Americans are amazing. Their healthcare system is literally killing them and ruining their families, and they keep talking about how bad “socialism” is…
The amount of bullshit this people buy is incredible.
TBF a shitload of us know how socialized health care works. We want it.
There’s a massive, massive industry that is working very hard to make sure that it doesn’t happen.
Living amongst these people is a baffling and frustrating experience.
Christ on a stick. Universal healthcare has nothing to do with socialism. Government programs that serve the public are part of the government’s core purpose in the first place.
It is remarkable how many people on this platform champion “socialism” when what they actually mean is social democracy. The difference is substantial.
Socialism does not work. It has never worked. No nation has prospered under socialism, and none will as long as scarcity remains.
Their systems are killing them, their cops are killing them, their guns are killing them, their politicians are on record saying they hate them, their religious leaders are clearly stealing from them while they abuse their children, they hate traffic but refuse to do anything about including keeping cars but using roundabouts, and the propaganda that they claim is corrupting their minds is so pathetic that even a toddler should be able to see past it like it’s made of crystal-clear glass.
The reason I hate the US is because they have zero excuses and still fuck things up in so many obvious ways while anyone with more than a few braincells screams at them to please just stop chugging rat poison and all they can say is “but it’s different here, we aren’t Europe” as if that’s any kind of excuse.
O and I’m sure you’re country is a bastion of moral superiority. Considering how well your English is I suppose you’re from western Europe? I’m sure I can dig up a whole bunch of shit on your country of origin.
I have been painfully aware of how expensive and convoluted this system in the USA is since childhood. Growing up in a household that hovered right around the poverty line meant we didn’t qualify for the free stuff but also could not afford to actually go to the doctor, so outside of emergencies, we didn’t. Friends at school would talk about going to the doctor for a sore throat or ear infection to get antibiotics or leave school early for a “physical” and that was all such a foreign concept to me.
But as everyone here is probably already aware and heard, it’s bad bad bad.
As luck would have it (bad luck is still a type of luck after all), I had a major health incident earlier this year. I had insurance, not even anywhere near the worst mind you, and it costs me around $10,000 USD a year.
The $1,000 ambulance ride was not covered. The ambulance company is out of network.
The $500 ER doctor, who I did not ever see or speak to, was not covered. He, too, was out of network.
The 2 ibuprofen I was given cost $40. They were not covered by insurance because it is considered non-essential and I did not get pre-approval. Also, my partner had to buy a drink from the vending machine to wash the pills down.
My overall out of pocket cost was over $3,000. Tough pill to swallow considering I’m unemployed. The bills didn’t even start coming until about 2 months after and took 5 months until I saw the last of them (I think & I hope). The ambulance company sent a bill, the doctor sent a bill, the hospital sent a bill, but then each little thing that happened at the hospital was a separate bill – one from radiology, one from the pharmacy, two different doctors, etc. One incident involving one emergency room visit was at least 8 or 9 separate bills, maybe more. And this doesn’t even include the follow-up care & costs.
Besides the vending machine drinks everything else would’ve been free pretty much anywhere else.
If you go to any hospital with no insurance here and just ask for a couple of ibuprofen they’ll just give them to you for free, the whole pack costs 3 bucks.
I once saw a bill online from someone who needed an MRI and CT scan after an accident and the guy might as well have bought his own MRI and took it home for what they charged him.
How about when the website explicitly says your subscription covers Stranger Things, but you watch Stranger Things, and they then bill you $80.
Then you follow the steps to dispute it on their website. And they say they didn’t make any mistakes. Then you do the follow-up appeal via snail-mail and they say that there’s still nothing wrong.
(My experience with UHC and a cholesterol test)
Took two appeals and 7 months but I finally got UHC to cover a test. The final successful action was a screenshot from the plan brochure that showed that they needed to cover it…
Got laid off that job and now paying out of pocket for a much better plan and I’ve never been happier.
Just a cool $1800/mo.
