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Forums - Politics Discussion - Non-Americans Stunned By American Health Care Costs

IcaroRibeiro said:
Dulfite said:

Americans stunned by Non-Americans taxes.

Source from 2018: https://www.businessinsider.com/tax-rates-take-home-salaries-40-countries-2018-5

USA:
Practical tax rate: 18%
Average pre-tax salary: $64,154
Average post-tax salary: $52,344

Most of the countries on this list of 40 have considerably lower average salaries too, other than Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, and Denmark. Yeah our medical bills in USA can be ridiculously high (if you don't have a good or platinum level insurance plan, which many of us do), but the amount going into our bank account each week is a lot higher than the vast majority of first world nations.

This is a stereotypical upper middle class reasoning. Upper middle class and upper classes USA citizens have higher income than Europeans or East Asians, while the lower income classes struggle because the lack of public services and welfare

I said either good or platinum insurance, and working class Americans have at least good insurance plans by and large. People working fast food jobs? No, they don't, but according to a 2020 survey I just pulled up 72% of Americans identify as part of the middle class. So only 28% are rich or poor. So yeah, when I talk about data and there is a supermajority of people in a certain class of life, that is what I'm going to talk about. More than 3/4's of Americans are doing just fine, possibly more than 4/5's of Americans, and don't need more insurance help funded by ridiculously high taxes. The poor needing more aid? Sure, let's address that, but not at the expense of the middle class like it is right now with this invisible tax on the middle class disguised as inflation.



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Dulfite said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

This is a stereotypical upper middle class reasoning. Upper middle class and upper classes USA citizens have higher income than Europeans or East Asians, while the lower income classes struggle because the lack of public services and welfare

I said either good or platinum insurance, and working class Americans have at least good insurance plans by and large. People working fast food jobs? No, they don't, but according to a 2020 survey I just pulled up 72% of Americans identify as part of the middle class. So only 28% are rich or poor. So yeah, when I talk about data and there is a supermajority of people in a certain class of life, that is what I'm going to talk about. More than 3/4's of Americans are doing just fine, possibly more than 4/5's of Americans, and don't need more insurance help funded by ridiculously high taxes. The poor needing more aid? Sure, let's address that, but not at the expense of the middle class like it is right now with this invisible tax on the middle class disguised as inflation.

Those first world countries you listed and have lower average income than USA also have healthy middle classes who don't need to worry with Healthcare and will be aided if they got unemployed, this will sacrifice part of their wages while they are active workers. I don't know exactly how do you expect a state (with very few sources of income other than taxes) will be able to aid the 25? 24? Percentage of USA citizens who are poor if not on the expensive of ther other 3/4. I agree though if you argue about a more progressive taxation that punishes less the lower end middle classes and more the very high end upper classes

Besides, the thread is to debate healthcare. USA prices for Healthcare are absurd, for medication too. That's because they are letting the free market define the prices. Imagine if USA government start baking the ridiculously high private healthcare prices for the 25% of their lower income population. With an average spending of 11k USD (2019 data) per person this would be a stunning 902 billion USD a year

And this is only to treat the lower end classes. Remember even middle classes can have treatments they cannot afford with their basic health insurances, so numbers will very likely go well over 1 trillion USD a year. 

I don't see how banking more private Healthcare will solve the problem, in reality if government starting to bank more private hospitals to attend poorer classes will only make the prices go up, as demand will increase and offer will not (at least not as quickly) leading to more and more people needing aid of USA state 

If private Healthcare was less expensive, then I could understand why USA citizens were willing to make state only affording rather than managing a public system as private business management are generally more efficient, but it seems like it's not the case there. 



Dulfite said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

This is a stereotypical upper middle class reasoning. Upper middle class and upper classes USA citizens have higher income than Europeans or East Asians, while the lower income classes struggle because the lack of public services and welfare

I said either good or platinum insurance, and working class Americans have at least good insurance plans by and large. People working fast food jobs? No, they don't, but according to a 2020 survey I just pulled up 72% of Americans identify as part of the middle class. So only 28% are rich or poor. So yeah, when I talk about data and there is a supermajority of people in a certain class of life, that is what I'm going to talk about. More than 3/4's of Americans are doing just fine, possibly more than 4/5's of Americans, and don't need more insurance help funded by ridiculously high taxes. The poor needing more aid? Sure, let's address that, but not at the expense of the middle class like it is right now with this invisible tax on the middle class disguised as inflation.

