Healthcare in the US vs. the U.K

[Noodlebear]

We do get taxed a fair bit here for all our different services but even so , I love the NHS (and not just because it pays my wages ). In discussions like this the quality of care often gets brought up, there have been a lot of controversies within the NHS but ultimately - you can opt to go private if there's something you feel that strongly about and that's fine. I think it's great that it's a choice though, you don't have to fork out another large chunk of money and no matter what, you are entitled to some sort of healthcare.

 

[babybrums]

I continue to be in absolute awe at how much my fellow Americans are paying for things.

We pay $300 total for medical and dental a month. We have a $100.00 deducible each.... and that's it. I don't work for the government, and every employer I've had has had a very similar plan (or plans there are a few I could choose from).

And someone mentioned pink eye. I'd have to pay $25 for a co-pay to be seen and about $10 for the prescription. I know this because this just happened to my DH about 3-4 weeks ago. Even if I went to a Target optical center (or Walmart) the fee to be seen without insurance is like $50, and then $15 for the prescription.

I just don't understand where or how people are getting thousands of dollars in bills, $10k deductible plans, only 70% of their procedures covered, etc.

The only way I've seen this happen is if you go PPO vs HMO. Great example. My sister had a monsterous kidney stone that had to be lazer blasted a few years back. She unfortunately gets these a lot (no idea why she's prone to them). In the years past she had a HMO (100% covered the bills), then she got talked into getting a PPO so she could chose which doctor she could go to instead of like she had done with the HMO. Her bill with the PPO? $7,000.00. So in cases like THAT, ok...I feel that was a stupid idea for her to go with a PPO. But that is an example of some astronomical medical bill that someone could pay. She switched back to HMOs after that. lol

You have a very generous employer. Coverage for our family is $890/month. It covers nothing but well visits until we reach our $3000/$6000 deductible, and then we have a $6000/$12000 out of pocket.

I've only had one employer in my 12 years of working that paid 100% of my premium. Since then the cheapest it's been is $300 - and that's just for me!

 

[Rhio92]

I love our NHS. We are seriously blessed in this country. Lately I have been seeing my GP every few weeks. When I first got ill in November, my mum rang up the doctors panicking late afternoon, and I was seen within the hour.
Connor has eczema and it's amazing that he can be seen and treated without me having to worry about how much it will cost. There's been a couple of occasions where I was concerned about Connor being ill, and we've been able to get to the GP and/or a&e, including use of the ambulance without paying at the point of care. Each time Connor turned out to be fine, but at least we had the option of getting him checked out and got peace of mind. The system has it's faults. The NHS puts student nurses through university which I have mixed feelings about. But we are very very lucky here. The American system scares me.

 

[Fergie]

If i'd have my 3 kids in the US i'd be bankrupt. They were all high risk pregnancies & deliveries.

I love my NHS. They've taken care of me since the day I was born with dodgy feet & hearing. They take care of me now with my chronic pancreatitis. I see my consultant 4 times a year and don't even pay for my prescriptions, mind you no one does here . My son sees one of the best paeds ortho consultants in Scotland for his talipes and has done since he was 3 days old. If this had happened anywhere else we would have been struggling to live day to day just to pay for his treatment.
I know a few mums in the US who cannot afford to see a talipes specialist for their child. They go wherever they are allowed by their insurance and the result of that is their child isn't treated properly and relapses. The cost of boots & bar is ridiculously high. In the UK it's £300 for them and you need them basically every 3 months. I know my son will eventually walk and he will continue to have the best care and all thanks to the NHS and Aneurin Bevan.

 

[hayz_baby]

If i'd have my 3 kids in the US i'd be bankrupt. They were all high risk pregnancies & deliveries.

I love my NHS. They've taken care of me since the day I was born with dodgy feet & hearing. They take care of me now with my chronic pancreatitis. I see my consultant 4 times a year and don't even pay for my prescriptions, mind you no one does here . My son sees one of the best paeds ortho consultants in Scotland for his talipes and has done since he was 3 days old. If this had happened anywhere else we would have been struggling to live day to day just to pay for his treatment.
I know a few mums in the US who cannot afford to see a talipes specialist for their child. They go wherever they are allowed by their insurance and the result of that is their child isn't treated properly and relapses. The cost of boots & bar is ridiculously high. In the UK it's £300 for them and you need them basically every 3 months. I know my son will eventually walk and he will continue to have the best care and all thanks to the NHS and Aneurin Bevan.

My son has talipes too.. We receive his ortho shoes as his consultant believes they are important to prevent relapse as well as his boots and bars. He has had a second set of bar and has had as many shoes as any other child and his treatment has always gone well and his consultant is very happy with his progress and always has been. Lord knows how much tht would cost in the us. Again he sees an extremely talented consultant who really does know what he's talking about and genuinely cares for his treatment. We see him for regular check ups every three months as well as seeing a separate orthotist to get his feet measured for his shoes. His shoes are even quite funky tbh too!

