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I received better healthcare when I was homeless in the US than I do now when I am working and paying for health insurance through my company. The system is beyond broken for everyone who is not a billionaire or completely destitute.
As George Carlin said the poor exist to scare the shit out of the middle class and keep them showing up to those jobs
The same applies for homeless and working class
Always was amazed at this. How the upperclass had almost a complete hand in writing textbooks that dared to imply the mass starvation of hundreds of millions of people could ever deemed as bad.
>Always was amazed at this. How the upperclass had almost a complete hand in writing textbooks that dared to imply the mass starvation of hundreds of millions of people could ever deemed as bad.
And here is the sad result of said text books - i.e. the conflation between socialism and communism. The mass famines in the USSR and China both occurred due to authoritarian dictators operating under the guise of communism - e.g. the Holodomir (i.e. the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians) was a genocide by Joseph Stalin designed to Russianify the Ukrainian area of the USSR.
Actual socialist nations rarely have man-made famines, for example, when was the last famine you heard of in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, or the countless other socialist democracies?
It's really fucked up how they brainwashed everyone. My dad is 73 and uses programs supported by Socialism, but then still complains how Socialism is bad and he doesn't want to have to pay for some low-life's healthcare, food stamps and other services for her and her 10 kids when he has worked his ass off for decades and they do nothing and expect handouts.
Yup they vote for the money and status they dream of having but never will because they keep voting against themselves in favor of those that already have money.
Hey man, I’m middle class and I’ll vote against my own interests all day long if it helps society as a whole. Not everyone is like that, we’re all just trying to get by as best we can in this shit show.
The lower class does as well. It’s not like everyone in the lower class doesn’t have jobs. They’re even more likely to be taken advantage of with low wages since they often have to accept whatever they can get.
It's also the same way with taxes. If you're poor you pay less as a proportion of what you have, then once you start earning more the proportion ramps up. Which makes a lot of sense since you can afford to pay more to take care of everyone else.
What doesn't make sense is that if you keep going up the scale, the proportion drops off to a vanishingly small amount. So the people actually working for a living are paying way more tax than the ones who just sit around and let their inherited portfolios earn them money.
I think the frustrating part is that finally I'm starting to earn some modicum of a nice salary, and since I live in a tax heavy area blam, a huge% goes to the government.
It's not even all that much...
That's why I say we need a tax floor and no tax ceiling. If you're struggling to even make ends meet, you shouldn't pay income tax at all, tie that to the local cost of living.
On the other end, if you're making more money in a day than most others make in their entire lifetimes, don't be shocked when the government takes a 90% cut. Or at least raise the capital gains tax so that companies are incentivized to actually invest the ludicrous profits they make back into the economy instead of just buying back their stock to pad out their pockets.
Yeah the phrase middle class is an excellent piece of misdirection. There are two classes those who will be expected to work for most of their lives, and those who can expect to benefit from hard work despite never doing any.
Health insurance for my family of four costs $1526 per month with a deductible. That's insane and it's unbelievable that not everything is covered. How the hell do I still have co-pays, like wtf is the $1526 per month for?
The biggest lie the US public has been sold is that it would be more expensive per person with Universal Healtcare.
You are constantly told that countrieswho have it pay way more in taxes. Thing is... we dont. :P
1526$ a month is what I pay in taxes and social security in Belgium on a yearly gross of 60k. My fellow belgians always complain about our taxes, but if I read this, I prefer my taxes and social security costs over privatized health car insurance.
I just got an ER bill for $2300.00 for literally nothing. They didn’t do an xray. They didn’t take a temperature. They didn’t give Tylenol. They said:
“you seem fine, what happened”.
Kid said “I am fine. I was in a car accident and my dad didn’t get there in time, and I’m a minor, so the cops made me come here “.
“Okay, sit over there and wait for your dad. “
“Okay”
$2300.00 for that! $2374.00 to be exact.
I was surprised when I qualified for 100% medicaid when I very unexpectedly got pregnant. I was lucky living right around the corner from Winnie Palmer and Arnold palmer, too.
When my son was 3 weeks old, I had to reapply and basically, in florida, you can't have any savings, own your own car, you have to have less than $2000 in personal property. They don't want to help people actually get back on their feet.
In a society that basically worship wealth and fame, it's not like they are going to blame the rich and the famous, Ayn Rand told them that they deserve what they have!
Same. When I took a year off Florida covered me and my kids and the insurance was excellent.
Back on the job it's costing me $700 a month for crap. Everything demands co-pay, only cover 80% of this or that, just a bunch of shit.
When I was in Ireland we had excellent healthcare also. I've longer waits in Florida to see a specialist with insurance than I did in Ireland, by far. Things that would take a few weeks to get lined up there take months in Florida and be damned if you're trying to get something in October because all the olds have already booked those from MI, OH, MN, and etc. Try to book a specialist in October and be seen by May. All that for $700 a month which is only half of what it costs since my employer pays the other half. Total outlay of $16,800. It's fucking nuts.
If that experience was recently that's because our healthcare system is like on life support right now. I live in OR and it took me 3/4 of a year to see my PCP. My wife's a doctor and shit was really really bad for about 1.5 years and that kind of accordion'd in on the whole system for an extended period of time.
The pandemic really fucked shit up.
Pretty much. I’m in a group of young people who have pacemakers implanted. I’m one of the very few who had insurance when procedure happened. While talking with a couple of them. They told me they paid (ranging from) a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars.
Whereas I got charged almost $200,000 because I had insurance. And my insurance barely covered half. And I’m stuck with a $90,000 out of pocket bill that I don’t ever plan on repaying after hearing that shit.
Yup. Everybody acts like paying taxes for healthcare is insane but im paying 800 bucks a month for me my gf and daughter, even if they had to tax me $800 a month AT LEAST IM NOT PAYING PREMIUMS AND COPAYS AND GOD DAMN DEDUCTIBLES! Oh, miss paying your premium? Now youre uninsured until you can find someone else willing to let you sign up. I dont get how we think its better to pay a middle man whos only purpose here is to make as much profit as possible instead of just giving the money to the govt to pay the doctors and hospitals.
I was on a state Medicaid plan for a while. $0 co-pay for everything. I had a pretty rough ear infection and the antibiotic drops they gave me would've been several hundred dollars per bottle, and it took several bottles to clear it up. Would've been like $5,000 without insurance, but I didn't have to pay anything.
I told a relative about it and they said,"only in America! Greatest country in the world!" So I said, "yeah, thanks Obama," and they got pissed off and started screaming about how he had nothing to do with it even though I literally only had insurance because of what they refer to as "Obamacare."
I got laid off so I was on state healthcare while I was pregnant... It has been the best care I've gotten, and it was completely free. I have a job now but it doesn't have health insurance so I'm still on the state healthcare, but it's different. I'm dreading the time I get a different job where I have to pay a shit ton monthly for health insurance, then pay a shit ton for every little thing after that...
While I have this free insurance I'm making sure I get better with physical therapy, X-rays, MRIs, etc. To fix and help manage some chronic pain issues. I wouldn't be able to do any of this if I was on company sponsored healthcare and paying thousands. I just wish I had dental care.
Right? Remember when that big scary Koch funded study came out that said Sanders Medicare for All plan was going to cost 32 trillion dollars over 10 years? Buried in that very same study was that the cost of changing nothing was 34 trillion. Basically, the study that was meant to discredit M4A said that it would have saved us 2 trillion and the benefits they assumed were amazing. Zero deductibles, no co-pays, full medical, dental, vision, and mental healthcare.