A survey on what class people self-identify as is a pretty terrible foundation for an argument, because it is absolutely rife with bias. If you actually look at income, the number of individuals in the middle class drops to about 50%.

However, even still, someone in the middle class isn't necessarily "doing just fine". These individuals may be struggling with various forms of debt, or lack the income flexibility to be able to account for sudden influxes in health care costs. For a single person household, the "middle class" is considered to start around $25k, which leaves a pretty small room for error. That means that about 20% of their wage would go to health insurance were they to purchase an average individual plan, and even if you are insured a medical emergency can still come with a plethora of additional costs. Also, with health insurance often tied to employment, individuals are still at high risk in the case of an economic downturn such as the pandemic. The middle class is also losing financial ground, with its share of income decreasing relative to the full economy.

If instead of looking at the question under the assumption that self identifying as "middle class" means you are "doing just fine" and instead ask individuals if they are worried about whether they will be able to afford health insurance, about 66% of Americans expressed some degree of worry. This is reflected in the coverage that people have. About 43% are inadequately insured, with 12.5% uninsured and another 9.5% having lapses in insurance. About half of the inadequately insured population had trouble paying medical bills over the last year, and even among those fully insured, about a quarter of them had problems with paying medical bills. 

Our health insurance system is a disaster and acting like is isn't a problem because people self identify as middle class is pure nonsense. 



Jumpin said:
Mr Puggsly said:

No. I think excessive eating and poor choices throughout the day are much more destructive to the human body than fad diets.

The American health system doesn't really push anything. Especially after realizing the food pyramid was trash. At best they just recommend to avoid obviously shit food.

I personally tell fatties intermittent fasting is the answer. You can eat junk, shit like a champ and lose weight. But nobody listens to me.

Fasting in order to eat junk food, AKA, the Roy Orbison diet, is just another extremely unhealthy practice.

You’ll want to eat much more nutrient dense food when fasting, not just empty macros. You’re giving people advice that will be cause malnutrition. In Roy Orbison’s case, dietary health issues lead to an early death.

It almost seems like the US wants health issues in its population to create customers for the healthcare industry. If health is really something you want to improve, mitigation of health issues should be a major goal: add a nutrition course to avoid a country filled with sham diets doing more and more damage to unwitting peoples’ bodies.

You completely misunderstood. I am not saying fast and just eat junk food, that's stupid. If a perfect diet is just too difficult for you to do, but you're also fat or gain weight easily, then you should also fast. A completely healthy diet is obviously off the table for most people. At the very least, if you fast and eat junk food you can avoid being obese. Being obese and sedentary pretty much destroys your body, so moving away from that is always good.

I think a compromise that would benefit many people, especially if you're already fat. Get into fasting because your metabolism probably sucks already. Eat junk food within reason, it shouldn't be your entire diet. People are surprised I eat junk food for example, I eat junk I enjoy and I eat plenty of nutritious stuff as well. I think people are confused I manage to enjoy a fairly normal diet while avoiding being obese, the answer is fasting and I make an effort to exercise regularly but not intense either.

Calm down the US health care shit. The reality is the world is getting fatter, diabetes is rising everywhere, so treating it just as a US problem is naive and ignorant. People already know what they need to eat and just make excuses. People aren't complete morons, they're just unmotivated, undisciplined and frankly opt for the tastier options. I believe junk food can also be addictive, otherwise changing your habits would be easier.

My advice isn't to convince people to change all their habits. It will almost always fail miserably. Instead try fasting, add more exercise even if its just walking and light free weights. Eat some junk within reason, but obviously add more healthy stuff. You don't need to have a perfect diet to avoid obesity. If you think my advice is bad, you just aren't being realistic.



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20% Of US In DEEP Medical Debt, DOUBLE 2 Years Ago... Journal of American medical Association 

The system hasn't changed under Biden, in fact M4A has been actively opposed by the Est Dems, currently Nina Turner (Dem) from Ohio strongly supporting M4A is being attacked by her own party even though she is by far the most popular candidate in the Ohio race

The Dem leadership is letting down the US people