Something Most of the World HAS but The USA Doesn't.. *YIKES

[00:00:00]All right, y'all. Welcome to an interesting kind of off-the- cuff video today. All right. I came about this uh yesterday, just a YouTube shorts, which we're going to view together. And at first, you're going to wonder what it's about, but it's proof that our system here in the US is broken. Look, let me lay it out there. I think every country has pros and cons. Every country has a lot to be proud of, and every country has some shortcomings as well. That's certainly true for the US. We've seen a lot of positives about the US at least.

[00:00:34]Uh well, positives and negatives as always, but we've seen some of the myths, you know, negative myths busted in the last couple months, especially with a lot of people, you know, um coming into the US for the World Cup and just the summer. And there's been a lot of um pleasant surprise. There's been some positivity about it. And I think that's great. There's a lot I love about this country. Um, mostly though I love the people here. You know, the landscapes, you know, lots of fun stuff to do. But, uh, as always, and as you've heard me say many times before, there's a whole truckload of problems, too. And some of them are getting out of hand.

[00:01:13]And a lot of them seem like they're just never being addressed. They're just getting worse. It's like, what are we doing here? This this what's the endgame? Cuz it's not looking good.

[00:01:23]That's just my opinion. First Amendment.

[00:01:25]I can have an opinion. So, any fellow Americans out there that would be pissed off about this, be pissed off. There's a lot to be proud of here and there's a lot to be ashamed of. Some of the things here just ridiculous. We're going to cover one of them today. So, we're going to get into this video right here and then we're going to break it down and more so we're going to be taking a look at the comments and we're going to be taking a look at how some people are like-minded and really concerned about this and realizing that well, this particular topic, it's a joke. It needs fixing big time. And then we're going to look at some absolute wahoos who have their head in the sand and act like uh everything's all great and then and everywhere else sucks. A lot of my audience is from European countries, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere.

[00:02:14]And a lot of you, well, you won't really deal with this kind of problem directly because your country does well things regarding this topic a little bit better. So, please watch and enjoy and weigh in because uh the comments should be good on this one. So, here's a video in questions from Consumer Investigator.

[00:02:32]Let's watch this and then we're going to get into why it's insane and the comments that also support that this is insane.

[00:02:40]>> They were getting threatened with a nearly $400,000 bill because of a little known Colorado insurance rule. If you are a new parent, pay attention to this.

[00:02:49]I'm Steve, a consumer investigative reporter in Colorado. Megan reached out to our Steve on your side unit in early June after she hit a wall. She lives in St. Louis, but last year she was here in Colorado when she went into preeacclampsia and had her son Benjamin at 29 weeks. So, just to catch everyone up, she's from St. Louis, Missouri in the middle of the country. She might have been out for business, maybe she was on vacation, maybe on a road trip, who knows? Uh, but she was in the state of Colorado out west and you heard him went into preclampsia, had to have an emergency pregnancy delivered early and uh, so she had the baby in Colorado, which by the way shouldn't be a problem. That's allowed. Should be okay. Let's see.

[00:03:34]>> Benjamin is great now. Look at all that hair. But he was in the NICU for 7 weeks. We added him to my plan um within the first 30 days and the coverage um started from his day of delivery.

[00:03:45]>> But there was a problem with that.

[00:03:47]Colorado has a rule called the birthday rule. Meaning if parents have separate insurance plans, the plan for the parent with the earlier calendar year birthday is technically responsible for primary coverage of the other parents plan is secondary. So seven weeks in the NICU was expensive. Megan's insurance, United Healthcare, initially paid but then clawed that money back. United Healthcare. Wow, they have a great track record, right?

[00:04:12]>> Because Megan's husband has the earlier birthday, so technically his plan with Anthem is supposed to be primary here.

[00:04:18]They were starting to get pestered by CU medicine for the doctor bills and UC Health for the hospital bill.

[00:04:23]Eventually, the CU medicine stuff got sorted out and paid by Anthem, but UC Health didn't. Megan spent hours on the phone with Anthem and UC Health trying to get it all sorted out. Then she got this letter from UC Health, strangely on Estis Park letterhead. She was in Aurora and it said if she didn't get her insurance to pay, she was going to be responsible for 38.

