If you have a HSA it is just as good as any other universal health care. Depending on what you decide to value you can argue it is better or worse, but either way for practical purposes you don't have to worry about going to the doctor when you need to.
> If you have a HSA it is just as good as any other universal health care.
I’m not American and have only just learned about HSAs and totally fail to understand your comment. Could you explain how they help someone poor pay for medical expenses? Doesn’t the account get low/empty and then you’re out of funds?
When the HSA gets to zero you reach your yearly max and insurance takes over and you don't pay any more.
I'm not sure how Amazon works, but my plans works something like (I'm rounding to make it easy, the reality is slightly more complex) that I pay everything for the first $3000, then for the next $15,000 I pay 20%, and thereafter I pay nothing. My total out of pocket is $6000/year, which is also the most I can put into the HSA per year, and my employer matches some of my contributions to in reality I'm getting $7k/year while only a few rare loop holes can get me close to needing that much. It is very rare for anyone to have more than $18k in medical expense per year (I had a baby last year and still am well below that), so for most people the HSA is another retirement account.
Now the HSA does mean I'm not paying $100/month for my insurance, but instead $600/month. However most of the money is invested using the HSA as a retirement account for my medical needs. The idea of the HSA (which has not worked out in practice) is because the money is mine I'll have incentive to shop around for cheaper medical procedures to make sure there is more money for my future retirement, and this should lower costs (in practice most medical things can't be shopped around for, but a few people do look at their itemized bills and sometimes notice a billed procedure that wasn't done).
Now that $600 is $3-4/hr, which is not insignificant to someone making $15/hr. However here again things get complex. That money is pre-tax income, so your taxes are almost cut in half for the year (granted this is only $500 - and only for a single person who can't claim anything else).
Thank you for this - I get it a bit better and HSAs do more than I thought they did.
It’s a phenomenal sum of money to spend, and while you have clearly considered your options, it really shows how expensive it is in the US.
That said, I was surprised to see how high it is in New Zealand where I am ($4204) and how much less you are spending than the average in the US ($10906).
Average spending isn't very meaningful here because it's just a few people spending a lot - mostly elderly people, which of course has the effect of nobody inheriting anything anymore because it went to hospital bills.
The median person in the US doesn't spend much more on healthcare than the median European and their income is much higher. (Median income in a poor state like Alabama is higher than the UK.)
Plus we have working clothes dryers. Meanwhile in Sweden they're so poor they have to ration the tvättstuga.
> Average spending isn't very meaningful here because it's just a few people spending a lot - mostly elderly people, which of course has the effect of nobody inheriting anything anymore because it went to hospital bills.
That’s the same everywhere though. If you want to record the most expensive year of healthcare in someone’s lifetime, it’s a safe bet that the last year is going to be at, or near the top. Like has been compared with like.
> Plus we have working clothes dryers.
I’m missing something, and I suspect it’s obvious. What’s this about sorry?
> That’s the same everywhere though. If you want to record the most expensive year of healthcare in someone’s lifetime, it’s a safe bet that the last year is going to be at, or near the top. Like has been compared with like.
You're right it is comparable, although it's affected by the country's demographics. I just mean if you're moving to the US as a working-age person, it is not going to represent your situation. A median or age distribution would be more informative.
> I’m missing something, and I suspect it’s obvious. What’s this about sorry?
That's just a fun quality of life fact about the US. Europe has better transit, we have better and bigger housing and our appliances work better. We're more likely to have air conditioning too.
(Clothes dryers don't work very well unless they're vented to the outside, and in older brick buildings like Europe, and for some reason also in Japan, they aren't always.)
