are poor.

[apercu]

"Obama" care is a far cry from single payer.

[mjevans]

The last step is a full-coverage default public option, paid for out of taxes. Enough to eliminate the billing departments outside of actual luxury medicine.

As far as cost controls/etc, set by something like a dutch auction within a given metro area, and then some bean counter will get to figure out if it's cost effective to ship people that are outside of metro areas in to them to provide non-urgent care.

[Tsubasachan]

Yeah I don't know how it is in the US but in my country everyone is employed on a temporary basis. The days of actually getting a stable job for life are long gone. Getting a two year contract is the best you can get.

[droithomme]

> I pay around $400 in health insurance premiums (health, eye, and dental) for a whole family

I would love to pay $400 a month for health care for my entire family all inclusive in the US! Can you please state the name of your insurance company and your specific policy so I can get this too? My rate is over $20,000 a year right now so that would be a tremendous savings. Thank you so much!

[ceejayoz]

> I moved from Denmark to the US, and I pay around $400 in health insurance premiums (health, eye, and dental) for a whole family.

My health alone is $2,100/month for a family of four. I suspect your employer is paying a large portion of your premiums as a benefit.

This is quite common in the US, and a significant portion of the problem, as people think they're getting great insurance "cheap". They're not - it's just being paid in a way that's not visible. As a result, any discussion of "it'd be cheap to implement national healthcare, it'd only cost $X" is met with "but I pay peanuts for mine now!"

[Gibbon1]

I've noticed that a lot of employers don't tell workers how much they are paying for health insurance. Because for large companies the number gets rolled into a negociated contract.

In my case I do know. My employer pays $930 some a month. My rent used to be $860/month.

The other thing the happens is just because you have insurance doesn't mean that healthcare providers aren't trying to jack more money out of you. Any procedure/service will be up coded to increase your out of pocket share.

[lotsofpulp]

Employer’s share of premium is on your W-2 tax forms, box 12 code DD.

https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/form-w-2-reporting-o...

[cozzyd]

Yeah I only pay like 20% of the cost of the premium for my plan for my wife and I. Which means the actual premium is over $1k a month... yikes. At least the deductible is only a few hundred dollars...

[Bombthecat]

What the...? Almost a thousend a month? That's 12k a year, just paid by employers. Where is the money going?

[ceejayoz]

To the USA's $9.5k/year per-capital healthcare spending.

Did my taxes and my family of four was well past the $30k mark for insurance, copays, dental, and optical this year.

[b_t_s]

Ha, that's cheap. Last time I checked the medical system gets over 20 grand a year from me(some via my employer). Works out to like 4 to 7 grand a visit, and that's mostly routine checkups/vaccinations for my kid. There's a reason doctors and medical/insurance execs are so wealthy.

[fucking_tragedy]

Employers can also negotiate for group rates that someone buying insurance on the individual market won't have access to.

Not only do employers pay for a portion of employee healthcare costs, they also get better coverage for less.

[jimbokun]

According to the article, workers in Denmark see 26.7% of compensation go to "compulsory payments" including taxes and health care. Workers in US pay 43.2%.

Why should I trust your figures over the article? Are you including the "employer contribution" toward your taxes and health care premiums?

[unreal37]

Yeah, that's the thing. The true cost is somewhat hidden because of the employer part of the premium. And the costs you pay out of pocket when an actual health event happens.

I imagine you can still pay $1000+ out of pocket to have a baby in a US hospital, even if you have great insurance.

Also, the article talks "average", while I imagine US health costs are highly variable depending on whether you are young, old, smoker, non-smoker, fat, skinny, pre-existing conditions, etc...

Some people pay $1500 per month in health care. And some, $400.

[fisherjeff]

> I imagine you can still pay $1000+ out of pocket to have a baby in a US hospital, even if you have great insurance.

I just got that bill, in fact, and we have about the lowest deductible insurance you can buy, at a cost of about $1500/month. It was still $6500.

[oneguynick]

Can confirm the same in NYC. NYU Hospital with nothing fancy other than delivery of a beautiful Daughter. We had to go back due to some Jaundice but were told to visit NYPH for this instead. I imagine we will be well north of 9000 USD when all is said and done.

[rayiner]

Note the figure in the article does not include income taxes, but rather only labor taxes and compulsory payments.

[mschuetz]

Did you check your employers contribution? Because at my US job, I paid around 340$ to insurance but the employer matched it with another 340$ to insurance, so insurance was actually 680$/month. A ridiculously bad deal considering there were still deductibles/out of pocket of a few thousand dollars and some differences based on whether I get in-network or out-of-network treatment.

> In Denmark, only health is covered, so for eye and dental many go out-of-country to get it cheap.

That kinda sucks for Denmark. In Austria, everything is included in the 7.5% that health insurance costs.

[readittwice]

Well, in Austria there are a lot of people going to the dentist to Hungary as well because it's cheaper. The situation is a bit more subtle than you pretend it is.

Health insurance typically only covers the minimum at the dentist, and almost nothing of what is considered "cosmetic" or would be good in the long-run (e.g. oral hygiene, braces). It gets expensive quite fast.

[jnbiche]

If you're poor in the US, insurance is free. It's the lower middle class and middle class who are frequently bankrupted by these costs.

[fucking_tragedy]

> If you're poor in the US, insurance is free

Depends on if the individual's state accepted Medicaid expansion funds from the federal government (states like Texas and Florida haven't) and whether the individual makes less than ~$16.5k/yr.

I wouldn't call either $0k/yr in North Carolina, or $17k/yr in New York, lower middle class. Neither of those incomes in those places would give an individual access to Medicaid.

[greedo]

Assuming you can find a doctor taking new Medicaid patients.

[Spooky23]

Hahaha. Sure.

Good luck finding a Medicaid provider.

[jnbiche]

Every doctor I see is a Medicaid provider. Yes, there are doctor who don't accept it, but it's not hard where I'm from to find a doctor who does (perhaps we have an oversupply of doctors?).

[ceejayoz]

"Medicaid provider" and "Medicaid provider taking new patients" are not the same thing. They'll usually set a maximum number of Medicaid patients for the practice, and there'll be a long waiting list for that.

[lucian1900]

Can you imagine someone thinking that Obama, a neoliberal imperialist, was a socialist?

Or that socialism is a bad thing?