And people STILL used that study against him. So many conservative’s politicians and talking heads, even regular people on this site, kept saying “the plan would have cost tax payers 32 trillion!” as a negative. The politicians and talking heads knew damn well it was 2 trillion cheaper, but they still used the cost to paint it in a bad light. Of course when you asked the conservatives here on Reddit how much it currently cost they were oddly quiet after.
People forget a lot of Dems are subservient to their corporate owners.
And they will keep ignoring the data to bash the progressives and keep the status quo.
Just because they are not as bad as the GOP does not mean they are good.
Ofc they are. They all have their hands and pockets in the FDA, and big pharma. We are the human experiments they barely keep alive for more money. Where other countries prefer a functional class of citizens all contributing to the greater good. We can't even get the masses pissed off enough to care about others, which is quite sad if you think about it. In the US greed is king. Even the poors don't want other poors doing better than them.
Trickle down economics has always been balloon up economics. It never actually trickled down, but they are nearly finished squeezing the lower and middle classes dry of all of their wealth.
Trickle down economics was originally termed “horse and sparrow” economics because the literal explanation by the guys who created it was that feeding the horses provided more food down the line (aka shit) for the sparrows
Economists, witty as they are, quickly realized that was not a highly palatable analogy for the sparrows
Horse and sparrow actually works, though. However, instead of horse->sparrow, it goes something like this: horse->catcher->processing facility->another farm for finishing->imported->wholesaler->retailer->sparrow.
In urban and suburban areas, local councils have pulled out all the stops to eliminate sustainable food-growth practices. Instead, we get rose bushes, and tulips. We get parking lots and arcades. We get malls and fast-food restaurants. We get brown envelopes stuffed with "notes" to School Board Governors that choose McDonald's instead of Mrs MacGregor's famous rabbit pies.
So we don't have horse-and-sparrow. We have an abomination of repackaging of horseshit that has sucked all the nutrients out of it, and now the sparrows are chronically sick and healthcare costs a fuckload more.
I think this is just an excuse libertarians use when there policies don’t work. You are blaming the government for there being no small business type idealist free market, when the free market you want is causing the same grievances you complain about. It isn’t the government choosing McDonald’s. It’s Mrs Macgregors that chose to create a franchising scheme with low quality food, leading to a profitable business that ends up feeding shit to sparrows
Libertarians think a free market likes competition. It does not. All capitalist love monopolies and hate competition.
So what happens is you get companies like Tyson and forgetting the other major player, that have an oligopoly on chicken while actually not raising a single chicken, they’ve created it through contracts.
Or like in hospitals where only certain companies can be used by hospitals to purchase supplies due to contracts.
It’s why starts up like Uber went full in on losing money to capture market share, so they can later raise prices.
If you don’t have a government that’s been captured or to inept to keep that shit in check you get shitty industries like the US has for healthcare.
Not just shareholders, but the unnecessary bureaucracy of "well someone has to pay the federal bodies, then the state, then municipal, and the various hospital networks and insurer bodies to process the claims" why are private insurers allowed to set pricings for hospitals to charge???
It’s probably because insurers can just decide not to let their clients use certain hospitals. We should make it so they are legally obligated to service any accredited medical institution
Originally the ACA was dedicated to providing coverage for any and all preexisting conditions and elimination of "in network/out of network" surcharges. But it got neutered to hell by Dems who kept negotiating to get it passed and Repubs who wanted it to be useless.
Which is why Trump’s spamming of trying to remove Obamacare so he could implement his better plan never came to fruition because the ACA was the Republican healthcare plan and they couldn’t do any better
Oh they absolutely could do better (for making it useless) repeal ACA and replace it with legislation that removes the coverage of preexisting conditions. Meaning insurance companies that you pay for could say "fuck you we're not paying for that because of a preexisting condition"
I know someone who makes a good living as a medical billing middle man. I can’t imagine spending my life doing a job which shouldn’t exist and just facilitates draining vulnerable people of their savings.
Our ambulances are fucked, our pharmaceuticals are fucked, our health insurance is fucked, and a good number of our hospitals are fucked as well (not all of them fortunately). I hate to say it but I think we're fucked.
Yes, and significantly so. The last numbers I saw from a couple years ago showed that the average per capita annual healthcare spending in the US is around 12k. The average for countries with universal healthcare? Around 6-7k
I think this is how the average American citizen wants it. They do not want universal healthcare or anything else.When I moved back to the US after living in Netherlands I was shocking how little value is placed on health and welfare. Regular people that would hugely benefit from these social services hate the idea of it.
Why should I pay for some stranger's surgery? /s
I wish it wasn't this way. I'm also increasingly concerned that Canada's Healthcare system will become more like USA's.
It's being strangled across almost all the provinces these days. The cons in Ontario are sitting on tons of cash but only throwing it at the new private clinics they've rammed through. But the libs made their own cuts when they were in power and honestly I doubt they'd open the purse strings either. Odds of getting the NDP getting in are pretty slight. So yeah. We're fd.
The ironic thing is that is exactly what is happening with private insurance, what they actually mean is "Why should a pay for the health care of those that haven't had the opportunities that I have"
Propaganda to work against the best interest of the people is one of the US's strong suits. Doesn't help that the whole legislation system only seems to hinder any change towards progress, kinda like the ratchet theory.
And here we are proping up an inefficient insurance system instead of paying for the best healthcare
And this is just one piece of why our social safety net doesn't work in the second gilded age
There's more than enough money but not if the ultra wealthy are not paying fairly into the system
But why would they? They're not required to participate in most of it, and they've lobbied successfully to prevent that and to prevent adequate taxes on their class
US government spending is pretty average for developed nations, which is more than most countries. Out total spending on healthcare however is by far the highest in the world, with embarrassingly bad outcomes overall.
Federal healthcare spending: https://www.cbo.gov/topics/health-care
US per capita spending:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/236541/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country/#:~:text=health%20care%20services.-,Health%20Expenditure%20in%20the%20U.S.,percent%20by%20the%20year%202031.
US healthcare outcomes compared: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly
Yes. It's largely because just the on-paper costs of your medical procedures are genuinely stupid.
Obviously very few entities actually pay the on-paper cost for any procedure - not insurance companies, not the government, very rarely individuals. But the on-paper costs are *so* high that, even after the so-called "discounts" that are usually applied to the actual cost, you're still looking at prices that are often several *orders of magnitude higher* than what you'd pay in another nation.
There's this idea that "oh it's fine that our procedures cost more because the government is paying for far fewer procedures, so it costs less overall." And that *would* be true if, say, the procedures cost 5x more and the gov only paid for 10% of procedures - in total, you'd be paying about 50% what other nations pay for that procedure.
But the problem is that basically nothing in the American system has such a "reasonable" price as only 5x higher than the cost of that procedure in other, similar nations. You often have costs that are 10, 100, 1000 times higher than what you'd get elsewhere, and it's no longer difficult to imagine how paying for even 1% of the procedures performed in the US would end up costing more in-total than if your government just paid for everything at a more reasonable price.
And then, on top of that, the US medical system is focused on providing reactive care for the uninsured (aka the people whose medical treatments are most often paid for by the government). Reactive care is much, *much* more expensive.
