Health Insurance

[KMD]

I met an exchange student from Germany yesterday, and we talked for a bit. "I haven't had health insurance for 5 years at least" I admitted, and he said "I can't remember a time when I didn't have it."

For a long time, my parents couldn't afford health insurance. Thanks to the affordable care act (I get kinda pissed when people call it "Obamacare") they finally got covered this year, but now i'm too old to be covered under theirs. The company I work for offers insurance, but its not very good and wasn't worth the cut from my monthly paycheck for something I might not use every month. As a student working part time, I simply can't afford it, I think that I am exempt from the uninsured-fine anyway. Speaking of that, forcing your citizens to pay for something many of them can't afford by threatening them with a major fine sounds absolutely insane to me!

Life is full of dilemmas, but I don't want my health to be one of them. To the international villagers, let me tell you firsthand; while the U.S. may have some of the best healthcare in the world, good affordable coverage is still an unobtainable luxury to many, and a nightmare to some. Hospitals here WILL send you away if you have nothing. When asked why ours can't be like Canada or Europe, almost everyone says "Well... I hear you have to wait a long time to get treatment" or "its not as safe as ours", which I have trouble blindly believing.

How does everyone feel about your health insurance?

[TK]

I live in Scotland so our primary healthcare is free at point of use, prescriptions are free for everyone; we have three, possibly four can't remember about wales, National health services. I'm not sure how our taxes compare to tax in the US but through one tax or several I pay in to the NHS so it's not free as such, I'm more than happy to contribute to the care of people who don't have the same means as I do. 

Our NHS is also partly funded by private hospitals and insurance firms who pay to use NHS facilities, this can be contentious if private patients get seen first.  Private insurance typically gets you seen first and covers tertiary non essential as well as primary care but in practice people will generally go to an NHS hospital for unplanned medical treatment and convalesce in a private hospital.

I earn over the threshold for assistance with dental care or sight aids but I don't have a need right now for full blown medical insurance so I have a cash back scheme I pay in to every month that pays back between 75 - 100% of expenses ranging from dental care to osteopathy, they get far more from me than I claim. 

You do hear of extensive treatment delays and horror stories about the NHS and to be honest if I had the funds and had a rare expensive to treat medical condition I would get insurance but it's still an institution service that provides a comprehensive if budget restricted service.  My concern about privatisation in our NHS would be that any form of 'free' healthcare provision would be driven by a profit derived funding model as opposed to the budget based model we have now.