[00:04:42]>> Look at that, guys. That's US dollars.

[00:04:45]389,000 of them. Yeah, that's like more than a house. Well, in a cheaper state.

[00:04:52]We can get into the cost of houses and cars and groceries and other things in life another day and how they cost more than ever and how the quality is worse than ever. That's another topic for another day. But um yeah, this is a whole whole lot of dollars. A obscene amount of dollars just to have a baby and spend a few weeks in the NICU.

[00:05:17]Okay.

[00:05:17]>> $89,000.

[00:05:19]So we made some calls for her and then suddenly >> Hey, that's good for your mental health and good to receive after you've just had a child that you're going to raise now for the next well decades of your life. UC Health said that they were sending medical records to Anthem and Anthem said that they got those records and they were going to handle the bill.

[00:05:39]If you're a parent, you're probably watching this and thinking that didn't happen to me. We just put our kid on whichever insurance we want. And that's likely because you didn't have a hefty bill. Rules in Colorado and in some other states are if you and your spouse have different plans, you're supposed to present both of them for a coordination of benefits. And if you have a big bill that your insurance company doesn't necessarily want to pay, they might investigate and make sure they're really responsible for it. The state's division of insurance told me that they're exploring whether or not this rule needs a change. But until then, it's a good idea to check your insurance booklet and see what the rules are so this doesn't happen to you.

[00:06:17]>> Well, there you have it. First, let's let's look at the problems here.

[00:06:23]389,000. That's there's 389,000 problems on that bill. Also, um the fact that this is one thing that is a little bit broken, right, is that we have federal laws and standards here in the US. But then we also have 50 different state laws and standards. Some align with the federal, some don't. And in this case, her just being out of state shouldn't be an issue. You're free to travel between states here in the US. That's kind of the appeal, right? Is that you get to come and travel wherever you want at any time. You can see how at the same time that can be a little bit of an issue when some states have various ways of doing things and some states have straight up stupid ways of handling things. Obviously, it sounds a little ludicrous and that needs to be changed cuz that's just ridiculous. But, uh, you know, we can get into the whole insurance thing and we're about to look at the comments because this is where it should really get interesting. Um, I'm sure you have some interesting thoughts already. Uh, this is the kind of stress that new parents of a premature child really need in their lives. Yeah, I uh I agree. That's all they need, right? It's just stupid, right? I I'm sorry. Like there's so much I like about the US, but there's so much I especially after learning about different countries.

[00:07:49]There is so much that I absolutely resent. Like this is one of the dumbest things about the US. I will defend this.

[00:07:58]I'll defend that. I'll, you know, be happy to celebrate this. I'll be happy to celebrate that. But like this is one of the so severe shortcomings of the US is the scam of the insurance industry in this country is out of control. Especially when it comes to healthcare, health coverage, health insurance. It is absolutely embarrassing and ridiculous and stupid. I said it. Don't care. Like it is insane. I'm laughing because the rest of the world must look at this and just and just laugh like how is that real? How is that a developed country?

[00:08:42]Our system is so broken. See, I'm glad to see people speaking up. It is. It is absolutely broken. Uh well, of course, it is actually working. It's working as designed. It's just doesn't work for you and me. It works for the people at the top of the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies. They're doing great. But uh yeah, nothing like making people's lives and health a commodity, right? There's a million other businesses you could start. Why start those? Why sell products to people when you could just sell the key to health instead? And people are bringing out right the logic here. Your country has a rare opportunity to look at all these healthare systems in the world and pick and choose what's working and toss what's not to create a model system the world would envy. We could do that here in the US. The money's there. The political will isn't. It's really quite a shame. Couldn't have said it better myself. Yeah, it's it really is a shame.

[00:09:40]It's incredibly stupid. It needs to be corrective or corrected legislatively immediately. Couldn't agree more.

[00:09:48]That rule is the most arbitrary, nonsensical waste of time I've ever heard of. It was handcrafted to cause this exact kind of problem.

[00:09:56]There you go. That's what I mean.

[00:10:00]these different stories that come up about this arbitrary bureaucratic nonsense that we experience so much in the US. Like these people might be scummy and scammy and and shitty, they can't be that stupid. So like this things that come up, it has to be done that way. Like there's no way, oh no, we we did it right. It's just I don't know how this happened. No, this is that stupid because you designed it that way.

