> pick some numbers for the employer paid health plan
Don't forget to account for real annual healthcare costs, insurance premiums are just one part of the story, but you still need to pay out of pocket for deductibles and copays. It feels like there are so many benefit that we take for granted in much of EU (even if not all of them apply universally) that you have to budget for in the US and they also incur poorly understood but very real psychological cost.
I'm not in France but I graduated from university with 0 EUR in student loans because there were no tuition fees and the accommodation, food, and public transport were heavily subsidized and easily paid for with a part-time job. I don't need a car because we have a decent and safe public transport.
When I took a sabbatical from work and quit my job I didn't qualify for benefits which means that I had to pay around ~50 EUR a month for health insurance. I could continue seeing specialists the same as I did before and I didn't pay a single cent out of pocket all year. I've seen people talk about how they pay $100-$200 a month for the same medication and that's with expensive insurance and then hundreds more for appointments, how they're having to fight insurance companies, scavenge for deals on medications at various pharmacies and it all sounds so exhausting.
If I lived in the US, I think trying to repeat what I did here would've put me at serious risk of homelessness and inescapable life-long debt, especially if I had some bad luck with my health.
Don't forget to account for real annual healthcare costs, insurance premiums are just one part of the story, but you still need to pay out of pocket for deductibles and copays. It feels like there are so many benefit that we take for granted in much of EU (even if not all of them apply universally) that you have to budget for in the US and they also incur poorly understood but very real psychological cost.
I'm not in France but I graduated from university with 0 EUR in student loans because there were no tuition fees and the accommodation, food, and public transport were heavily subsidized and easily paid for with a part-time job. I don't need a car because we have a decent and safe public transport.
When I took a sabbatical from work and quit my job I didn't qualify for benefits which means that I had to pay around ~50 EUR a month for health insurance. I could continue seeing specialists the same as I did before and I didn't pay a single cent out of pocket all year. I've seen people talk about how they pay $100-$200 a month for the same medication and that's with expensive insurance and then hundreds more for appointments, how they're having to fight insurance companies, scavenge for deals on medications at various pharmacies and it all sounds so exhausting.
If I lived in the US, I think trying to repeat what I did here would've put me at serious risk of homelessness and inescapable life-long debt, especially if I had some bad luck with my health.