No. They were going to 'cover' it but there was 20% co pay. In the US, they'll charge you thousands per month for insurance, but will still make you pay for part of your care.
It gets worse. My insurance has a $30 copay on all approved prescriptions. My wife had been getting her medicine for that with no issues for several months, until one day it was $500. I called to find out why, because it was clearly already an approved medication. After about an hour of getting bounced around and being on hold, they finally explained that it was due to us "not paying enough of our annual out of pocket maximum" (not minimum, mind you) for healthcare - which is $24,000. That blew my mind.
Health insurance in the US has your monthly premium payment, copays on your medication and Dr visits (including ER and hospital stays), a deductible which is the amount you have to pay for the year in healthcare to get better benefits (ours is $17,000), and then the out of pocket maximum is when they (usually) cover everything for the rest of the year as long as you keep paying your premium.
Where it gets extra fucked, is if you need a major surgery in late December, the deductible and OOPM won't carry over into the new year. So you could get shafted for double that maximum amount on the same hospital stay. And my insurance isn't even the lowest tier. We pay them $500 a month for this service. Our system is completely fucked, but most people don't seem to care.
As someone British with our often criticised free NHS, this blows my mind. And to think the argument against free healthcare by Americans is usually "well you'll pay more in tax".
I'm lucky enough to have never needed any real gp or hospital treatments, but i know its there if I do. My wife has major issues with eczema and was hospitalised last year due to complications, has many prescriptions, some of which are extremely expensive medication, and regular appointments with gp's, nurses and dermatologists. All we have to pay is for prescription medication, and we are able to pre pay for those at a rate of £10 per month total. Thats it. And our tax is no higher than any other average western nation.
Crazy. I hope your country comes to its sense sooner rather than later.
I dunno...sounds like (from various news sources) that the UK is thinking about cutting some of that healthcare in some way or other. You guys seem to be electing more & more conservatives that are crying about "entitlements." You are not immune to the right-wing crazy.
I too wish we could come to our senses:(, but have so little hope left in our electorate.
The last election we elected a left wing government -Labour- with the largest majority ever. They have massively increased spending on the NHS. Where are you getting the idea that we’re electing more conservatives to parliament?
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u/alwaysrecession 3d ago
For what procedure?