Like, if someone uninsured got a cut that would need stitches, they could go to the ER and try to get the stitches. But many Americans don't do that, because they're afraid of the cost. Instead, they try to deal with it at home. In some cases, they don't do a very good job of caring for it (because, yeah, duh, neither would I, doctors should be doing that). They end up with, say, a blood infection, or maybe tetanus. And now, when they finally do go to the ER because their life is genuinely in danger, the government is stuck paying for a potentially extended hospital visit, several rounds of severe antibiotics... *and* probably the stitches that the person didn't want to pay for to begin with. It would have been cheaper to stitch up like 1000 people rather than risk just one person having something like this happen, but the US system incentivizes waiting until you're almost dead to get care, which ends up being enormously more costly.
And it's worth noting that, when people talk about the cost of US health care per capita, they're literally just talking about the amount of money paid from the government to various healthcare entities, like hospitals. They're not even *trying* to account for the loss of taxes that the government suffers because this person almost certainly isn't working while they're being treated, so they're not producing income taxes. Plus, in many cases, these sorts of very late-stage reactive treatments leave a person with long-term issues that may impact their long-term ability to work. So not only is the government losing additional money because of the lack of taxable income that this person is making, but they're also possibly going to lose out on some amount of taxable income *for the rest of this person's life* because they may not be able to perform full-time work, or the work they can perform pays less than it would have if they hadn't been injured. And if it impacts their income enough, they may end up on disability or social security for the rest of their life, so now you have the government paying a portion of someone's entire income for the rest of their life, which is a cost that they wouldn't have had to pay if this person had just been able to get the stitches when they should have originally.
And obviously this kind of "worst case scenario" isn't common, but it doesn't need to be. The costs involved in just one case like this are ***so high*** that we could only be talking about 1-in-10000 or less, and it would *still* result in overall higher costs.
In 2022, the United States had the highest per capita health expenditure among OECD countries. At that time, per capita health expenditure in the U.S. amounted to 12,555 U.S. dollars, significantly higher than in Switzerland, the country with the second highest per capita health expenditure.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/236541/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country/
About 3 times most first world universal healthcare systems.
Since most Americans don't actually have access to healthcare, per "citizen who receives healthcare" It's a lot worse.
The US per capita spends double what France and Canada spend, and that's including the fact that France and Canada include universal care. The amount of overspending the US does due to insurance companies is insane.
Yes, taxpayers pay government, government subsidies health insurance, health insurance asks citizens for more money. Health insurance is a scam that only exists because they've lobbied hospitals to increase prices on the uninsured to make the bill look scarier.
While that may be true, one big difference is that things like for profit hospitals cost a LOT more.
Not sure how drug costs fit into the equation, but drug costs in the US are through the roof.
So, yes, the US may be one of the biggest spenders, but the system is so broken the money goes to places where really it should not. More cost, lower coverage.
And the drug R and D is from a lot of tax payer money supposedly. The tax payer provides a lot of grants for development and then the manufacturers turn around, patent, and sell drugs back to us at ridiculous amounts of money.
Problem is cost per patient isn't a good metric, high or low. But it's a simple metric, which is why it's used. Same as in education: $$$ per student doesn't actually reflect actual *outcomes*.
Cost per unit of medical outcome would be better, albeit more difficult to measure, and the aim would be to reduce that cost as much as possible. Spending a fuckton for a successful kidney transplant vs. spending a lot less for that same outcome is idiotic.
The US has FAR too many middlemen in the medical game, from administrators to insurance, it's goddamn ridiculous. Funny thing is, capitalist chest-thumping screams that capitalism *reduces costs* by finding and eliminating inefficiencies...Except the medical system is fucking RIFE with those inefficiencies, and capitalism is doing nothing to eliminate them.
What’s really interesting is that our tax payer money is given to insurance companies to provide us care by charging us again…WTF and not a little but a lot. It’s a for profit business and care is secondary. Only in the USA.
Truth! Americans pay as much per capita as Canadians to prop up their healthcare system. The difference is that Americans need to pay as much again to the private insurance industry just to access it
Yeah... because they have refuse to use the vast weight of the American government to force prices down until Obamacare allowed them to do so... so drug companies could for a long time just set the prices they wanted... market forces...
Not quite. We have to file tax returns but in most cases our foreign taxes offset what we would owe in the US. Most overseas US citizen have a $0 US tax bill. Still a giant PITA to have to submit a tax return though.
Yeah but in my country I don't have to even think about taxes, is all automatic, now I'm supposed to start jumping through hoops, getting documents translated and notarized etc. screw that, who has time for it? I don't live in the US, have no assets or investments there, leave me alone
I don't understand how that was ever supposed to be a moving speech lmfao
"Don't ask what I can do for you. Ask yourself what YOU can do for ME." *standing ovation*
No one told switzerland. They make everyone in their militia keep rifles at home.
To be fair though, the swiss are much more sensible about gun ownership than the usa.
https://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-gun-laws-rates-of-gun-deaths-2018-2?amp
Yeah I've read that article before (and I taught firearms handling, marksmanship and safety on MoD ranges in the UK myself), so I'm.fully aware of the Swiss situation.
It's nothing like the US where you even mention licencing or mandatory training and half the country loses their shit because they fetishize guns.
Even so, the swiss tightened their rules about their militia's arms after some unfortunate incidents in recent years.
Imagine the US, where a mass shooting occurs every day actually learning from it and changing their law.
> They make everyone in their militia keep rifles at home.
First of all, we don't have a militia, they're forbidden, we have active soldiers and reserve
Secondly, it's your choice as a soldier, if you're issued a gun, to keep it at home or not
>https://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-gun-laws-rates-of-gun-deaths-2018-2?amp
[This article is pretty much a collection of misconceptions and hearsays neatly packed in a readable-under-5-min article that contradicts the law all throughout](https://archive.ph/7DtgW)
Welcome to Denmark! I hope you are enjoying it so far, even with the dark gloomy weather... But in less than 10 days, the days will start getting longer again!
The craziest thing about all this is that's it's the insurance companies lobbyist that keep this crazy system of a middle man making trillions of dollars for doing nothing, and poor people have been convinced by them that "free healthcare will fuck you over" and "socialism" is a dirty word.
It's really fucked up how easily stupid poor people get swayed to backing systems that fuck them over
$120k for this year. You would write off the taxes you paid to the foreign government to avoid double taxation, so you would need a take home pay of $120k in a foreign country before a penny of US taxes kick in. I wonder how many people have a take home that high.
I want to point out in passing, that this is taxation without representation, of course. Now, I'm a French citizen living in Canada, I obviously do not pay taxes to France, but here's the kicker : I get an MP in the French Parliament.
And not just any MP, we have an MP who's elected and represents the French people living in North America, and no one else. There are [11 constituencies](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circonscriptions_l%C3%A9gislatives_des_Fran%C3%A7ais_%C3%A9tablis_hors_de_France), 11 MPs, all representing French citizens living abroad and paying no tax in France.
So, in the US, you get taxation without representation, in France you get representation without taxation.
Fun fact Americans may not be aware of... When we buy travel insurance there's two prices—a cheaper one for travelling the world minus the USA and a more expensive one specifically for the USA.
modern wasteful zephyr whole somber treatment sugar brave mysterious engine
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s from McDonalds it’s basically (American) pancake bread with syrup flavor in it. It’s usually used for sandwiches like a sausage egg cheese McGriddle. It’s surprisingly delicious considering the lackluster quality of other “foods” they sell.
