I expect Urbanredneck is expecting unions in other countries to be like those in the US. They’re a completely different animal, at least for Europe vs. the US; I don’t know how it is for Japan, Canada or Australia.
Spain is unionized. The whole country. Collective agreements are what most people take as the basis; there are sectorial ones, but also any company above a certain number of employees must have one. Many people are so used to them that many smaller companies will decide to have one, simply because managing everybody according to the same rules is a lot easier than juggling a bunch of individual agreements. Whether someone is easier or harder to fire varies according to things such as how long they’ve been in post (every job has a “trial period”) or which kind of contract they have (“permanent” vs limited time, mainly), as well as by the specific collective agreements which apply. Contracts in writing are the norm, but most of them will include only a few specific details with everything else being “according to applicable laws and collective agreements”. Note that self-employed people such as myself are on a different situation altogether: my contracts are prepared by Purchasing, not Human Resources; the court involved in case of dispute is even a different one.
In the US the Unions are more like “subcontractors with a big bat.” The contract is with the union, and a strong union can really fuck up employers. One of our factories had a veteran of 17 years replaced without warning by a 17yo boy; the agreement with the union banned even calling the veteran to ask if he was ok.
A factory close to my home town belongs to an American company. They were furious when they heard most of the people hired in the first round were local women and ordered the HR manager “no more women and nobody from less than 60 miles away!”; furious, because in the US that’s the group most likely to try to unionize. In Spain that’s considered the best group: we’re already unionized, and they’re considered the people most likely to be rational about collective negotiations, most likely to tell the headquarters of their union to get stuffed if what HQ wants does not favor the actual workers, and least likely to jump ship. Completely different situations.
Except that those sites are discussing how professional MMA fighters have “a lifestyle that usually precludes a 9-to-5 gig that would provide full coverage.”, trying to sell “complete travel insurance with extreme sports coverage as an optional add-on rider”, how the scuba dive insurance covered expenses incurred in the Bahamas and the evacuation to a Florida hospital but the health insurance kicked in for medical treatment once the diver was in Florida. And the link for sky diving actually says “The normal scope of health insurance is to cover expenses arising from an unforeseen illness or accident, so you probably will be covered but sometimes health insurance companies can get very gray in this area.”. I certainly can’t say that there is no health insurance company that won’t cover injuries caused by participating in extreme sports - but your cites don’t support a general statement that
It is , however, common for health insurance to not cover expenses that should be covered by a different insurance policy- for example, workers comp or an auto policy. In fact, a couple of times when my son was injured playing baseball, the insurance company had questions about whether he was involved in a school or community league team that had its own insurance policy. That sort of question could probably come up with the extreme sports/hobbies , but that’s very different from saying health insurance won’t cover those activities.
Any time I’ve travelled to the States and bought medical insurance, they caution me that it doesn’t include risky activities like rock climbing or sky-diving. Need to pay extra for that coverage.
As for my own anecdote: No problems, no issues getting to see a doctor, get treated and reasonable costs for me. I’m not speaking for everyone in the country, but just myself. I have had good experiences with employer-provided health insurance. And my family uses these services. WE’re not all super-healthy.
That’s a strange thing to apologize for. Were you a chubby female rentacop working in RR in 2002?
The few times I’ve needed to bring paperwork from a doctor to another in Spain, there was no cost; in fact, several of those have involved the doctor who originated the information asking if I’d want a copy or directly giving me one. There was only one instance where they wanted to not give me the information, a private medical practice from a chain of clinics which was part of a huge financial scandal not much later; they caved after I cited the relevant parts of the Personal Data Protection Law (zero cost). France, no problem at all; I recently went to a dentist and not only did she give me copies of everything, she made sure I had her email in case my dentist wanted to contact her. The UK, I didn’t go to the doctor there but several of my coworkers did and it was “like back home but with English you know;” no issue or direct cost to getting all applicable paperwork and results.
In the US, they’ve always treated my Xrays and my bloodtest results as if they were the codes to the nuclear football, and charged me for copies.
No, I wasn’t. I was just being polite in my response to you, since you felt the need to bring up getting grabbed in your privates. If my response bothered you, well so be it.
