More tariffs paid by US consumers

[Dill]

(06-12-2019, 08:43 PM)Benton Wrote: We're derailing a bit here, but in regard to healthcare, as I understand it, Germany has base coverage for everybody (in other words you don't die if you're a diabetic and can't afford insulin or have to decline going to the hospital after you've had a heart attack because it costs too much). But if you want better than basic, you can get additional coverage at your own expense.

Which is what I'd like to see here. 

More like this: everyone below a certain income MUST buy insurance. No notice of per-existing conditions.

The insurance market includes public and private companies, the public being cheaper coops, whose directors were voted in or out of office by the membership.

The market and laws have changed somewhat since I lived there, but when I did, our family was completely covered, including dental and eye care (but if wanted designer glasses we had to pay for the frames).  The birth of my son, my daughter's leukemia, my gall bladder removal--all included, with no raise in rates.  There were small copays for prescription drugs, but not for children. While treated, my daughter had a free pass for public transporation, and insurance paid for a babysitter.  We had to pay 5 marks for every night she spent in the hospital, roughly $2.50. There was a limit on all this, something like a million dollars.  We chose own doctors and never had to wait.

All this cost about third of the Blue Cross insurance we had before leaving the US and took up again when we returned.  But with Blue Cross we had to select what we were covered for (e.g., appendicitis, but not gall bladder removal), and coverage did not include emergency room visits or cat scans for my daughter.  It was like we were paying triple for half the coverage. And we arrived back in the US just as Hillary and Bills healthcare initiative was being defeated by a campaign which emphasized the US had the best health care system in the world.

NB, US doctors told us that Germans had a statistical edge over the US in treatment of childhood leukemia. Yet when we placed her in a German rather than an American hospital, some acquaintences thought we were crazy and "playing with our daughter's life"--because they all knew the US was the best.  Somehow. 

So yeah, I'd like to see something like the German system here too.  Something less insurance driven.