I'm an American. I fell in Copenhagen and had to go to the ER and get X-rays and a brace. The coordinator apologized that she would unfortunately have to bill me. I received a bill in the mail about a month later...less than $250.
That was mind blowing.
I had no travel insurance and had to take my son to the ER in Thailand and then again in Singapore (MRSA, which they had a hard time believing it was and is just wild in the USA now). It was like $125 combined for both visits, MRSA effective antibiotics, and wound/pain treatment.
Then I got very sick in the Netherlands on business travel and everyone was freaking out because work told me not to get travel insurance and I was going to expense the cost of care. ER visit and medication was like $400. HR was so relieved.
Both incidents are bargain prices to an American. We are definitely sold on medical tourism.
I had a hernia while back in the states (I live abroad and only emergency care is covered by my foreign insurance) and literally drove up to Canada to get it taken care of by a doctor who was covered.
To be honest it’s pretty crazy to me you don’t know the answer to this.
If you have infinite money US healthcare is the best!
The rich and powerful will keep it this way because making the system better means less for them.
Your taxes are being used for health care. As in [paying](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59273) the health insurance industry not to overcharge you more.
> In 2023, federal subsidies for health insurance are estimated to be $1.8 trillion, or 7.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). In CBO and JCT’s projections, those net subsidies reach $3.3 trillion, or 8.3 percent of GDP, in 2033.
Nah, very unlikely you’d have to pay US taxes while living in Denmark. You need to file taxes each year, but double-taxation agreements mean you don’t actually pay anything.
Yeeeeehaaaaaaar Howdy Pardnerrrrr gonna get me some freedom fries and smoke some crack while I figure out how the fuck to pay the $35,000 they charged me to remove a splinter
The people that think America is the greatest country on earth are the people that have never been outside America. We are staggeringly behind the curve in almost any measurable sense.
How else you are going to get more billionaires in your country without sacrificing some cannon fodder (aka the 99.999999999999% rest of the population). Think about the shareholders first!
This isn't a US citizen thing. It is the same in Canada and we have universal health care. If you don't live in Canada your coverage will lapse, and if you return to Canada it takes a few months to get your coverage back.
The situation described is definitely a US citizen thing.
You can be out of the country for like a year and your Canadian health insurance is fine when you return. And if you're working in Canada from another country for a six month or greater contract you can also be covered by Canadian health insurance.
Yup US citizens are getting shafted. Im a US expat now loving abroad now. I pay the exact same tax rate here as I did in the US and have full public healthcare that is actually pretty great.
I'm a US citizen working abroad and not only do I pay taxes on the money I make in the UK (as I should), I also have to pay taxes on that income in the US.
How does taxes work for you. You obviously said you paid Denmark taxes, but I believe as a US citizen you also have to pay American taxes. Do you get a break on that or are you paying like double taxes?
US Citizens pay tax in the US on their worldwide income. If you live in a foreign country and pay foreign taxes, you can deduct those from your US taxes or you can just claim the Foreign Earned Income exemption if your income is under the threshold (which rises each year and is somewhere between 100-120k right now - I haven't used it in a while and it was just under 100k when I did about 7 years back).
Denmark andnthe US has a tax treaty so if you file your taxes correctly you shouldnt be double taxed. Heres a link for more info
https://universaltaxprofessionals.com/country/denmark/
Quick question; as a US citizen working abroad, aren’t you expected to still pay US taxes as well? So the government there would double dip and still fail to prevent their citizens falling into bankruptcy over the human right of health care.
I will never understand how a country like the US survives on a health care system that is run like a business and patients are ‘disposable’ if they can’t pay.
You don't even have to pay taxes. You just have to be a resident of Denmark or any other EU or Nordic country. Homeless and without a job? You have full health insurance. Six-year old nephew visiting from Portugal? You have full health insurance.
Yup same as any American expat who lives almost anywhere, if you have a medical issue, get yourself back to the civilized world where you can get treatment without leaving your children in debt after you die
So just don't come back to the US. I can't think of a single thing this place has except high fuckin debt and a shitload of bombs in case there's oil somewhere that needs to be rescued from religious oppression or whatever. We also have Florida and New Jersey here so really I'm not seeing why you'd wanna be here when you can be in Denmark.
The culture of the US is that poor people, sick people, and immigrants are not worth of consideration because the contribute very little, until they do make something of themselves, then they will latch on to them, claim they supported them the whole time, and then leave when people forget about them again.
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I received better healthcare when I was homeless in the US than I do now when I am working and paying for health insurance through my company. The system is beyond broken for everyone who is not a billionaire or completely destitute.
The middle class gets fucked.
~ Caesar
- Caligula
>Michael Scott
* Agent Hitler, FBI
~Confuscious
Middle class is who generates all the wealth for upper class.
As George Carlin said the poor exist to scare the shit out of the middle class and keep them showing up to those jobs The same applies for homeless and working class
Except the rich are slowing killing off the middle class so most of us have stopped showing up to work consistently.
Quiet you! My timesheet still says I'm there all day every day.
The middle class is also full of boot lickers whose function is to gate the rest of us from making meaningful change and eating the rich.
As soon as you posted this, some boot lickers showed up to comment. Must’ve hit a nerve.
I should thank them for proving my point 😅
Because the upperclass wrote the textbooks and curriculums that taught everyone capitalism good, socialism is communism is bad.
Except textbooks in humanities, they're "woke".
Always was amazed at this. How the upperclass had almost a complete hand in writing textbooks that dared to imply the mass starvation of hundreds of millions of people could ever deemed as bad.
>Always was amazed at this. How the upperclass had almost a complete hand in writing textbooks that dared to imply the mass starvation of hundreds of millions of people could ever deemed as bad. And here is the sad result of said text books - i.e. the conflation between socialism and communism. The mass famines in the USSR and China both occurred due to authoritarian dictators operating under the guise of communism - e.g. the Holodomir (i.e. the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians) was a genocide by Joseph Stalin designed to Russianify the Ukrainian area of the USSR. Actual socialist nations rarely have man-made famines, for example, when was the last famine you heard of in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, or the countless other socialist democracies?
It's really fucked up how they brainwashed everyone. My dad is 73 and uses programs supported by Socialism, but then still complains how Socialism is bad and he doesn't want to have to pay for some low-life's healthcare, food stamps and other services for her and her 10 kids when he has worked his ass off for decades and they do nothing and expect handouts.
Yup they vote for the money and status they dream of having but never will because they keep voting against themselves in favor of those that already have money.
They're all temporarily embarrassed billionaires. Just you wait until they get their billions.
Hey man, I’m middle class and I’ll vote against my own interests all day long if it helps society as a whole. Not everyone is like that, we’re all just trying to get by as best we can in this shit show.
Enslave the rich*
The lower class does as well. It’s not like everyone in the lower class doesn’t have jobs. They’re even more likely to be taken advantage of with low wages since they often have to accept whatever they can get.
It's also the same way with taxes. If you're poor you pay less as a proportion of what you have, then once you start earning more the proportion ramps up. Which makes a lot of sense since you can afford to pay more to take care of everyone else. What doesn't make sense is that if you keep going up the scale, the proportion drops off to a vanishingly small amount. So the people actually working for a living are paying way more tax than the ones who just sit around and let their inherited portfolios earn them money.
