Nitin Chhoda explains how insurance and healthcare in the United States differ from other countries. He discusses how healthcare is tied to insurance in order for Americans to afford proper healthcare.
Healthcare and Insurance in Other Places
In some countries, the price of healthcare itself is affordable to residents. For example, in Thailand the need for healthcare and insurance is negligible, especially if a patient is earning a first world level salary.
If you need to go to the doctor, you can afford to go. If you need surgery, it will cost you a lot of money, but it will not cost you even close to the amount you’d pay if you were in the United States.
Another example is the healthcare and insurance system in Norway. Rather than have health insurance, the government uses taxes to subsidize healthcare.
That means that when a Norwegian needs to go to the doctor, they pay an affordable rate, but the doctor also gets paid a good salary because an extra fee is added that is paid by the government. Even for expensive things, if you need healthcare you can get it and at the same time, everyone makes a really good salary.
Our Healthcare and Insurance System
In the United States, the system of a healthcare practice management is very different. The cost of healthcare and insurance is so high that it is unaffordable for most Americans. Especially if a serious accident happens or an illness is diagnosed, uninsured Americans will be responsible for paying all of the costs – hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Because the prices are so high and nobody can afford to pay for surgery in the U.S., instead we buy healthcare and insurance, just in case something bad happens.
Healthcare and insurance work similarly to car insurance. Most of the time you pay your monthly premium, or you pay it up front for the year or the quarterly price each quarter.
Your plan may include co-pays, which are the amounts that you pay when you go to the doctor for certain types of visits. It may also include a deductible, which is the amount you pay each year before you start to redeem your healthcare and insurance.
But if you get into a car accident, your insurance is meant to pay for the amount that you cannot pay. The damage to the other car, medical costs of people in the cars, and damage to your car and your medical expenses can all be covered by car insurance, depending on your policy.
The same is true of healthcare and insurance. If you are diagnosed with cancer, your insurance policy should cover the high costs of treatment.
Healthy or Not
If you are healthy, you don’t use your insurance for healthcare. But once something happens, you cannot get healthcare and insurance because no insurance company will accept you as a client if you are going to be expensive.
This is why healthcare and insurance are so intimately tied together in the U.S. Without insurance, you cannot afford healthcare when you need it.
Sadly, these days healthcare and insurance companies are largely unregulated and can charge incredible premiums for insurance.
That means that even if people want healthcare and insurance, they can’t afford to get it.
If you stop paying your insurance bills, you are no longer covered. That means that healthcare and insurance are unaffordable. In that situation, Americans do not have many options besides medical bankruptcy.