 

[Fergie]

If i'd have my 3 kids in the US i'd be bankrupt. They were all high risk pregnancies & deliveries.

I love my NHS. They've taken care of me since the day I was born with dodgy feet & hearing. They take care of me now with my chronic pancreatitis. I see my consultant 4 times a year and don't even pay for my prescriptions, mind you no one does here . My son sees one of the best paeds ortho consultants in Scotland for his talipes and has done since he was 3 days old. If this had happened anywhere else we would have been struggling to live day to day just to pay for his treatment.
I know a few mums in the US who cannot afford to see a talipes specialist for their child. They go wherever they are allowed by their insurance and the result of that is their child isn't treated properly and relapses. The cost of boots & bar is ridiculously high. In the UK it's £300 for them and you need them basically every 3 months. I know my son will eventually walk and he will continue to have the best care and all thanks to the NHS and Aneurin Bevan.

My son has talipes too.. We receive his ortho shoes as his consultant believes they are important to prevent relapse as well as his boots and bars. He has had a second set of bar and has had as many shoes as any other child and his treatment has always gone well and his consultant is very happy with his progress and always has been. Lord knows how much tht would cost in the us. Again he sees an extremely talented consultant who really does know what he's talking about and genuinely cares for his treatment. We see him for regular check ups every three months as well as seeing a separate orthotist to get his feet measured for his shoes. His shoes are even quite funky tbh too!

Another talipes mummy . How do you get on with the bnbs at night ?. Jnr is a nightmare and doesn't sleep that great at all. Are they the pedro boots you have ?. Jnr has atypical talipes, so we know we're going to have to get either pedro boots or handmade shoes for him. Bit of a bummer, but we've started a shoe fund already for him .

 

[hayz_baby]

Yes we are in piedros.. They are quite funky looking.. We have red ones that look like converse high tops folded down with the British flag on them! We have been told we will probably be wearing them till he is in school.
Lo has bilateral talipes. Boots and bars at night recently has been hit and miss.. Right now he is very much aware he wears his "special night time shoes" and we have had some issues with him not sleeping well and them hurting his feet recently where we have Ben bak and forth to his consultant about it. Right now we are doubling up his socks. He is in a normal bed now too and he doesn't get out of bed when he wakes up and doesn't make much noise so doesn't let us know he's awake and has had the odd accident in bed where he just doesn't tell us he's awake. But he's not to bad right now tbh. His old cot bed is completely scuffed dented and marked and so is the wall by his bed too. I remember for months when we first got them and he was sleeping in a co the would move bang the boots and bar against the cot and wake up.. Or it would just wake me up most times.. I was soo close to going to b n q and buying some drain insulation!!!! How's ur lo with bnb at night? X

Eta have u also thought of start rite shoes? As long as his consultant gives him the ok when not in piedros I will probably buy those.. They look more supportive at the heel. Did ur lo have a tendontomy? Mine did x

 

[Fergie]

Yes we are in piedros.. They are quite funky looking.. We have red ones that look like converse high tops folded down with the British flag on them! We have been told we will probably be wearing them till he is in school.
Lo has bilateral talipes. Boots and bars at night recently has been hit and miss.. Right now he is very much aware he wears his "special night time shoes" and we have had some issues with him not sleeping well and them hurting his feet recently where we have Ben bak and forth to his consultant about it. Right now we are doubling up his socks. He is in a normal bed now too and he doesn't get out of bed when he wakes up and doesn't make much noise so doesn't let us know he's awake and has had the odd accident in bed where he just doesn't tell us he's awake. But he's not to bad right now tbh. His old cot bed is completely scuffed dented and marked and so is the wall by his bed too. I remember for months when we first got them and he was sleeping in a co the would move bang the boots and bar against the cot and wake up.. Or it would just wake me up most times.. I was soo close to going to b n q and buying some drain insulation!!!! How's ur lo with bnb at night? X

Eta have u also thought of start rite shoes? As long as his consultant gives him the ok when not in piedros I will probably buy those.. They look more supportive at the heel. Did ur lo have a tendontomy? Mine did x

Harris has bilateral too, pretty severe atypical but they have slowly come round to a "normal" foot shape. He had his tenotomy at 4 months old and then back into plasters til he was about 6 months. I can't wait to get him nighttime only, but that's going to be a long way off. I gave up last night turning him around in his cot as he loves to batter his feet off the bars too . I never thought of the insulation thing, may have to send the OH off to buy some . This was his feet about 6 casts in. Its amazing how much his feet have changed now, I just wish they weren't as tiny . Still it could always be worse . Sorry OP off on a tangent

 

[MommyJogger]

I continue to be in absolute awe at how much my fellow Americans are paying for things.