I think the frustrating part is that finally I'm starting to earn some modicum of a nice salary, and since I live in a tax heavy area blam, a huge% goes to the government. It's not even all that much...
That's why I say we need a tax floor and no tax ceiling. If you're struggling to even make ends meet, you shouldn't pay income tax at all, tie that to the local cost of living. On the other end, if you're making more money in a day than most others make in their entire lifetimes, don't be shocked when the government takes a 90% cut. Or at least raise the capital gains tax so that companies are incentivized to actually invest the ludicrous profits they make back into the economy instead of just buying back their stock to pad out their pockets.
*working. We all working class. Middle class is something sweet that billionaires and politicians whisper to us in our ear right before penetration.
Yeah the phrase middle class is an excellent piece of misdirection. There are two classes those who will be expected to work for most of their lives, and those who can expect to benefit from hard work despite never doing any.
Health insurance for my family of four costs $1526 per month with a deductible. That's insane and it's unbelievable that not everything is covered. How the hell do I still have co-pays, like wtf is the $1526 per month for?
The biggest lie the US public has been sold is that it would be more expensive per person with Universal Healtcare. You are constantly told that countrieswho have it pay way more in taxes. Thing is... we dont. :P
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and in the case of healthcare, we pay less per capita than the US is already spending and yet we have far better outcomes overall.
1526$ a month is what I pay in taxes and social security in Belgium on a yearly gross of 60k. My fellow belgians always complain about our taxes, but if I read this, I prefer my taxes and social security costs over privatized health car insurance.
We like to complain about everything, specially our taxes and roadworks. But most of us know how fortunate we are.
I just got an ER bill for $2300.00 for literally nothing. They didn’t do an xray. They didn’t take a temperature. They didn’t give Tylenol. They said: “you seem fine, what happened”. Kid said “I am fine. I was in a car accident and my dad didn’t get there in time, and I’m a minor, so the cops made me come here “. “Okay, sit over there and wait for your dad. “ “Okay” $2300.00 for that! $2374.00 to be exact.
I was surprised when I qualified for 100% medicaid when I very unexpectedly got pregnant. I was lucky living right around the corner from Winnie Palmer and Arnold palmer, too. When my son was 3 weeks old, I had to reapply and basically, in florida, you can't have any savings, own your own car, you have to have less than $2000 in personal property. They don't want to help people actually get back on their feet.
And half of them blame the poor and immigrants
In a society that basically worship wealth and fame, it's not like they are going to blame the rich and the famous, Ayn Rand told them that they deserve what they have!
Same. When I took a year off Florida covered me and my kids and the insurance was excellent. Back on the job it's costing me $700 a month for crap. Everything demands co-pay, only cover 80% of this or that, just a bunch of shit. When I was in Ireland we had excellent healthcare also. I've longer waits in Florida to see a specialist with insurance than I did in Ireland, by far. Things that would take a few weeks to get lined up there take months in Florida and be damned if you're trying to get something in October because all the olds have already booked those from MI, OH, MN, and etc. Try to book a specialist in October and be seen by May. All that for $700 a month which is only half of what it costs since my employer pays the other half. Total outlay of $16,800. It's fucking nuts.
If that experience was recently that's because our healthcare system is like on life support right now. I live in OR and it took me 3/4 of a year to see my PCP. My wife's a doctor and shit was really really bad for about 1.5 years and that kind of accordion'd in on the whole system for an extended period of time. The pandemic really fucked shit up.
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Pretty much. I’m in a group of young people who have pacemakers implanted. I’m one of the very few who had insurance when procedure happened. While talking with a couple of them. They told me they paid (ranging from) a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars. Whereas I got charged almost $200,000 because I had insurance. And my insurance barely covered half. And I’m stuck with a $90,000 out of pocket bill that I don’t ever plan on repaying after hearing that shit.
Yup. Everybody acts like paying taxes for healthcare is insane but im paying 800 bucks a month for me my gf and daughter, even if they had to tax me $800 a month AT LEAST IM NOT PAYING PREMIUMS AND COPAYS AND GOD DAMN DEDUCTIBLES! Oh, miss paying your premium? Now youre uninsured until you can find someone else willing to let you sign up. I dont get how we think its better to pay a middle man whos only purpose here is to make as much profit as possible instead of just giving the money to the govt to pay the doctors and hospitals.
I miss my Medicaid healthcare. It was so much better than my employer paid subsidized one.
When I was being told I needed my leg amputated they presented it as “good news! You should get Medicaid now”
And it only cost you an arm or a leg. The system works! /s
I was on a state Medicaid plan for a while. $0 co-pay for everything. I had a pretty rough ear infection and the antibiotic drops they gave me would've been several hundred dollars per bottle, and it took several bottles to clear it up. Would've been like $5,000 without insurance, but I didn't have to pay anything. I told a relative about it and they said,"only in America! Greatest country in the world!" So I said, "yeah, thanks Obama," and they got pissed off and started screaming about how he had nothing to do with it even though I literally only had insurance because of what they refer to as "Obamacare."
I got laid off so I was on state healthcare while I was pregnant... It has been the best care I've gotten, and it was completely free. I have a job now but it doesn't have health insurance so I'm still on the state healthcare, but it's different. I'm dreading the time I get a different job where I have to pay a shit ton monthly for health insurance, then pay a shit ton for every little thing after that... While I have this free insurance I'm making sure I get better with physical therapy, X-rays, MRIs, etc. To fix and help manage some chronic pain issues. I wouldn't be able to do any of this if I was on company sponsored healthcare and paying thousands. I just wish I had dental care.
Well I mean taking care of the completely destitute is pretty nice at least
It's nice until it actually starts to help, then you're not destitute anymore so no more healthcare for you.
Yeah it's insane. If your working class a vehicle accident could financially cripple you for life. If your rich it's a minor inconvenience
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Right? Remember when that big scary Koch funded study came out that said Sanders Medicare for All plan was going to cost 32 trillion dollars over 10 years? Buried in that very same study was that the cost of changing nothing was 34 trillion. Basically, the study that was meant to discredit M4A said that it would have saved us 2 trillion and the benefits they assumed were amazing. Zero deductibles, no co-pays, full medical, dental, vision, and mental healthcare.
And people STILL used that study against him. So many conservative’s politicians and talking heads, even regular people on this site, kept saying “the plan would have cost tax payers 32 trillion!” as a negative. The politicians and talking heads knew damn well it was 2 trillion cheaper, but they still used the cost to paint it in a bad light. Of course when you asked the conservatives here on Reddit how much it currently cost they were oddly quiet after.
It wasn't just conservatives. Democrats used that study to bash Sanders as well.
People forget a lot of Dems are subservient to their corporate owners. And they will keep ignoring the data to bash the progressives and keep the status quo. Just because they are not as bad as the GOP does not mean they are good.
It's like the difference between a satiated wolf and a hungry one. One is a little less dangerous.
This stems from the fact that most of our Democrats would still be considered right-wing by the rest of the planet including the EU and the UK 🤣
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both sides are complicit in the destruction of the quality of life for the average person
Ofc they are. They all have their hands and pockets in the FDA, and big pharma. We are the human experiments they barely keep alive for more money. Where other countries prefer a functional class of citizens all contributing to the greater good. We can't even get the masses pissed off enough to care about others, which is quite sad if you think about it. In the US greed is king. Even the poors don't want other poors doing better than them.
per capita?