[00:10:27]You did it on purpose. Like there's no way this this kind of thing doesn't happen on purpose, right? It was totally handcrafted to cause problems. UC Health sent me a bill addressed to my actual baby like 3 days after I got home from the hospital. Hey, newborn, shiny newborn, welcome. Congrats on life.

[00:10:48]Welcome to the United States. Welcome to Earth. Here's a big bill. Work up, pony up.

[00:10:58]Like what the [ __ ] 400k for a child birth is utterly insane.

[00:11:04]It is. It's called the American medical industry, right? This is what you get with pharmaceutical companies and doctor networks and insurance companies. You get a bunch of artificial price inflation, price gouging, competition.

[00:11:21]Not in a good way. Competition to see who can charge the most.

[00:11:26]It's insane. Everything's for profit, so let's just make the price as high as possible. These are the kinds of prices we get when the hospital systems get used to just charging insurance companies exorbitant prices. Same thing happened with colleg's university. Oh, it certainly did. Now, this is the real kicker of the whole video right here. I love this comment clearly from someone outside of the US. Very sensible comment. Your healthc care for profit is insane. I could not agree more. It's how I feel and a lot of people feel. We're fed up with it. We know it's a joke. We know it's a scam. It's ridiculous. It gets crazier. So, we have my favorite type of people left on the internet. We have the blind head in the sand boot kissing joke of a patriot, right? A a real patriot here who thinks the US is the best and everyone else is an absolute waste of space. Here we go.

[00:12:18]Let's see what he said. So, here he is.

[00:12:21]Okay. Runin Panda, a gradea jackass. All right. Wherever you're from, I guarantee your healthc care industry makes a profit. You're likely taxed heftily for that free healthcare.

[00:12:39]Oh, okay. All right. Let's see the comment section and myself absolutely ruin this guy. That's not making a profit. Government run agencies don't have an incentive to make more money because they aren't supposed to make money. They exist to provide a service to the citizens of that country. Not to try to squeeze every last dollar out of its consumers like American healthcare does. The citizens in these programs pay taxes. Their taxes actually go to something. They get in return a service.

[00:13:08]It's very simple. That's how it works.

[00:13:10]We do it here in the US, but for some reason in the US we pay a high amount of taxes and then we don't get much back for it if at all. Right? And I'm going to get into that in a second because this guy maybe would make sense if the tax rate everywhere else in the world was 40 or 50%, right? And the tax rate was zero in the US. But that is certainly not the case at all. It it's so far off it's insane. But I'll get into that in just a sec. We have another sensible comment from a fellow American and I'm going to add on to this once we finish this. I've actually compared my current tax percentage in the US with what it would be in countries that offer universal healthcare. My tax rate in the US is similar to what it would be in several European countries. But on top of that, paying my taxes in the US, I also have to pay several hundred per month in insurance premiums. Then I have an annual deductible before my insurance pays for anything. plus co-pays and a 20% share of any surgery or any hospital stay. That's with paying taxes and with paying insurance and deductibles and annuals and co-pays. The math doesn't lie. I'm objectively paying more for taxes plus healthcare in the US than I would ever pay in the UK, for example.

[00:14:31]We have some of the poorest health outcomes of any developed nation here in the US. So, I'm not even getting good value for my money. Not all health care is for profit because many countries have laws preventing price gouging.

[00:14:45]You see? Yeah. Uh I'm going to add on to that in just a sec. More people just piling on the run and panda idiot.

[00:14:55]You're likely, huh? You know what they say about assuming going quiet after your comment was debunked.

[00:15:02]So yeah, to add to that comment, that's how it is, right? That's how it is. I have a big family. For example, I have a wife and three kids that depend on me.

[00:15:12]And let's just say this, because I'm self-employed, guess what? I pay, let me see, I wrote this down somewhere.

[00:15:22]I pay 39% federal taxes.

[00:15:27]39% of my income gone, plus 5% for my state of Illinois.

[00:15:36]gone. So if we add that up, 44% of my income gone at the end and at the end of the year, 44%.

[00:15:50]Gone. Now, last time I checked, different countries, Germany, the UK, Sweden, Poland, Slovakia, right? Just insert countries.

