She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by AmericanChopper on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @11:09AM (#37309069)

> but what could you have gotten if you paid as much there as you pay in the US?

If you ignore the fact that I was already paying substantially more for it with higher taxes, the answer is still nothing. Countries with public healthcare don’t have expansive private healthcare systems, and nowhere in the world has a healthcare system that offers the level of service that the US system does. For example my sister was giving birth in New Zealand, and I wanted to just pay out of pocket for a private hospital for her. There are zero private hospitals in the country that offer this service, so her only option was to go to her local (and notoriously bad) hospital. She remained in the maternity ward for nearly a week, because while she was there that hospital had its 15th norovirus outbreak for the year.

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by beej71 on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @11:26AM (#37309329)

Last I checked, Americans already pay more tax for health care than anybody except the Norwegians.

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by AmericanChopper on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @11:36AM (#37309491)

Overall perhaps, but the taxes I paid in NZ were much, much higher than what I paid in the US.

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by beej71 on Thursday August 31, 2023 @07:50PM (#37345036)

Here's an interesting chart on the matter: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/154e8143-en/index.html?i...

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by AmericanChopper on Friday September 01, 2023 @06:34AM (#37348971)

Per capita statistics have no affect on me personally given the level of taxes I paid in the US and NZ was substantially higher than their respective per capita averages.

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by causi on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @11:27AM (#37309344)

The maternal mortality rate for the US is 4.7 times higher than New Zealand's. The infant mortality rate is 61% higher.

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by AmericanChopper on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @11:42AM (#37309591)

I could also cherry-pick some statistics to try prove a point. But the point I’m actually making is that the healthcare I had access to in the US was far better than the healthcare I had access to in New Zealand (or anywhere else), regardless of how much I was willing to pay.

Complaints about systemic issue of healthcare costs in the US are perfectly valid (and there are other somewhat unique problems with it as well). But are completely seperate from the fact that the best healthcare facilities, and most qualified healthcare professionals in the world are generally located in the US.

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by grecy on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @12:21PM (#37310185)

>the healthcare I had access to in the US was far better than the healthcare I had access to in New Zealand

No, it wasn't.

Factually, your sister is 4.7 times more likely to die giving birth in the US than in New Zealand.

The outcomes in US healthcare are terrible, and it's extremely expensive.

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by AmericanChopper on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @06:52PM (#37315214)

> Factually, your sister is 4.7 times more likely to die giving birth in the US than in New Zealand.

Factually, that’s completely wrong, and I don’t think you know what maternal mortality is. It’s any death that occurs during pregnancy, during or with 42 days of childbirth. There’s a lot of reason that the number is so high in the US (including unequal access to healthcare in the first place), but the quality of the healthcare provided isn’t one of them.

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by grecy on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @08:54PM (#37316258)

> There’s a lot of reason that the number is so high in the US... but the quality of the healthcare provided isn’t one of them.

In one sentence you acknowledge that the US has a VASTLY higher maternal mortality rate than developed countries, then you say that has nothing to do with the quality of healthcare provided.

That's.... impressive.

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by causi on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @11:49AM (#37309688)

the healthcare I had access to in the US was far better than the healthcare I had access to in New Zealand (or anywhere else), regardless of how much I was willing to pay.

Can you back that up with data?

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by AnthonyMouse on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @12:18PM (#37310133)

The US has some of the best healthcare providers in the world. They also have some very bad ones. But gains are harder to achieve than losses in healthcare, so when you average in the bottom of the barrel you get some bad numbers even if both the median and the best available provider is above the international average.

Basically, healthcare quality in places that are both very rural and very poor (e.g. West Virginia and Mississippi) can be awful and it brings down the average even though the system provides better outcomes for most people in most other parts of the US.

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by AmericanChopper on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @12:01PM (#37309873)

You mean like my healthcare records?…

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by causi on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @01:22PM (#37311028)

The numbers I've seen do not support your position. If your opinion is based on evidence, show me that evidence. I'm willing to change my mind, but not based simply on "trust me bro".

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Re:She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death,... by ianburrell on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @01:32PM (#37311180)

Lots of countries with universal healthcare have private insurance and healthcare. Public healthcare is pretty rare, Britain and Canada are the main examples, and Canada is only one that bans private healthcare. Switzerland is good example of country with required private health insurance. France is mostly public insurance but healthcare is mostly private.

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