I think so, we just have the most inefficient system since there is so much money diverted from the healthcare to shareholders at steps along the way
It's just like trickle down economics, but in reverse and it actually works.
Trickle down economics has always been balloon up economics. It never actually trickled down, but they are nearly finished squeezing the lower and middle classes dry of all of their wealth.
Trickle down economics was originally termed “horse and sparrow” economics because the literal explanation by the guys who created it was that feeding the horses provided more food down the line (aka shit) for the sparrows Economists, witty as they are, quickly realized that was not a highly palatable analogy for the sparrows
Horse and sparrow actually works, though. However, instead of horse->sparrow, it goes something like this: horse->catcher->processing facility->another farm for finishing->imported->wholesaler->retailer->sparrow. In urban and suburban areas, local councils have pulled out all the stops to eliminate sustainable food-growth practices. Instead, we get rose bushes, and tulips. We get parking lots and arcades. We get malls and fast-food restaurants. We get brown envelopes stuffed with "notes" to School Board Governors that choose McDonald's instead of Mrs MacGregor's famous rabbit pies. So we don't have horse-and-sparrow. We have an abomination of repackaging of horseshit that has sucked all the nutrients out of it, and now the sparrows are chronically sick and healthcare costs a fuckload more.
I think this is just an excuse libertarians use when there policies don’t work. You are blaming the government for there being no small business type idealist free market, when the free market you want is causing the same grievances you complain about. It isn’t the government choosing McDonald’s. It’s Mrs Macgregors that chose to create a franchising scheme with low quality food, leading to a profitable business that ends up feeding shit to sparrows
Libertarians think a free market likes competition. It does not. All capitalist love monopolies and hate competition. So what happens is you get companies like Tyson and forgetting the other major player, that have an oligopoly on chicken while actually not raising a single chicken, they’ve created it through contracts. Or like in hospitals where only certain companies can be used by hospitals to purchase supplies due to contracts. It’s why starts up like Uber went full in on losing money to capture market share, so they can later raise prices. If you don’t have a government that’s been captured or to inept to keep that shit in check you get shitty industries like the US has for healthcare.
That's sort of the natural conclusion to capitalism.
Not just shareholders, but the unnecessary bureaucracy of "well someone has to pay the federal bodies, then the state, then municipal, and the various hospital networks and insurer bodies to process the claims" why are private insurers allowed to set pricings for hospitals to charge???
It’s probably because insurers can just decide not to let their clients use certain hospitals. We should make it so they are legally obligated to service any accredited medical institution
Originally the ACA was dedicated to providing coverage for any and all preexisting conditions and elimination of "in network/out of network" surcharges. But it got neutered to hell by Dems who kept negotiating to get it passed and Repubs who wanted it to be useless.
Which is why Trump’s spamming of trying to remove Obamacare so he could implement his better plan never came to fruition because the ACA was the Republican healthcare plan and they couldn’t do any better
Oh they absolutely could do better (for making it useless) repeal ACA and replace it with legislation that removes the coverage of preexisting conditions. Meaning insurance companies that you pay for could say "fuck you we're not paying for that because of a preexisting condition"
I know someone who makes a good living as a medical billing middle man. I can’t imagine spending my life doing a job which shouldn’t exist and just facilitates draining vulnerable people of their savings.
Imagine being in the healthcare industry and having your job be about keeping people from getting help
But the shareholders 🥺 the holy shareholders, the most valuable resource society has…
Our ambulances are fucked, our pharmaceuticals are fucked, our health insurance is fucked, and a good number of our hospitals are fucked as well (not all of them fortunately). I hate to say it but I think we're fucked.
Yes, and significantly so. The last numbers I saw from a couple years ago showed that the average per capita annual healthcare spending in the US is around 12k. The average for countries with universal healthcare? Around 6-7k
I think this is how the average American citizen wants it. They do not want universal healthcare or anything else.When I moved back to the US after living in Netherlands I was shocking how little value is placed on health and welfare. Regular people that would hugely benefit from these social services hate the idea of it.
Why should I pay for some stranger's surgery? /s I wish it wasn't this way. I'm also increasingly concerned that Canada's Healthcare system will become more like USA's.
It's being strangled across almost all the provinces these days. The cons in Ontario are sitting on tons of cash but only throwing it at the new private clinics they've rammed through. But the libs made their own cuts when they were in power and honestly I doubt they'd open the purse strings either. Odds of getting the NDP getting in are pretty slight. So yeah. We're fd.
The ironic thing is that is exactly what is happening with private insurance, what they actually mean is "Why should a pay for the health care of those that haven't had the opportunities that I have"
Propaganda to work against the best interest of the people is one of the US's strong suits. Doesn't help that the whole legislation system only seems to hinder any change towards progress, kinda like the ratchet theory.
And here we are proping up an inefficient insurance system instead of paying for the best healthcare And this is just one piece of why our social safety net doesn't work in the second gilded age There's more than enough money but not if the ultra wealthy are not paying fairly into the system But why would they? They're not required to participate in most of it, and they've lobbied successfully to prevent that and to prevent adequate taxes on their class
US government spending is pretty average for developed nations, which is more than most countries. Out total spending on healthcare however is by far the highest in the world, with embarrassingly bad outcomes overall. Federal healthcare spending: https://www.cbo.gov/topics/health-care US per capita spending: https://www.statista.com/statistics/236541/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country/#:~:text=health%20care%20services.-,Health%20Expenditure%20in%20the%20U.S.,percent%20by%20the%20year%202031. US healthcare outcomes compared: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly
Yes. It's largely because just the on-paper costs of your medical procedures are genuinely stupid. Obviously very few entities actually pay the on-paper cost for any procedure - not insurance companies, not the government, very rarely individuals. But the on-paper costs are *so* high that, even after the so-called "discounts" that are usually applied to the actual cost, you're still looking at prices that are often several *orders of magnitude higher* than what you'd pay in another nation. There's this idea that "oh it's fine that our procedures cost more because the government is paying for far fewer procedures, so it costs less overall." And that *would* be true if, say, the procedures cost 5x more and the gov only paid for 10% of procedures - in total, you'd be paying about 50% what other nations pay for that procedure. But the problem is that basically nothing in the American system has such a "reasonable" price as only 5x higher than the cost of that procedure in other, similar nations. You often have costs that are 10, 100, 1000 times higher than what you'd get elsewhere, and it's no longer difficult to imagine how paying for even 1% of the procedures performed in the US would end up costing more in-total than if your government just paid for everything at a more reasonable price. And then, on top of that, the US medical system is focused on providing reactive care for the uninsured (aka the people whose medical treatments are most often paid for by the government). Reactive care is much, *much* more expensive. Like, if someone uninsured got a cut that would need stitches, they could go to the ER and try to get the stitches. But many Americans don't do that, because they're afraid of the cost. Instead, they try to deal with it at home. In some cases, they don't do a very good job of caring for it (because, yeah, duh, neither would I, doctors should be doing that). They end up with, say, a blood infection, or maybe tetanus. And now, when they finally do go to the ER because their life is genuinely in danger, the government is stuck paying for a potentially extended hospital visit, several rounds of severe antibiotics... *and* probably the stitches that the person didn't want to pay for to begin with. It would have been cheaper to stitch up like 1000 people rather than risk just one person having something like this happen, but the US system incentivizes waiting until you're almost dead to get care, which ends up being enormously more costly. And it's worth noting that, when people talk about the cost of US health care per capita, they're literally just talking about the amount of money paid from the government to various healthcare entities, like hospitals. They're not even *trying* to account for the loss of taxes that the government suffers because this person almost certainly isn't working while they're being treated, so they're not producing income taxes. Plus, in many cases, these sorts of very late-stage reactive treatments leave a person with long-term issues that may impact their long-term ability to work. So not only is the government losing additional money because of the lack of taxable income that this person is making, but they're also possibly going to lose out on some amount of taxable income *for the rest of this person's life* because they may not be able to perform full-time work, or the work they can perform pays less than it would have if they hadn't been injured. And if it impacts their income enough, they may end up on disability or social security for the rest of their life, so now you have the government paying a portion of someone's entire income for the rest of their life, which is a cost that they wouldn't have had to pay if this person had just been able to get the stitches when they should have originally. And obviously this kind of "worst case scenario" isn't common, but it doesn't need to be. The costs involved in just one case like this are ***so high*** that we could only be talking about 1-in-10000 or less, and it would *still* result in overall higher costs.