We pay $300 total for medical and dental a month. We have a $100.00 deducible each.... and that's it. I don't work for the government, and every employer I've had has had a very similar plan (or plans there are a few I could choose from).

And someone mentioned pink eye. I'd have to pay $25 for a co-pay to be seen and about $10 for the prescription. I know this because this just happened to my DH about 3-4 weeks ago. Even if I went to a Target optical center (or Walmart) the fee to be seen without insurance is like $50, and then $15 for the prescription.

I just don't understand where or how people are getting thousands of dollars in bills, $10k deductible plans, only 70% of their procedures covered, etc.

The only way I've seen this happen is if you go PPO vs HMO. Great example. My sister had a monsterous kidney stone that had to be lazer blasted a few years back. She unfortunately gets these a lot (no idea why she's prone to them). In the years past she had a HMO (100% covered the bills), then she got talked into getting a PPO so she could chose which doctor she could go to instead of like she had done with the HMO. Her bill with the PPO? $7,000.00. So in cases like THAT, ok...I feel that was a stupid idea for her to go with a PPO. But that is an example of some astronomical medical bill that someone could pay. She switched back to HMOs after that. lol

I was about to post the exact same sentiment. I know, for at least some population of people (obviously not everyone and maybe not even the majority), it's a blatant lack of researching their options. My coworker is under the exact same contract as my husband and I, we work the exact same job, get the exact same paycheck, etc. They went with the plan our contract is auto-enrolled in. They pay $500/mo (more than a quarter of their pay) for insurance and have a several thousand dollar deductible after which there's 90% coverage of most medical procedures. We sat down with our list of insurance options and called each company for literature on each one of them and enrolled in the plan that costs us $100-150/mo/person with a $75 deductible and 100% coverage of most procedures. If we have pink eye and we've payed our $75 for the year, we don't get charged anything.
When my parents (staunch republicans in lower class income bracket) were shopping for insurance ala ACA, all I heard about for days was "Obama this" and "Obama that" and "stealing our hard-earned money", then I sat down with them over skype and in 10 minutes found them a plan that was hundreds of dollars cheaper/mo than what they were paying pre-ACA with a low deductible and good coverage and they're going to pay thousands less this year than previous years. I just want to shake people sometimes.
I'm a huge single-payer advocate, but believe there are a lot of other ways to achieve healthcare availability improvement. I'm sick of hearing about how people don't want to pay for others' health problems. Insurance companies make sick amounts of money and the welfare of children, the old, and the infirm should not be in the hands of far-removed, overpayed assholes who care way too much about their bottom line. Give insurance to the government, let them run a more affordable, moderately less-lucrative system, and use it to pay down the national debt and fund the less commercially-appealing medical research while you increase health care availability. Then if we could just stop electing uber-rich people who have no idea how their constituents live day-to-day, we'd be a lot closer to ideal and sustainable.
Sorry, rant over.

 

[babybrums]

@MommyJogger - Mind sharing the name of the insurance company? We looked online and found a great plan for $300/mo but it didn't have maternity coverage so I was under the understanding that we could no longer buy it because with the new ACA guidelines, the plan has to have maternity coverage? If that's not the case we'll be buying it after the baby comes - I'd rather pay $300 for outstanding coverage than $900 for crap coverage!

 

[MommyJogger]

@MommyJogger - Mind sharing the name of the insurance company? We looked online and found a great plan for $300/mo but it didn't have maternity coverage so I was under the understanding that we could no longer buy it because with the new ACA guidelines, the plan has to have maternity coverage? If that's not the case we'll be buying it after the baby comes - I'd rather pay $300 for outstanding coverage than $900 for crap coverage!

DH and I have Aetna. There was/is a similar United Healthcare plan, unless it changed during the last rollover (Aug 2013). (We had united for DS1's pregnancy/birth and Aetna for this one.) Both cover 100% of routine prenatal and hospital costs. They cover extra scans 100% (extra= over 2 in the first, over 1 in second, over 1 in the third trimester, and over 1 if you go over 40 weeks) if your doctor is willing to say there's a medical need. They covered most of the prenatal screening tests (quad screen, etc), but amnio, etc. would be out of pocket if it's just a choice on your part. There has to be either history of detectable disease present in your other children or something showing up anomalous on a scan/quad screen to get it covered.
My parents are on BCHP South Carolina now and just at a glance, their maternity coverage (lol) is comparable. The only thing I can say against these plans is that your in-network doctor choices may be limited depending on the area you live. We have several choices of hospital and ob providers because there are sooo many in the area, but I know if you have the plan and you're just a few hours to the east of us, your choices are going to be limited because they restrict you to certain providers within your area. Frankly, I'd rather have limited choice and use the money I'll save each month from the more expensive plans to pay for any out-of-network doctor visits I just "have" to have. (My favorite pediatrician is no longer in our network, but when my son's care is covered well anywhere qualified to treat him and I don't have to worry about whether he'll suffer with something we can't afford to have looked at, I don't have the balls to be picky about whether my pediatrician is "crunchy" enough.)

