• Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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    6 days ago

    What is this thread? Since I got chronically ill my insurance has paid my salary for a year and is now paying into unemployment and pension for my wife, who’s caring for me. And besides that they’re still paying for all our medical expenses despite me not paying into them anymore.

    Yeah, I had to fight for them to pay for a transport. But overall they definitely are offering a service I am greatly benefitting from.

    • HowdWeGetHereAnyways@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I’m truly glad that it’s helping someone; however, for every one of you there are a hundred people denied important procedures because insurance has decided its opinion is more important than the doctor’s.

      An easily available example off the top of my head is Styropyro’s most recent video where he might have cancer but Insurance has denied his brain scan.

      • django@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 days ago

        Germany: If your physician thinks, you need your brain scanned, they will give you a referral, you make an appointment for your brain scan, your brain gets scanned, and your physician now knows if your brain has a problem. Your insurance pays for this.

        Source: got my brain scanned, brain is fine and at the proper location.

    • Buttflapper@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Not sure if you are in the USA or Germany based on your URL but The general idea is that a private company should not have to hold the cards for our fate, and our health treatment. That’s what you are clearly missing. If you get chronically ill in some of the better parts of Europe, you won’t have any medical or financial consequences of that. Ambulance is don’t cost much of anything directly, hospital stays don’t cost you much. In the USA you cannot say the same. Going to the hospital for some major illness like cancer or emergency surgery could cost you anywhere from $15,000 to $200,000. Look up the cost of having a baby at a hospital especially when there are complications. It’s unbelievable.

      The idea is that you should pay into a system that works for everyone, namely the government and taxes, and they help you out in return once you have a hardship at a low or no cost because you have been paying into it. This is not how insurance works. In most cases, you pay stupid amounts of money into insurance, and once the new year rolls around, you have lost your entire deductible and you’re out of pocket is completely reset. You have severe limitations on your FSA or health savings accounts so you can’t save enough money. Literally not allowed for you to save and stockpile lots of money for covering healthcare. You have to pay into this stupid for-profit company that doesn’t give a damn about you and will never lift a finger to help you. Sometimes people are lucky and benefit from the insurance. Those situations are extremely rare, and situations in which people are financially ruined by insurance and healthcare are far more common.

      I’m glad that the system in place has worked for you currently. But that does not mean it works for everyone, and that’s something you need to understand. Just because something works for you doesn’t mean it’s a great system.

      • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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        6 days ago

        Yeah, I’m in Germany. It is widely known that the US medical system absolutely sucks ass. Doesn’t mean that the concept of health insurance sucks. In most of the developed world it works well. It’s only the US implementation that is majorly flawed.

    • TheHarpyEagle@pawb.social
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      6 days ago

      The problem is greatly unequal access to healthcare. I’m glad your insurance is doing well for you, but there are many out there who are struggling to pay for expensive family insurance with high deductibles that still leave them in medical debt.

      I’m also currently in a situation where I’d like to find a new job, but I have some expensive medication ($750 a month for one of them) and I am worried about losing my insurance/not being able to afford the premium while I wait for benefits to kick in at a new job. I also have absolutely no way of knowing if another employer’s plan will cover my medication or if my current group of providers will be in network. All this added stress, and yet I’m lucky to work in a field where almost every employer offers health insurance.

      Ideally, there would be universal safety nets to provide the services you’re benefiting from to all Americans. It’s not even like we’re saving money by relying on private insurance, as the US spends way more per capita on Healthcare for average results, at best.

      So I’m glad that your insurance is taking care of you, truly I am. But spare a thought for the thousands of Americans out there who are struggling to survive under the same system.

      • Avatar_of_Self@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I think the issue is that you look like you are talking about health insurance in the US. There is basically a zero percent change the person you are responding to is talking about insurance from any plan in the US.

        • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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          6 days ago

          Yeah, I should have realised that everyone is talking about the US. Everything about their medical system sucks. It’s powered by greed and not much else. I bet most third world countries have better health care than them.