I’m familiar with healthcare systems in a few different parts of Asia. In some countries, there’s national health insurance, and in others, there’s a mix of public/private, but they get to essentially UHC. I think America needs to get better for sure. My own situation is good. I wish more people had it as good as I do. I think step #1 is for America to get to UHC or very close to it, which is technically possible without throwing away employer-provided healthcare. But right now, due to our politics, I don’t see UHC in our near future. Maybe a few decades out, but our politics will have to change for that to occur.
While healthcare startup costs can be high, the variable costs in a normal system are very low. Installing a gate-keeping function to keep a group of people away from healthcare is likely to cost more than the healthcare they’d have consumed.
Not to mention -someone gets hurt doing that, and doesn’t get healthcare will probably end up disabled. So he goes from producing a tax contribution to consuming a disability pension. He is going to need all kinds of long-term support for the foreseeable future.
Turning an asset to a liability like that, its not what you’d call good business sense.
In Europe are UHC policies transferable? I mean can say someone from France whos vacationing in Germany, if they get hurt go in to see a German doctor and be covered under their French plan?
I just checked and the government website in the Netherlands just simply states: yes, you are covered abroad. Your coverage is global.
There are some ifs and buts, like the insurer not (always) paying out fees that are (a lot) higher than is common in the Netherlands. I guess that’s why the US is one of the only vacation destinations where people might buy additional insurance.
Personally I’ve used services in Europe a couple of times with my Dutch insurance card and maybe paid 13 euros for a prescription or something like that (after seeing a bunch of doctors).
PS there are many different packages of insurance in the Netherlands and I’m sure they can be different regarding the specifics about coverage abroad.
There is a European reciprocal scheme, as noted above. The UK also has reciprocal agreements with Australia, New Zealand, most of the remaining British overseas territories and the former Yugoslav republics. For anywhere else, we’d need to get travel insurance (and you’d need it anyway for emergency repatriation).
There are, as people have said, reciprocal agreements. It is simply far cheaper to treat a patient where they fall ill than to transport the patient to another country first! Today, we treat one of their tourists, tomorrow they treat one of ours.
It is not quite universal though. If you are from inside the European Economic Area, you are covered across it of course. And any other nation where your country has a reciprocal agreement with their UHC system. That is not necessarily all of them, and some nations do not have UHC systems to make agreements with. Mostly Africa.
The ones which don’t have an agreement with your country (check it out) or don’t have a UHC, you need to make sure your travel insurance covers health care. It normally does, unless you are going to the USA.
Canada doesn’t have the reciprocal agreements as far as I know. I’ve bought insurance for the EU and the US at the same time, for a longer trip in the EU than in the US.
The premium for the US was almost double the premium for the EU, for a shorter visit.
Well, there are doctors in Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia…i.e., everywhere we have UHC, we have doctors. I’m not married to a single-payer idea. We can get to UHC in America without single-payer. But when I hear comments like your co-workers, it’s laughable on its face.
You can also remind your coworker that besides the obvious falsity of this claim (UHC exists everywhere in the developed world, and those countries have plenty of doctors, and they’re doing very well financially) there’s a lot of truth to the exact opposite: under private insurance, a lot of qualified bright young people are reluctant to pursue a medical career, and especially reluctant to go into primary care, because of insurance bureaucracy and paperwork and the costs and difficulties of getting paid. Indeed it would be hard to think of another profession where one works and studies so hard only to end up being micromanaged by mercenary petty bureaucrats.
Yeah. Right. Just gone checking and 44 of top 50 and 922 of top 1000 public sector salaries (including ministers, generals and president) goes to docs. Here, in Slovenia. That would be in a range 100k- 200k before taxes.
Here are some more blue states that are looking to expand on the ACA, via something akin to a public option or medicaid-buy-in.
If you’re interested in following what’s going on with the ACA, and state efforts with healthcare, acasignups.net is a good blog. This guy really stays on top of the data.
I think when the lawsuit in Texas resulted in a ruling that Obamacare wasn’t constitutional, that changed the politics around healthcare some. More than ever, Dems are talking about M4A. Also, you’re going to see more blue states get aggressive in this area. In addition to NM & Minnesota, you’re seeing some other states also move in this arena (California, Washington, etc).