To be fair this the lifestyle most elites in the US also have.
Since employers often pay more than half the cost, this is often expensive and also only lasts for a certain period of time (18 to 36 months, depending on the situation).
They could also buy coverage on their state's healthcare exchange at whatever the market rate is - depending on the state this may or may not be affordable.
If someone can't afford coverage they might qualify for Medicare.
If someone is uninsured then they are liable for 100% of the bill.
If that's the case, why are people so many worried about losing healthcare coverage after leaving their jobs (to work on personal project for example)? Is it different if you leave voluntarily vs being sacked?
About 30-40% of non-medicare America lives in non-expansion states, more if you include long-term resident undocumented (not just seasonal workers).
Medicaid is not available to 'unenemployed' people in most states in any sort of automatic way, so if you were employed in most middle class jobs, you won't qualify without serious tax shifting around the eligibility year enrollment cycle.
If you make under 133% of the federal poverty level in non-expansion states, you don't qualify for the exchanges.
Each non-expansion state's metrics for Medicaid qualification are slightly different. Unless you are under-18, a pregnant mother, or have ESRD, you probably don't qualify.
Also, to a different point above, COBRA is not 'discounted'. It temporary, but generally just as expensive as private insurance.
Kaiser Family Foundation is a great place for digestible data on US health care.
You can buy insurance on the exchanges, you just don't get subsidies. Which does make it a largely moot point, since the last time I checked premiums for the low-end plans ran around $600/month unsubsidized, obviously out of reach for anyone who would have otherwise qualified for Medicaid.
> you won't qualify without serious tax shifting around the eligibility year enrollment cycle.
I could be mistaken, but I've helped people with this process personally and we didn't run into any problems in that regard. Lose your job, you're making $0/month, you qualify and there's no tax things we had to deal with. (I can't say, of course, that we did it all correctly but nobody has come back and punished her for what we did.)
> Also, to a different point above, COBRA is not 'discounted'. It temporary, but generally just as expensive as private insurance.
I am fully aware, but a hypothetical middle to upper-middle class person who lost their job would have that option available to them unless they had no savings.
I genuinely do not understand how you can tolerate living like that - youtube channels telling people how to stop their house being robbed ("It works! My house is the only one that wasn't in the whole neighbourhood! Woo!")
I've lived here for decades in 15 different states.
I've been poor. I've been middle class. I've been friends with the "elite".
I've lived in big cities and small towns.
I've never seen a car jacking. I've never seen an armed guard assigned to a gated community.
I've never seen a mugging. I'm not sure I've ever witnessed a crime beyond traffic violations.
I'm sure they exist. But to think they are common from watching YouTube?
As you say, most of the US is just fine. But even in my three weeks I have seen lots of homeless people at busstops and intersections. I've heard distant gunshots in the (very) cheap motel in LA, where the police sirens were so common that I mistakenly thought that we were really close to a police station. I saw so many people who were dangerously obese that I can't blame the people who repeat the "FAT MURICANS" meme.
Some major roads were riddled with potholes and looked nothing like the images we saw in movies that supposedly play in LA. Let's just say the image I had beforehand (mostly instilled by Hollywood movies) was exactly the opposite.
There were just as many fat Germans or Brits as fat Americans touring. The Italians were mostly slim.
The cobblestone streets in Rome and Florence had plenty of holes.
You obviously for some reason don't like Americans. The biggest difference I saw was there was almost no opportunity in Italy. Young locals with college degrees bartending or waiting tables for 8-9 euros an hour because they can't get a job (same thing happens in America but the locals I spoke to had desirable degrees).
I've been to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Mexico and Panama and heard sirens and gun violence in most of those places despite guns being illegal.
Been to London and Scotland and heard ambulances at night in the big cities.
It's all realitive but the one thing I've seen in America is more opportunity.
Moving the goal posts a LOT, aren't we?
It's not a meme. It's reality.
-A fat (but not obese) American
> I'm well off, as well as my temporarily unemployed neighbours, there are no beggars in the streets, the roads are paved nicely and I can visit a doctor without him bankrupting me.
...is pretty well entirely true for me - the temporarily unemployed seem to do OK, there's no homeless people, roads are very well paved, doctor is relatively cheap, while...
> They also live in gated communities with armed guards, have to put up with theft and batter, carjackings, etc.
Sounds like some alien civilization. I've never even seen a gated community, I have never, nor known anyone, who experienced theft or battery and certainly not a carjacking. About ten years ago there was a carjacking a few miles down the road from my parents.
I understand that in some urban areas there are places like this, but I hesitate to put that too strongly since I've never seen them in the cities I've been to. It is certainly not representative of the country as a whole.
That would be Mexico