this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
789 points (96.7% liked)

News

23408 readers
5323 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

American taxpayers footed the bill for at least $1.8 trillion in federal and state health care expenditures in 2022 — about 41% of the nearly $4.5 trillion in both public and private health care spending the U.S. recorded last year, according to the annual report released last week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

On top of that $1.8 trillion, third-party programs, which are often government-funded, and public health programs accounted for another $600 billion in spending.

This means the U.S. government spent more on health care last year than the governments of Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Austria, and France combined spent to provide universal health care coverage to the whole of their population (335 million in total), which is comparable in size to the U.S. population of 331 million.

Between direct public spending and compulsory, tax-driven insurance programs, Germany spent about $380 billion in health care in 2022; France spent around $300 billion, and so did the U.K.; Italy, $147 billion; Spain, $105 billion; and Austria, $43 billion. The total, $1.2 trillion, is about two-thirds of what the U.S. government spent without offering all of its citizens the option of forgoing private insurance.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Stupidmanager 97 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I feel vindicated. Not 15 days ago I complained about paying more in taxes AND health insurance. And I’ve been saying it for over a decade. Fuck private healthcare, it serves no purpose for the people.

https://lemmy.world/comment/5808789

[–] SupraMario 36 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Yep, this is why I argue with people who say, we should raise taxes to fund it....no fuck that, we can afford it now already without having to raise taxes even a penny.

[–] Synthead 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

We would save a significant amount of money. And private insurance almost always doesn't provide good healthcare. Imagine no copays or deductables.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Imagine not having to argue with a massive corporation about whether you should be able to take the medication your doctor told you to take.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Imagine not having to choose between taking your kid to the doctor for $300 and a sick note for sniffles or letting him tough it out and get marked truant.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I have to say, being on Medicaid through college showed just how true this is. Being able to put my health first, rather than worry about if I could afford a doctor visit (or an ER visit), was great. The peace of mind of knowing that I would pay $0 for ANYTHING medical lead to me putting my health first.

The one potential charge you could get was for going to the ER for something deemed a "non-emergency." Even then I didn't worry about whether I could go to the ER after whiffing it off my longboard and smacking my head into the pavement because... well, the non-emergency charge was $8.

[–] chitak166 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This was very eye-opening for me as an American into the world of public healthcare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1TaL7OhveM

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Yeah that's pretty informative. I am not sure how well the recommendation for implementing it in the US would work though. It's probably the best chance anyone in the US has for government funded healthcare, but it would mean people in the poorest states would get the worst healthcare. It would probably still be a step up and we could give solutions to that problem later.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Private health care is literal vampirism.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Benefiting from the ill health and suffering of others? Yeah that sounds right

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Year over year my insurance at huge companies would get both worse and costlier. It was to the point that the insurance that was costing me $200/mo was literally just acting as a safeguard against something costing me $10,000- which would have financially ruined anybody at those jobs anyway