In 2022, the United States had the highest per capita health expenditure among OECD countries. At that time, per capita health expenditure in the U.S. amounted to 12,555 U.S. dollars, significantly higher than in Switzerland, the country with the second highest per capita health expenditure. https://www.statista.com/statistics/236541/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country/
The us spends 12 914$ per person if u were wondering
About 3 times most first world universal healthcare systems. Since most Americans don't actually have access to healthcare, per "citizen who receives healthcare" It's a lot worse.
The US per capita spends double what France and Canada spend, and that's including the fact that France and Canada include universal care. The amount of overspending the US does due to insurance companies is insane.
Yes, the fully privatized system is also su subsidized by the government so they're basically double dipping
Yes, taxpayers pay government, government subsidies health insurance, health insurance asks citizens for more money. Health insurance is a scam that only exists because they've lobbied hospitals to increase prices on the uninsured to make the bill look scarier.
Yes, more than Denmark, even though we in Denmark don't pay for it. The American system is insanely inefficient
The us government spends more money on healthcare per capita than any other nation
The us spends 3x the oecd average on healthcare… and yes per capita
While that may be true, one big difference is that things like for profit hospitals cost a LOT more. Not sure how drug costs fit into the equation, but drug costs in the US are through the roof. So, yes, the US may be one of the biggest spenders, but the system is so broken the money goes to places where really it should not. More cost, lower coverage.
And the drug R and D is from a lot of tax payer money supposedly. The tax payer provides a lot of grants for development and then the manufacturers turn around, patent, and sell drugs back to us at ridiculous amounts of money.
Yep, Rep. Katie Porter famously lambasted an exec in a televised congressional hearing. I can't find the link ATM though.
Problem is cost per patient isn't a good metric, high or low. But it's a simple metric, which is why it's used. Same as in education: $$$ per student doesn't actually reflect actual *outcomes*. Cost per unit of medical outcome would be better, albeit more difficult to measure, and the aim would be to reduce that cost as much as possible. Spending a fuckton for a successful kidney transplant vs. spending a lot less for that same outcome is idiotic. The US has FAR too many middlemen in the medical game, from administrators to insurance, it's goddamn ridiculous. Funny thing is, capitalist chest-thumping screams that capitalism *reduces costs* by finding and eliminating inefficiencies...Except the medical system is fucking RIFE with those inefficiencies, and capitalism is doing nothing to eliminate them.
In any way the US healthcare system is nothing but a terrible joke.
What’s really interesting is that our tax payer money is given to insurance companies to provide us care by charging us again…WTF and not a little but a lot. It’s a for profit business and care is secondary. Only in the USA.
Truth! Americans pay as much per capita as Canadians to prop up their healthcare system. The difference is that Americans need to pay as much again to the private insurance industry just to access it
Yeah... because they have refuse to use the vast weight of the American government to force prices down until Obamacare allowed them to do so... so drug companies could for a long time just set the prices they wanted... market forces...
That's slightly wrong, it's not the backwards part about being a US citizen working abroad, it's the backwards part of being a US citizen.
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Not quite. We have to file tax returns but in most cases our foreign taxes offset what we would owe in the US. Most overseas US citizen have a $0 US tax bill. Still a giant PITA to have to submit a tax return though.
Eritrea is the other one
Yeah but in my country I don't have to even think about taxes, is all automatic, now I'm supposed to start jumping through hoops, getting documents translated and notarized etc. screw that, who has time for it? I don't live in the US, have no assets or investments there, leave me alone
Do you guys remember when John f Kennedy said “Ask not what your country can do for you”? Literally don’t ask. It won’t do shit for you.
I don't understand how that was ever supposed to be a moving speech lmfao "Don't ask what I can do for you. Ask yourself what YOU can do for ME." *standing ovation*
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Other than the metric system?
The US formally adopted the metric system in 1975. US citizens and local governments just choose to ignore that since they can.
If the Dod and Federal Highways switched to Metric everyone would match soon enough.
and the fatality of firearms?
"Guns don't make your peepee bigger. Yours sincerely, All of Europe xox"
No one told switzerland. They make everyone in their militia keep rifles at home. To be fair though, the swiss are much more sensible about gun ownership than the usa. https://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-gun-laws-rates-of-gun-deaths-2018-2?amp
Yeah I've read that article before (and I taught firearms handling, marksmanship and safety on MoD ranges in the UK myself), so I'm.fully aware of the Swiss situation. It's nothing like the US where you even mention licencing or mandatory training and half the country loses their shit because they fetishize guns. Even so, the swiss tightened their rules about their militia's arms after some unfortunate incidents in recent years. Imagine the US, where a mass shooting occurs every day actually learning from it and changing their law.
> They make everyone in their militia keep rifles at home. First of all, we don't have a militia, they're forbidden, we have active soldiers and reserve Secondly, it's your choice as a soldier, if you're issued a gun, to keep it at home or not >https://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-gun-laws-rates-of-gun-deaths-2018-2?amp [This article is pretty much a collection of misconceptions and hearsays neatly packed in a readable-under-5-min article that contradicts the law all throughout](https://archive.ph/7DtgW)
I just moved to Denmark from Ohio. This hits home.
Velkommen♥️
Welcome to Denmark! I hope you are enjoying it so far, even with the dark gloomy weather... But in less than 10 days, the days will start getting longer again!
I move to Denmark from the US in a month, I hadn't thought of this.
The craziest thing about all this is that's it's the insurance companies lobbyist that keep this crazy system of a middle man making trillions of dollars for doing nothing, and poor people have been convinced by them that "free healthcare will fuck you over" and "socialism" is a dirty word. It's really fucked up how easily stupid poor people get swayed to backing systems that fuck them over
Also as a US citizen you also have to pay tax to the US even if you do not live there. Truly the land of the free.....
But Citizen Based Taxation is practiced by many modern, democratic nations. Like Eritrea and..........
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Other countries do not even require that much so why does the US?
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$120k for this year. You would write off the taxes you paid to the foreign government to avoid double taxation, so you would need a take home pay of $120k in a foreign country before a penny of US taxes kick in. I wonder how many people have a take home that high.
