My wife and I are in our fifties. We pay about $3,600-4,000 per person, per year, with a $3,000 deductible before insurance kicks in. We're very fortunate, though. We know people who pay $20,000 per person per year. Employers typically pay something like $6,000-12,000 per employee per year for health insurance (with $250-500 deductible), but nowadays employers are dropping insurance all over the place. It's really becoming a thing of the past except for large corporations and those are requiring high co-pays from the employee. So now lots more individuals are having to pay for their own insurance. My wife is a professional and I'm an entrepreneur, so we pay our own.jas_rho wrote:But I have paid a heck of a lot of taxes and haven't got anything out of it. I would like to know what I would have had to pay insurance wise if I was living in the US and compare it that way.
The not getting anything out of it is just kinda how insurance works. Here in the States, an auto accident that breaks one or more bones is likely to land you with a $25,000 - $100,000 hospital bill, depending on how seriously you're banged up. Stereotypes aside, a large majority of Americans really can't afford that, especially not after the last 8 years when income for the lower and middle classes have gone down while incomes for the top 2% have multiplied several times over. If you get cancer, and some young people do, you're looking at multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you can't afford it, chances are good that you just don't get treated. At least not enough to survive. Also, the Republican Congress made changes to the bankruptcy law such that medical debts (the most common cause of bankruptcy here) can no longer be discharged through bankruptcy. So even if you die, your estate has to pay for the inadequate care that didn't save your life.
Don't worry, the day will come when you get your due out of the part of your taxes that have gone to Finnish health care. And even when you use the private system, you're heavily subsidized by the public system. All your employer is paying is the difference between what KELA pays and what private clinics charge -- or the insurance premiums for the insurance company to pay the difference. It's like supplemental Medicare insurance for U.S retirees.
. They always seem to be hiring those.