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Comment by reacharavindh | Hacker News Reader

I am very sorry for what you went through.

I lived in the US for 6 years, and worked at above average tech company and had excellent healthcare benefits through employer. I must admit it blinds people to say "country's messed up healthcare system is not my problem" because my employer took care of it :-(

Before my move to Europe, I risked living in the US for a month without health Insurance, and I was very anxious about it. I can't imagine what most Americans who don't have that luxury of employer benefits feel daily.

It's silly to think that the richest country on earth by far does not have a decent healthcare system that covers all of its citizens.

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>it blinds people to say "country's messed up healthcare system is not my problem" because my employer took care of it :-(

This is something I never understood. If your employer is in power of your health insurance, how free are you?

I'm not saying it's a good system, but I'm not following your logic here. If the government is in power of your health insurance, how free are you? I can change my employer a lot easier than I can change my government.

But when you change employers you risk losing access to your healthcare. Whereas if government pays for the health system you can maintain continuity of care, which can be essential to treat various psychiatric and medical conditions. Imagine if, because you got a new job, your lease on an apartment were canceled and you had to go find a new place to live? That's what our healthcare system is like and it's maddening.

I'm not defending the system, I was trying to point out the absurdity of the parent's statement.

To your point, the affordable health care act addressed the issue with not being able to get insurance due to preexisting conditions. In the US you're required to have healthcare insurance. You can buy it yourself, get it through your employer, or, assuming you qualify, get it from the government.

The point I'm making isn't that you can't get insurance, it's that the insurance you have changes every time you change jobs. At one employer you might be on an HMO plan like Kaiser Permanente and be limited to their providers. But then your next employer uses Blue Cross / Blue Shield or United Healthcare and you can no longer use your Kaiser Permanente doctors. So you're not guaranteed continuity of care, and you might lose coverage for certain optional things if you change jobs. And your costs, which are nebulous to begin with, might change substantially depending on who your employer is. It's a crap shoot.

Also you're not required to have insurance. The individual mandate was repealed a couple of years ago.

You can generally keep paying for the same health insurance for to 18 or 36 months after leaving a job via COBRA except in cases of gross misconduct. It can be shockingly expensive though.

https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/legacy-files/ebsa/abo...

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