Off-topic - does that include bank holidays and the like, or is it in addition?
It’s in addition.
As jabiru and Gleena have noted, we pay a levy of 1.5% of taxable income for the universal health care system that operates in Australia. While in theory that should meet all my health care requirements, I also choose to have additional, private health insurance. There is a tax incentive to do so, and it also gives me much quicker access to medical care via the private hospital system. I pay about $700 every half-year i.e. roughly $120 per month. It covers me for:
- private hospital accommodation, theatre fees etc
- dental
- optical
- physiotherapy
- pharmaceutical
- ambulance
- chiropractic
- naturopathy
- health appliances etc
With my luck, I would die instantly and never recover any of my premiums. 
on cobra $600 per month. i missed the subsidized cobra by 10 days.
We have an HSA with a catastrophic insurance policy. My deductible is $10,000 per year for the total family out of pocket, after that it covers 100%. I haven’t hit that amount yet. It costs me about $200 per month, and I put $250 per month into the HSA. I also pay an additional $90 a month into AFLAC-like plans that cover cancer, car accidents and ICU care, which are the things that we decided that are the greatest threat to us.
We started looking into this when our contribution to my husband’s Anthem insurance started going up - it was a crappy plan for our money, with no dental or vision (which is what we need the most), and had something like 80/20 payment.
All of our insurance/HSA/AFLAC costs still totalled less than what my husband’s company took out of his paycheck every month for Anthem coverage. And they just jacked the monthly paycheck deduction by $200 per month for each employee.
Retired US military; I pay $460 a year for good coverage: Tricare Prime for me and wife (no kids). $12 co-pay for office visits, $3 co-pay on scripts.
But health care was promised to be free for life for me for life when I entered the service, provided that I stayed to retirement! Oh well…another broken promise.
Still, it’s a good deal.
My employer (State of Oregon) pays for medical, dental and vision for my entire family.
It’s the main reason you see state workers here staying in their relatively low-paying jobs for 30 years.
My insurance doesn’t cost me anything out of my paycheck but can run up to $1000 a year out of pocket with co-pays and deductibles.
I don’t know why I can’t find anything useful about US income tax, but from what I have found, it looks to me as if I pay roughly the same amount of tax as an equivalent earner in the US, plus National Insurance at roughly 8% which entitles me to a pension, unemployment or incapacity benefit, that kind of thing.
All doctors’ and nurses’ appointments, in and outpatient treatment including operations and hospital stays, clinics, visits to casualty, rides in ambulances, etc, are free. This includes mental health care also, though there are usually long waiting lists for therapy or counselling on the NHS and many people choose to go private.
Dental care costs £16.50 for a check up, x ray, basic hygienist appointment, and planning future care; £45.60 for root canals, fillings or extractions; and £198 for more complex work like bridges, crowns or dentures. That’s for the whole course of treatment, not for each appointment. For instance I recently had a check up and some x rays which led to having a root filling renewed, a new filling and a wisdom tooth extracted. Because it was all planned at once, I paid £45.60 ($75) for the lot. In addition, if you haven’t visited the dentist in twelve months, they’ll give you one free course of treatment to encourage you!
If I need a prescription drug, it costs £7.20, regardless of what it is. If I’m going to need a lot of them, I can pay for a twelve month prescription certificate at £104, again regardless of what drugs they are, how many different ones I need, or how much they actually cost. Many people are exempt from these charges, including children, those in education, pregnant women and new mothers, the unemployed, people on low incomes, people on a war pension, over 60s… also excluded from charges are medication for various specific conditions, drugs given in hospitals or clinics, contraception, etc. You get free sight tests for these and various other reasons, including if you’re diabetic, have glaucoma or a relative with glaucoma, or need particularly complex lenses. It’s all free if you have a sight condition and need to attend a hospital optical clinic.
In addition, the NHS can help with travel costs for you to get to your appointments if you can’t afford your own transport.
It’s a terrible system.
My wife’s root canals were completely free with our private coverage. The crown could have been free, but we opted for the porcelain, so it cost $45. Exams are free. Periodontal treatment is free. Pretty much, any routine work is free, where free means our personal, out of pocket cost.
I could have chosen a different dental plan that would have had a 20% co-pay with a maximum out of pocket, though. The advantage would be, any work, any time, immediate appointments, and being treated like a good, cash-paying customer. My current plan is HMO-styled, so like a public medical system, it’s over-burderned and takes forever to get a routine appointment (they’ll squeeze you in for emergent care, though). In our case, we deemed it better just to use the crappy (but cheap) system.
See, the thing here isn’t so much the money, but the fact that I have a choice. And not just a choice for the sake of having a choice, but a reasonable choice.
I have a choice. If I want to have private coverage, I can do that. In fact I actually have private health insurance through my employer, though I didn’t know it when I took the job and wouldn’t want to use it. I do pay to have my teeth cleaned privately, though only because my particular dentist doesn’t offer the full range of hygienist treatments on the NHS. If you mean that I have no choice about paying my taxes and some of it going towards healthcare, whether I have private insurance or not: well, if I had lower or no income, I wouldn’t contribute so much to the NHS; but since I can afford it, it seems to me that it’s reasonable that I pay my share towards a system which is free at the point of delivery for most people, with minimal payments for those who can afford to make them. If I call out an ambulance and get taken to casualty, it’ll be an NHS ambulance that takes me to an NHS hospital, regardless of how much money I may have poured into the pockets of private insurers. And I’d rather know that the ambulance is there, for me or for the people living on the estate who can’t afford to do much of anything, let alone pay thousands for health insurance or treatment.