rainbow8 posted:
But many (France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, etc.) have something like Obamacare in structure, mandatory regulated subsidized 'private' insurance, where you'll probably pay something in co-payments or co-insurance. If you're really poor there'll be something to catch you, but otherwise, getting sick does cost you something.
At the risk of spiraling down a meaningless tangent, I take some issue with this description. Germany and France fund the vast majority of their systems through taxes (including but not limited to payroll taxes). Neither system uses "private insurance" in the way Obamacare does; the government collects money from the populace, then fully funds smaller non-profit structures that handle coverage. Private insurance exists on top of those structures, but is considered supplementary or is only available once certain income thresholds have been surpassed. German co-pays are also pitifully small (~10 euros per day for hospitalization, as an example) and determined by federal legislation.
Again please pardon, but I do think the details matter a lot.
It does, thanks for pointing that out. Said co-pay is also, as i pointed out earlier, in relation to your actual income (at least here in Germany), so the less you make, the less you gotta pay.
Of course there's still some bullshit to this system, like how there's a "fictional" income that's used for calculating your co-pay, even when you don't have any income whatsoever and you're expected to co-pay based on that, whether you have the money or not but that's digressing even more xD
