[throwaway0123_5]

> So like these are less serious issues if you are paid an extra $1-200k/ year

Ok but to be fair most people in the US aren't making "extra $1-200k / year" over a person in Europe. They aren't even making $100k / year to begin with.

[mothballed]

Almost 40% of the USA is on medicare, medicaid, or entitled to VA benefits or military healthcare. It's only a narrow majority that depends on unsubsidized private healthcare, and those people skew in the upper income levels.

[jkartchner]

You believe the top 60% of the nation skew in the upper income levels? Median pay is $61k a year for the entire country. The top 1% skews to the upper income levels. The rest are charged $30 for a dose of aspirin and can't afford it.

[tptacek]

There are numbers on this, and their comment is probably directionally correct; the median household with private insurance earns more than 400% of household FPL (KFF). By subtracting Medicaid and fixed-income seniors from the picture, you are sharply biasing the median upwards.

[gusgus01]

I would say if you ignore the poorest 40% of the population, you've got quite the slim margin to go before you are no longer talking about "Most" Americans, which the OP was pretty explicitly talking about.

He was saying "Most people in the US" don't make 100-200k more, and that they probably don't even make 100k. This was in response to the generalization that "people from other countries ... underestimate how well paid people in the US often are".

Now there was talk of getting the political motivation to change things, so I guess everyone is assuming Medicaid/Medicare/VA recipients don't want to change the system, but that wasn't really established, nor was that really being refuted.

[tptacek]

I don't think I could be any clearer that I am (1) talking about Americans with private health insurance and (2) not making a normative judgement about which system is better, but rather a positive claim about the political challenge of changing the system (its large group of stakeholders who are better off under it).

[gusgus01]

Oh I'm clear about the demographic you are trying to discuss, my point was I'm not sure this all stemmed from a discussion about that specific demographic. It started at "people in US", then went to "most", then by the time you got involved in the thread you were defending a statement about people with private health insurance.

I could have made this comment at the level where it went off the rails, but I thought making it at the leaf level would help everyone involved see the deviation between what was said and what was being argued.

[nxor]

People in the US can't afford aspirin? Where do you live? It's just not true

[sumeno]

They are referring to the price that hospitals charge for aspirin, which is massively inflated, not the off the shelf cost of aspirin

[tptacek]

Where in their comment do you see them referring to hospital care?

[DennisP]

The article, talking about a patient's hospital visit, mentions "the $31 low-dose aspirin, of which they'd given him four."

[GuinansEyebrows]

i think in this case, if you're at all familiar with what US hospitals charge for the small stuff, it's a safe assumption that when someone says aspirin costs $30 a dose, they're not talking about buying it at a CVS. of many folks on hacker news dot com i trust you to bridge that gap instead of nitpicking!

[sumeno]

I'm capable of understanding context.

[nosianu]

So what about this? It is a question, not meant as a counter.

Although I have to say the rosy picture some paint here about the high incomes is counter to anything I ever heard - and saw, although I left the US in the early 2000s, after having lived there for almost a decade (still mostly paid from Germany, never ready to make a complete move).

"Medical Bankruptcies by Country 2025"

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b...

"Healthcare Insights: How Medical Debt Is Crushing 100 Million Americans"

https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute/blog/john-au...

By the way, Europeans don't quite all have a "nationalized healthcare system". Germany, for example, has "Krankenkassen" but also private insurance, and the "Krankenkassen" are private organizations.

We pay health insurance and get to choose the provider, those with higher incomes can switch to complete private insurance. We also have lots of our own problems and increasing costs because of immigration but more so aging population.

However, I personally know several people who had severe illnesses for a long time, and their normal "Krankenkassen" insurance never made any problems. One person with plenty of money, whose wife was dying, even asked US medical experts if he should come to the US with her, and those US experts said he should stay where he is, the German univ3ersity hospital right next door had some of the leading therapies in the field. She lived five more years instead of dying after less than half a year with the standard therapy, every single expense paid for with the standard insurance, additional private insurance unnecessary. Similar with my stepfather, who had soooo many severe conditions, and yet every single item down to the special medical bed brought into our house so that he could finally die at home was paid without question.

The problems are with more mundane expenses, e.g. glasses, or the dentist, where only some of the treatments are covered. The really expensive illnesses seem to be better covered than the more common and much simpler problems.

[onli]

Careful there, thats a rightwing propaganda point. Immigration into an aging society does not raise healthcare costs, it lowers it. See https://archive.is/XxfTH (and note that this is a NZZ article, a right-wing publication by now, so not slanted towards being immigration friendly).

[nxor]

Are people ever allowed to criticize migration?

[epistasis]

Who's not being allowed to criticize immigration? Critique of a critique is pretty much the furthest thing from "disallowing" critique.

[bleepblap]

Sure, but it helps to not misrepresent the facts while you do it

[nosianu]

Misrepresenting???

The costs DID increase.

I did not try to make a political statement, what happened here, anyway???

I have no idea what there is to defend - even if you assume they will all get high-paying jobs some ay, for the first few years costs will increase while they either learn the language, are not allowed to work (status pending), or get minimum wage jobs (food delivery and parcel services at least in my city now is dominated by immigrants).

Even with your most positive outlook, initially there will be lots more people and the same system (number of doctors), and the numbers of payers increases slowly.

I even wrote "but more so aging population", conveniently overlooked in this strange politicized discussion.

I am NOT against immigration!!! Don't make stuff up people.

[yieldcrv]

And while European countries have various forms of nationalized welfare, their salaries are so low that they would be automatically eligible for the US' welfare too!

our blocs aren't that different

except in the US middle class and upper middle class

[fukka42]

It's hilariously out of touch, but it's what you should expect from the HN bros. They live in a bubble.

I'm from the eu and earn far less than these American techbros do, but far more than my American friends who work normal jobs. They work at the DMV, a supermarket, or general office work. You know, normal people. The vast majority.

[smaudet]

Yeah, just because the US has 300 billionaires that does not make the median salary anywhere near six figures.

In fact it's quite low, somehow people are expected to survive on several thousand a year, after the rent, utilities, transport costs are all paid.

https://www.fool.com/money/research/average-us-income/

These are official stats, but unofficial employment puts the number lower:

https://investorshangout.com/carlyle-group-unveils-alarming-...

[tptacek]

It helps to understand the difference between the mean and the median.

[georgeecollins]

I agree I am not in any way representative. But the forum is hacker news, not my day at WalMart.