My US cousin is worried we don’t understand the crippling expense of healthcare & has asked me to tell you the truth.

Please don’t switch off because, zzzz, numbers: it’s VITAL, & I’ll make it easy!

Her family of 4 is ‘lucky’- they have ‘generous’ employer-sponsored insurance.

So ‘all’ they pay themselves is...*$8,689. A YEAR*.

Or around £6,730 to us That’s:
$3,555 just to have health insurance;
$214 vision
$420 dental

Then she pays ALL of the first $3000 for everything- doc’s visits, x rays, blood tests or whatnot.

THEN the deductible finally kicks in
But she pays another 10% up to $4,500 total

They ALWAYS HIT $4,500

And it’s US healthcare Boris & Trump will force us to buy- some of the most expensive in the west.
The Huff Post has called it ‘obscenely expensive’.

It gets worse, my cousin says: the doctor you choose has to accept the brand of insurance you happen to have purchased. If you visit someone who doesn’t?
You pay A LOT MORE.

There are also levels, called tiers, for prescription drugs.

My cousin’s daughter needed a more complex asthma medication, because the first choice medications weren’t working. Scary enough.
But the insurers WOULD NOT APPROVE the medicine her doctor ordered. They forced her to try another drug first.

We think at least care is free in the US for seniors?

It’s NOT.

My cousin says:
‘Medicare covers some, NOT ALL health costs. E.g.
my mom paid over $900 for her breast cancer surgery this year. And prescription drug costs are also very high for seniors. It’s not free at all’

The Tories can lie all they like about the NHS- they’ve already stealth-privatised a lot of it & are COMMITTED TO SELLING THE REST TO THE US.

As the papers @jeremycorbyn showed us say, if we try to pull out the US can refuse us ‘ALL TRADE, AID & COMMUNICATION’. We’d be screwed.

LAST CHANCE TO SAVE THE #NHS OR IT’S GONE FOREVER.

You know what to do.

#VoteLabour12December