 

[babybrums]

Thanks! Will look into those!

 

[minties]

I love the New Zealand NHS. My OH also has health insurance through his work, he pays nothing for it.

 

[Midnight_Fairy]

Nhs is fab

 

[JASMAK]

I can go to any hospital in Ontario (my province). If its a specialist then I need a referral from my GP.

My city did a massive population growth, when I moved here it was only 90,000 people, in 5 years it became 130,000. Our services have struggled to keep up, so for GPs you need to use your specific GP.

However, anyone can go to any walk in clinic. GPs take turns with clinic rotations and some doctors specialize in just that.

Hope that answered your question!

Same with BC....we have wait times...but for my semi urgent hysterectomy last year...it was a month wait. When i had a breast lump...I was in the hospital the very next morning and seeing a surgeon within a week. My kids have seen pediatricians in hospital within the hour when very sick and admitted instantly, no waits.

When I broke my back in the us....care was great. But the VERY FIRST question was what is my credit card number. You get the idea what it is all about. Its about money. Man, its so sad! They had a card on my bedside table saying if you leave AMA, your insurance is void...and they wanted to keep me forever...why? Because cha-ching! Each day is more $$$. The day I left, they offered me a pap smear!! I felt like I was being upsold like at McDonalds when they ask if you want fries with that. No...I can go home and get a pap smear any day, for free...in Canada.

Hubby and I have full benefits at work. We pay not a cent. My kids get all doctors, dentists, braces, glasses, prescriptions...100% paid for. No one has ever asked for a credit card number. lol

Makes me wonder...what if we didn't have a credit card?

 

[Tiff]

Jasmak, ours is similar but with a few differences. For prescriptions, we pay 10%. Restorative dental is 100%, but if we needed braces or other things then we'd get 80% reimbursed.

That's just hubby's insurance though. If I worked fulltime I would have my own benefits package that we could offset anything we have to pay. Hopefully I'll be able to do that soon!

 

[deafgal]

We don't have aethna in our state (i looked it up)

Are you saying we should switch to private insurance because it will save us money. My husband say he had few other options but their coverage weren't very good

 

[hongkongchick]

I have lived in the US for over 10 years now, and never had to really worry about insurance because i was a student so the school pretty much covers it. but now i am no longer a student, and married, pregnant, i have been trying to get on anything that's better than hubby's work insurance, but i couldn't.

1. Not qualified for any govt aid because a. Not a US citizen, b. hubby makes too much money for the state funded aids
2. the insurance plans that are "affordable" really are affordable, but are just as bad as hubby's work insurance.

but to really look at it from our perspective, we do not make too much money, if you are looking at take home money (after taxes), we are not even middle class. the affordable insurance plans have very high deductibles which makes "insurance" useless. Who spends over 5-10k a year on medical expenses as a generally healthy person? hubby's work insurance is exactly that. no co-pay because insurance company only pays after the deductible, which is 5k in network, and 10k out network, per year, per person. CRAP. but then, who wants to pay over 300 bucks a month for insurance?


Now, i am originally from Hong Kong, a former British Colony. our healthcare system is pretty great. We have Private healthcare and public healthcare.

Private healthcare is just like the family doctors (or GP as some of you call them) in the US, they have their own practice and people usually pay about US$40 bucks for a visit including meds. We have private hospitals, which means they are not funded or aided by the government. One can go to the private hospital for anything and usually are pricey, but can be covered by medical insurance.

Public healthcare means public hospitals are funded by the government and will not turn down anyone or ask for money up front. Ambulance service is free. ER (or A&E as some of you call it) service is served according to urgency. so if there are a ton of emergencies, your bad stomachache might have to wait. Surgeries (no matter what kind) are free, they only charge for the stay, which is US$15 a night. of course surgeries are queued because there is such a high demand and not enough surgical wards or doctors. there is also general practice at the hospital, and it is about $12 per visit.

so needless to say, i am for sure going back to Hong Kong to have my prenatal care and the birth of my child.

 

[hongkongchick]

Makes me wonder...what if we didn't have a credit card?

well, they do accept cash, cashier's check, bank card. oh no worries, they will get your money.

 

[deafgal]

Or if you are lucky, they have charity. I signed up for one for ER and they covered the whole thing since I was just a community college student with no insurance.

Or they will ask you to sign up care credit...which you get billed monthly to pay it off