[00:16:03]They all pay taxes, too. Of course they do, right? But they usually have better roads. Our roads are hilariously bad here. They have more services. They have better social safety nets. They have well, literally healthcare. They have good healthcare that's paid for by your taxes. And last time I checked, their tax rates weren't 80 or 90% or something, you know, obscene, right?

[00:16:28]Last time I checked, their tax rates were probably in that 30 35 40 maybe 45% range. Well, guess what? That's what I'm paying here in the US. But I get to pay four figures a month. You know what four figures means? Four figures a month in insurance. On top of that, if anything happens, I still have to pay thousands of dollars for a deductible.

[00:16:57]I have to pay co-pays anytime we get seen or anytime we get medication. If I don't go in network, I have to pay the full price. What's in network? Who the [ __ ] knows? It's some something they make up that you can only see some whatever doctors are in their network.

[00:17:12]If you don't, you're on your own.

[00:17:14]Medication is what 20 to 80x what you would pay in every other country because of insurance.

[00:17:22]And yes, the insurance hopefully will cover some of that, but the point is the price is obscene and you better hope the insurance covers that. And well, that's just it. We run on hope here because whenever you go, you're never 100% sure the insurance is going to cover it.

[00:17:37]Deductibles, co-pays, annuals, four figures a month. Plus, I pay above 40% taxes, 44% to be exact. Plus, the roads are bad in Illinois. Plus, I pay tolls on the highway. So, the highways are good. I'll give them that. Every other road that's not a highway is trash and rips your car apart from inside out.

[00:18:00]But, we still pay tolls on the highway.

[00:18:03]Would you imagine that? Okay. Life is good. Day-to-day life is good. It's not all doom and gloom. I I just I've always been someone that like, you know, is a realist. And I I uh I I'm also very, you know, I I kind of like being a smartass sometimes. And this is my kind of opportunity to rant a little bit about the absolute juvenile stupidity that is some of the systems here in the US. I think it's ridiculous and I I can't even believe it's real sometimes. And I would love to hear your thoughts down below.

[00:18:39]If I'm wrong, tell me if I'm wrong that I pay 44% tax in the US, which is equivalent or more than you would pay in other countries, and I seem to get nothing for it. I mean, I know someone out there's going to bring up the military. Oh, okay. All right. We got military, so I guess I'm funding that.

[00:19:01]Okay. Like, I I don't know what to say, right? Thanks. You know what I mean?

[00:19:05]Like, damn, that's a heavy price. Heavy price to pay. I I guess my point is these stupid people that comment defending clear scams and exorbitant prices in the US under the guise of other countries pay taxes so their healthcare is not free.

[00:19:23]No, their healthcare is extremely affordable compared to ours because we still pay taxes and we pay way more for health insurance and the prices are ridiculous and sometimes their insurance will try to screw you and fight you and not pay for stuff. How can anyone defend that? I just don't understand. I just don't get it. Like I said, if the US if our federal income tax was like 1% or or zero, then okay, then maybe we got a little leg to stand on here. Then I okay, I I'll pay absorbent prices for health insurance because at least I don't have to pay taxes every year, right? But see, that's just not the case. I'm being taxed at 44%. because of what I do here in the US. And I just don't understand the US how that 44% apparently covers Oh, I'm paying for my local fire department. I'm paying for my local police department. I'm paying for my local roads, which are complete shambles. Looks like grenades went off in the roads, by the way. But hey, I'm paying to maintain them. But like, why is it okay to pay to maintain all those, but we can't have that same tax money also just pay for my healthcare? Why do I have to pay that separate and have that be a literal mortgage per month and then it still doesn't cover everything?

[00:20:41]Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little bit of a rant. A little bit of a different video. I don't care. I'm just having fun with it. I felt the need to post this. I thought it'd be fun. Spark a little conversation. The brain working a little bit. I love the US. There's a lot to love here. There's a lot to dislike, too. And I suppose that's how it is anywhere, right? So, so yeah. Hopefully this was interesting to you. Whether or not you agree with me, totally fine. I appreciate you watching and I hope to see you in another one. My name is Ian.

[00:21:07]You're watching Id Rocker. Until next time. Catch you later.