I’d like to know other non-US citizen’s opinions on your health care system are when you read a story like this. I know there are worse places in the world to receive health care, and better. What runs through your heads when you have a medical emergency?
A little background on my question:
My son was having trouble breathing after having a cold for a couple of days and we needed to stop and take the time to see if our insurance would be accepted at the closest emergency room so we didn’t end up with a huge bill (like 2000$-5000$). This was a pretty involved ~10 minute process of logging into our insurance carrier, and unsuccessfully finding the answer there. Then calling the hospital and having them tell us to look it up by scrolling through some links using the local search tool on their website. This gave me some serious pause, what if it was a real emergency, like the kind where you have no time to call and see if the closest hospital takes your insurance.
Yeah my employer luckily pays most of the premiums. If I lost my job and “had” to get COBRA, then what I’d have to pay would jump drastically to keep my employer based coverage or I could look at whats on the marketplace/exchange which would likely cover bare minimums, if it was even worth it at all.
It’d be worth considering dropping insurance altogether at that point as I would not have that kind of cash to continue insurance plan I’ve had.
I would rather pay higher taxes out of my paycheck if it meant EVERYONE could get healthcare, regardless if they had a job or were “legal”. Everyone’s gonna need it someday, no exceptions.
I try to vote for the candidates that have as close of values as I do, but realize not everyone running will be a 100% match.