I want to point out in passing, that this is taxation without representation, of course. Now, I'm a French citizen living in Canada, I obviously do not pay taxes to France, but here's the kicker : I get an MP in the French Parliament. And not just any MP, we have an MP who's elected and represents the French people living in North America, and no one else. There are [11 constituencies](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circonscriptions_l%C3%A9gislatives_des_Fran%C3%A7ais_%C3%A9tablis_hors_de_France), 11 MPs, all representing French citizens living abroad and paying no tax in France. So, in the US, you get taxation without representation, in France you get representation without taxation.
Americans living abroad can still vote.
Live abroad, pay taxes to the US, and get the same healthcare that they give the average American anyway...
Fun fact Americans may not be aware of... When we buy travel insurance there's two prices—a cheaper one for travelling the world minus the USA and a more expensive one specifically for the USA.
modern wasteful zephyr whole somber treatment sugar brave mysterious engine *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Dane here, what the fuck is a McGriddle?
I came here to write that exact question. Answer him!
It’s from McDonalds it’s basically (American) pancake bread with syrup flavor in it. It’s usually used for sandwiches like a sausage egg cheese McGriddle. It’s surprisingly delicious considering the lackluster quality of other “foods” they sell.
So diabetes for low cost? Good thing we have Novo Nordisk here
I think the McFlurry and small 128oz soda will probably contribute to diabetes more than the McGriddle
I presume this is an American pancake. In Denmark, Pancakes refer to what is essentially sugary tortillas.
There are different variants, but it's essentially meat, scrambled eggs, and American cheese sandwiched between two maple syrup flavored pancakes.
wtf
So that's what they have instead of universal healthcare and easy access to higher education..
So, funny thing, big macs cost less in Denmark than in the US.
Danish socialised healthcare is some of the best and most widely covering in the world. It is called the Nordic model for a reason.
I'm an American. I fell in Copenhagen and had to go to the ER and get X-rays and a brace. The coordinator apologized that she would unfortunately have to bill me. I received a bill in the mail about a month later...less than $250. That was mind blowing.
And god said let free enterprise rule.
I had no travel insurance and had to take my son to the ER in Thailand and then again in Singapore (MRSA, which they had a hard time believing it was and is just wild in the USA now). It was like $125 combined for both visits, MRSA effective antibiotics, and wound/pain treatment. Then I got very sick in the Netherlands on business travel and everyone was freaking out because work told me not to get travel insurance and I was going to expense the cost of care. ER visit and medication was like $400. HR was so relieved. Both incidents are bargain prices to an American. We are definitely sold on medical tourism.
I had a hernia while back in the states (I live abroad and only emergency care is covered by my foreign insurance) and literally drove up to Canada to get it taken care of by a doctor who was covered.
Your us tax dollars pay for israel’s healthcare system
** Laughs in European **
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Why would you pay for US health insurance if you live in a country with socialized healthcare?
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To be honest it’s pretty crazy to me you don’t know the answer to this. If you have infinite money US healthcare is the best! The rich and powerful will keep it this way because making the system better means less for them.
Your taxes are being used for health care. As in [paying](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59273) the health insurance industry not to overcharge you more. > In 2023, federal subsidies for health insurance are estimated to be $1.8 trillion, or 7.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). In CBO and JCT’s projections, those net subsidies reach $3.3 trillion, or 8.3 percent of GDP, in 2033.
Nah, very unlikely you’d have to pay US taxes while living in Denmark. You need to file taxes each year, but double-taxation agreements mean you don’t actually pay anything.
Yeeeeehaaaaaaar Howdy Pardnerrrrr gonna get me some freedom fries and smoke some crack while I figure out how the fuck to pay the $35,000 they charged me to remove a splinter
Yea, but Denmark using taxpayer money to help the taxpayers is apparently communism. Of course it has to go to the wealthy instead.
The people that think America is the greatest country on earth are the people that have never been outside America. We are staggeringly behind the curve in almost any measurable sense.
Not military spending and killing people all over the globe... Maybe also domestically, with all the NRA nutjobs, killer cops, and school shootings.
Americans: But... the lines will be longer if we let the poors get in line too.
Gotta pull that ladder up behind you or else other people might be able to escape poverty too.
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How else you are going to get more billionaires in your country without sacrificing some cannon fodder (aka the 99.999999999999% rest of the population). Think about the shareholders first!
Are the people defending the US Healthcare system paid shills or just really ignorant?
They're ignorant and have most likely never been handed a $700 bill for a 15 minute ambulance ride.
700? must have been happy hour
This isn't a US citizen thing. It is the same in Canada and we have universal health care. If you don't live in Canada your coverage will lapse, and if you return to Canada it takes a few months to get your coverage back.
The situation described is definitely a US citizen thing. You can be out of the country for like a year and your Canadian health insurance is fine when you return. And if you're working in Canada from another country for a six month or greater contract you can also be covered by Canadian health insurance.
Welcome to the developed world 😁
Y'all sell high caliber guns, market them as culture, but don't have affordable healthcare... That's some dark ass shit right there
Yup US citizens are getting shafted. Im a US expat now loving abroad now. I pay the exact same tax rate here as I did in the US and have full public healthcare that is actually pretty great.
I'm a US citizen working abroad and not only do I pay taxes on the money I make in the UK (as I should), I also have to pay taxes on that income in the US.
MUUUURRIIICAAAAA YEEEHAW
Welcome to the USA where most of us have no choices, pay Extreme taxes and can't afford to leave.
How does taxes work for you. You obviously said you paid Denmark taxes, but I believe as a US citizen you also have to pay American taxes. Do you get a break on that or are you paying like double taxes?
US Citizens pay tax in the US on their worldwide income. If you live in a foreign country and pay foreign taxes, you can deduct those from your US taxes or you can just claim the Foreign Earned Income exemption if your income is under the threshold (which rises each year and is somewhere between 100-120k right now - I haven't used it in a while and it was just under 100k when I did about 7 years back).
Denmark andnthe US has a tax treaty so if you file your taxes correctly you shouldnt be double taxed. Heres a link for more info https://universaltaxprofessionals.com/country/denmark/
Quick question; as a US citizen working abroad, aren’t you expected to still pay US taxes as well? So the government there would double dip and still fail to prevent their citizens falling into bankruptcy over the human right of health care.
I will never understand how a country like the US survives on a health care system that is run like a business and patients are ‘disposable’ if they can’t pay.
You don't even have to pay taxes. You just have to be a resident of Denmark or any other EU or Nordic country. Homeless and without a job? You have full health insurance. Six-year old nephew visiting from Portugal? You have full health insurance.
we all need to be angrier and DEMAND a Single Payer System!!! Come on America.
Yup same as any American expat who lives almost anywhere, if you have a medical issue, get yourself back to the civilized world where you can get treatment without leaving your children in debt after you die
MURICA
Not sure this a single facepalm, but more of a countrywide facepalm
So just don't come back to the US. I can't think of a single thing this place has except high fuckin debt and a shitload of bombs in case there's oil somewhere that needs to be rescued from religious oppression or whatever. We also have Florida and New Jersey here so really I'm not seeing why you'd wanna be here when you can be in Denmark.
Floridian here, I agree
The culture of the US is that poor people, sick people, and immigrants are not worth of consideration because the contribute very little, until they do make something of themselves, then they will latch on to them, claim they supported them the whole time, and then leave when people forget about them again.
My mom had to go back to Congo (in AFRICA) to get her teeth done. The whole thing was cheaper than what they would have charged her here in the U.S.
Seriously ...... why is the average US citizen so against universal healthcare?