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US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

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Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#371

Post by ajdlinux »

dboreham wrote: post #276
interpol_p wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An emergency room is a fairly regular visit if you are a parent. I have three young kids and all of them have been to emergency at least a few times — you'll call the government hotline, they'll tell you how urgent it sounds, then you go They don't want anyone to risk staying home with their child if there's a chance that they are in danger This is in Australia and there is no cost for this

I'd be careful you're talking about the same thing as a US ER because there are two other places you can take your kids in an "emergency" in the US that are not called ER: you can go to the kid's pediatrician who will have emergency appointments during roughly the same hours stored are open (e.g. Saturday and Sunday); and there are Urgent Care centers that are usually open late into the evening 7 days or possibly 7*2…

Can confirm in Australia "emergency" does mean the department with the giant red emergency sign at your local hospital.

We have late-night general practitioner services here (at least in the city), which I have used for less-urgent stuff.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#373

Post by specialist »

vonmoltke wrote: post #68
maxxxxx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My family in Germany throws a fit when they have to pay 50 Euro for something. In the US you can happy if your cost for seeing a doctor is less than 4 digits.

> In the US you can happy if your cost for seeing a doctor is less than 4 digits. My wife and I have never paid four figures for a doctor visit, despite having two surgeries (one oral), a calf strain, and a dislocated shoulder (with ER visit) between us. The state of medical care in the US is bad enough as it is; you don't need to make up hyperbolic bullshit to make it seem worse.

Just one of my blood tests alone cost $4,600. Surprise billing. "Out of network". Didn't even know to ask. Doctor, lab, everything all under the same roof. Why would any one even think to ask?

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#374

Post by peteretep »

roenxi wrote: post #270
TallGuyShort wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't even find out what stuff costs beforehand either. I had to get a blood test. I had gotten burned before where my insurance said they covered a physical, but it turns out their definition of a physical didn't include the doctor's definition, which included blood tests. So before I had my blood drawn, I asked them to tell me what the tests would cost if my insurance didn't cover it. "It depends on how it's coded,…

'You should know the price before you agree to buy the product' seems like such an innocuous principle. Why isn't their broad-based support of it for medical care? If you need emergency care then sure, there isn't time. The vast majority of interactions with the medical system aren't that type of emergency though. People have time to choose the better of two options. They can't decide on better if they don't know the…

> Why isn't their broad-based support of it for medical care

Because the American medical system is perhaps the finest example in the world of regulatory capture, ironically masquerading as an example of pure capitalism, while decrying the "socialism" in other countries.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#375

Post by Foobar8568 »

germinalphrase wrote: post #254
rch wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Swiss system (as I understand it) it's about $600 to attend classes, but if you don't hit the minimum on the semester exams twice, then you're done in the country . If you miss it the first round then there is a massive incentive to transfer or find an easier program, otherwise you face the prospect of being forced to go abroad to complete a degree.

Do you have any idea if this causes grade inflation to protect below-to-average, but otherwise responsible, students?

I would tend to believe it does considering the people I work with from university like the EPFL. But more generally, it might be a today problem where people has to be hand carried to do anything with 0 critical thinking.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#376

Post by rjf72 »

roenxi wrote: post #270
TallGuyShort wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't even find out what stuff costs beforehand either. I had to get a blood test. I had gotten burned before where my insurance said they covered a physical, but it turns out their definition of a physical didn't include the doctor's definition, which included blood tests. So before I had my blood drawn, I asked them to tell me what the tests would cost if my insurance didn't cover it. "It depends on how it's coded,…

'You should know the price before you agree to buy the product' seems like such an innocuous principle. Why isn't their broad-based support of it for medical care? If you need emergency care then sure, there isn't time. The vast majority of interactions with the medical system aren't that type of emergency though. People have time to choose the better of two options. They can't decide on better if they don't know the…

Because of insurance. It often leads the peculiar case that a healthcare provider might have no real clue about how much a person will ultimately end up being required to pay for some procedure they're undergoing. It has no clear connection to the price that the provider will bill the insurance for.

In many developing nations insurance is the exception, rather than the rule. This changes two big things. The first is that you're expected to pay for things that would have more than a negligible cost before these procedures are done. If you don't like the cost - you go somewhere else. Emergency care, like the US, is an exception - and nobody can be turned away, so you are billed afterwards.

But the really big thing this changes is that costs are such that people can actually pay them. For instance in one procedure I had a consultation, x-ray, and medicine. Total cost was about $20, and that's not government subsidized in any way - the hospital is making profit on that cost. And this is not a "hospital" with "doctors". Most of the medical staff are educated in the west and then come back home to work afterwards. As an aside, it also means they generally have great English. It's why developing nations are increasingly a destination for medical care - 'medical tourism'.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#377

Post by specialist »

MertsA wrote: post #303
jdmichal wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You walked away from multiple ER visits including surgeries for less than four digits out of pocket? Maybe consider that your experience is the exceptional, not the people you call hyperbolic. My son had a laceration glued together (dermabond in lieu of one or two stitches) and that was either close to or slightly over four digits after totaling the hospital bill and doctor bill, both in network.

My son just had a laceration that needed closed up a week ago. We didn't even take him to the ER, just his pediatrician who saw him for all of 5 minutes. She didn't even use any skin adhesives to close up the wound, she just taped it together and called it good. $120 for literally putting on a bandaid that came apart before we even finished the car ride home leaving us to tape it up properly ourselves.

How much support stuff does your doctor have? Industry wide, admin expenses are now 5x the cost of the care providers. Your doctor probably needs $X revenue per hour just to keep the lights on.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#378

Post by [deleted] »

rhacker wrote: post #87

Like to bring this up when we talk taxes: I think it's totally crazy that we give the feds 25% or more and our states soo soo sooooo much less. I think it should be the other way around: 5% for the feds, and maybe 20% to the states. The reason is that our cities are filled with bums, and have absolutely no money to either give them jobs or make new programs. The feds don't give a shit and are busy making missiles or…

[deleted]

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#379

Post by pgeorgi »

gwright wrote: post #179
johnm1019 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is missing a few important points. 1. The 15% of income has a cap. It's something like after 60k EUR in wages you don't pay anymore. Also, only 7.5% comes out of your paycheck, the employer pays the other half. When I was there a few years ago I was self employed so I had to pay "both sides". It would've worked out to roughly 750EUR/month for health insurance which had _0 deductible_ and _0 coinsurance_ for doct…

> Also, only 7.5% comes out of your paycheck, the employer pays the other half This just means that paychecks are 7.5% lower then they would otherwise be. It is a mistake to think that the employer paid benefits are "free". The market adjusts. You find that out right quick of you are self-employed (at least in the US).

The difference is that the other 7.5% (plus a few more such line items) don't appear in your progressive tax rate, and they also don't appear in "how much do you earn in country X" comparisons.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#380

Post by austincheney »

rhacker wrote: post #87

Like to bring this up when we talk taxes: I think it's totally crazy that we give the feds 25% or more and our states soo soo sooooo much less. I think it should be the other way around: 5% for the feds, and maybe 20% to the states. The reason is that our cities are filled with bums, and have absolutely no money to either give them jobs or make new programs. The feds don't give a shit and are busy making missiles or…

> or more and our states soo soo sooooo much less

That is a perspective from somebody living in a place with state income tax. Life is so much better when you are not paying state income taxes. Texas, Florida, and a few other places have no state income taxes.

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