I do, through my employer. I think I pay $10/week for me + wife + 3 children. But there are agonizingly complex details, e.g.:
- some medicines are virtually free, some are $100/3 months
- copays at doctors
- annual family deductible
- in-network vs. out-of-network
- the annual ritual of choosing from among the 4 or 5 plans my employer offers and then trying to decide which is optimal.
I think the problems with our system are fairly obvious:
- ridiculous litigation drives up costs and induces defensive medicine (ordering extra tests to defend against malpractice, the cost of lawsuits in new medicines, extra trials and regulation, etc.)
- lack of market pressure on health care companies does not lower prices. For example, why is the same medication cheaper in Canada vs. the US.
- we do have very fancy treatments now compared to 50 years ago. And of course, everyone wants them. For example, there's a new hepatitis C drug that costs $1000 a day for 90 days. If you have hep C you want it, because it cures 90% of patients, but the cost is astronomical.
- people without insurance use the most expensive services (e.g., ER)
- we have insane knee-jerk laws like HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc. that jack up the costs of everything
- and of course, the government puts its regulatory/buffoonish hands in everything
Also, people smoke, eat bad food, drink, etc. but that is true of humans globally. It's expensive to treat heart disease and diabetes - pretty cheap to eat vegetables and quit smoking. Americans actually smoke less than many countries (#51), drink less, and have much lower environmental pollution than many, but we have higher obesity.
I hate the American system because it is strangely tied to employment and it grossly distorts corporate earnings and behaviors. Every exec I know is forced to become a minor expert on health care law. American companies have to manage health care benefits for employees, which takes management time and attention. It's a relic of a more formal union/employer world of the 1930s.
I work for a big Fortune 500 company that at one time offered comprehensive health care benefits for free. Then copays and monthly fees came and every year, the cost goes up and the benefits grow more expensive. I don't blame my employer - I blame the reality that health care costs grow at double-digit rates every year.
Of course, the problem is that the alternative is giving it to the government to manage, and public sector employees are universally idiots.
Oh yeah, no healthcare here. Employer doesn't offer it. I can't / don't want to afford it out of pocket and don't want to be forced to have it either. Ideally for me, I should be able to go visit a doctor if needed and pay cash out of pocket without it being insane. If I need emergency treatment to an injury, ideally it wouldn't bankrupt me. But hey, that's not how the world works.
Are you in the US? Honestly, dude, you're an appendectomy away from bankruptcy. That's the sad truth. I would carry something.
In this day and age it's ridiculous to think that in some countries, if you are seriously ill or injured you have to PAY someone to fix you, make you better, cure your illness, stop you from dying.
In a world where billions are traded every day for consumables and millions are given to charities there should be no country, anywhere, that requires payment or insurance from patients in order to be treated.
There's no country where healthcare is free. It can't be because it costs money - medicine, people, etc. You pay for it either through taxes or insurance premiums. Yes, you have to PAY someone to fix you because doctors don't work for free. The only discussion is who's paying that doctor - either the government takes money from you at gunpoint (aka taxes) or there's an insurance scheme you pay into.
I think there's a misunderstanding that some US citizens don't have health insurance. This is not the case - even prisoners have health care, you can buy it on the market, there are zillions of programs for the poor, old people get Medicare, there's Medicaid, etc. It's just a question of how much it costs and what it covers. People with "good" insurance (which infuriatingly tend to be public sector employees whose insurance is paid for through people's tax dollars) pay less for their care, while people with "bad" insurance pay for more.
