this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
333 points (92.2% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35822 readers
1624 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I'd like to know other non-US citizen's opinions on your health care system are when you read a story like this. I know there are worse places in the world to receive health care, and better. What runs through your heads when you have a medical emergency?

A little background on my question:

My son was having trouble breathing after having a cold for a couple of days and we needed to stop and take the time to see if our insurance would be accepted at the closest emergency room so we didn't end up with a huge bill (like 2000$-5000$). This was a pretty involved ~10 minute process of logging into our insurance carrier, and unsuccessfully finding the answer there. Then calling the hospital and having them tell us to look it up by scrolling through some links using the local search tool on their website. This gave me some serious pause, what if it was a real emergency, like the kind where you have no time to call and see if the closest hospital takes your insurance.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ThanksForAllTheFish@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The UK also has much higher income taxes. Comparing US and UK income taxes:

  • in the US, for someone earning 578,126+ USD (£457,000) it's 37%
  • in the UK, for earnings over £50,000 (~65,000 USD) its 40% , equivalent US earners only pay 22%
    • and when over £125,000 (~157,000 USD) this increases to 45% in the UK

US income tax is ferarally controlled. I don't have exact numbers but increases in income tax for the highest earners should be able to fund a public healthcare system, at least for the lowest earners in the US.

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/united-states/individual/taxes-on-personal-income https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates

Edit: There are also state income taxes, which vary for some reason, I'm sure theres also county and city based taxes as well, processing them must be a nightmare. Is the US just 52 countries in a trench coat?

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Is the US just 52 countries in a trench coat?

It seems that way sometimes.

There’s variation between states as a form of competition. For example Texas might attract people by claiming no state income tax, whereas Massachusetts might attract people with 100% medical insurance coverage, best education, highest quality of life.

When someone compares income tax rates and claims US is lower, I really don’t believe it because I know there are many taxing entities that are all separate from each other. I have no idea what other countries’ tax situation is, but are you really picking a fair comparison, if your taxing model is simpler? I’m cynical enough to expect we’re probably worse off than a simple comparison would show

[–] ThanksForAllTheFish@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You're probably right about being worse off overall, just so much unnecessary complexity. We do have council tax here, but that depends on how big a house you live in and how expensive the area is to maintain for the council. And its a fixed rate per household, owed monthly while you're at the same address. But I know the councils get most of thier funding from the state budget and other income streams like selling land. Theres also national insurance too which I guess is like social security. https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance

I have no idea ehich one is better, or costs more, but the UK does seem to offer more in return. Admittedly I only see the bad news stories about the US so have no idea what its like "on the ground". I've been to Florida, New York and Vermont, so I see how states are very different places with different needs, understandible why theres not a lot of state unity on issues.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Yeah, I do want to say that nothing is as bad as our bad news highlights. Even all the crazy”Florida Man” stuff, at least some of that is from laws favoring transparency in the legal system over other places favoring privacy of the accused. A lot of the political craziness is just posturing for points. Gun violence may be twice that of other developed countries but it’s still pretty low and most people do not live in fear. Etc etc.

I’d even claim some of what you hear is good, in that it’s a good value to criticize your own society. That’s how we get better.

Then again, most of it is probably outrage headlines and clickbait.