What the fuck
New job doesn’t offer health insurance, so that’s the premium. However, I did manage to negotiate that they bump my offer to cover half of it, and the other half I can pay tax-free. So that’s something.
Plus I pay on credit card, so I get points.
Just imagine living in a first world country where they provide free Netflix instead of maintaining an insanely large military.
It’s not either/or. I think even if we joined all the other modern countries in providing universal healthcare for all our citizens, we’d still be spending more on our bloated, unaudited military then the next countries combined, but feel free to fact check that.
excuse me it is audited regularly, just they fail every time.
edit: for anyone wondering, that’s worse.
As an American, I’d rather die a preventable death then share free healthcare with someone I don’t think deserves it! /s
How dare someone who is dying of cancer and is too sick to work anymore get free Netflix! They can work for it like everyone else! I’m not subsidizing their Netflix /s
I’ve heard people honestly defending paying more for healthcare rather than having “freeloaders”.
Do you ever ask them why they’re paying more to hurt people? I’d think they’d be on it just for the “you’re gonna pay less money” line, but racists gonna racist…
(It may just be my experience, but these types tend to be racist and that’s one of the driving factors, not paying for minorities)
i’m white as fuck and if they could only choose one minority to not be on their health plan, it’d be the disabled. has been said to my face, by someone who had been a friend before they moved to an extremely conservative locale, shortly after i had some semi-vital organs removed.
It’s not even racism. It’s just plain evil. There might be a bit of it, it was just not wanting anybody benefiting.
At first they rationalized it by saying is cheaper, but when they shared the costs it was brutal. They then said it was better and started ranting about how it’s actually not good either. It was a bit weird and he was kind of my boss so I didn’t want to push it.
This point is overdone, but Americans spend more than other developed countries on healthcare, so it’s not even an austerity thing.
I mean, it still counts as austerity when the money is coming out of your own pocket
I’m gonna need you to cite them sources boss, or I’m gonna assume you’re another liar spewing bullshit.
Appreciate you for the links!
Whoever down voted me, go back to your echo chamber where you can stay an ignorant dipshit that takes everything you see on the internet as factual.
Im just asking for citations to encourage spreading good information instead of AI generated hallucination trash and right-wing/cult/heresay nonsense.
Whoever down voted me, go back to your echo chamber where you can stay an ignorant dipshit that takes everything you see on the internet as factual.
this isn’t reddit. you can ask for sources politely or you can get downvotes. we like to encourage civility.
You’re being downvoted due to being aggressive for no reason.
If you don’t wanna be downvoted, maybe don’t be so aggressive when you ask for citations.
I’m gonna assume you’re another liar spewing bullshit.
is a bit antagonistic for “just asking”. A little civility will take you a long way.
"I’m going to aggressively call anyone talking about a widely known issue with American Healthcare a bullshit spewing liar!
Waaaah why am I being downvoted waaaah I fucking hate you socialists and your facts, you’re all ignorant dipshits even though you just proved I’m the ignorant one!"
As an American leftist, the above is the majority of my countrymen and it is fucking embarrassing and exhausting to live alongside them. It is incredibly frustrating how well our government has convinced the average person in this country to vehemently fight against their own wellbeing. The number of people I’ve come across who claim to be left politically but then call socialism the extreme right is just mind-boggling. It’s like they think other countries are just actual make believe and that the US is the only functional country on the planet
But then we wouldn’t be able to murder a bunch of random Venezualans or lose wars that we started against overwhelmingly inferior opponents.
That last one doesn’t happen any more. It’s called Surprise Medical Billing. Used to be that some providers would be out of network (thus requiring a separate bill) but now the law is that if an encounter is in network, the whole bill is in network.
I’m too lazy to do hyphens right now
Not specifically because they were out of network, but I definitely will get billed separately by “contractors” when going to an urgent care clinic. They had a separate contractor for radiology examinations or some shit. And I’ve definitely gotten bills for nursing, or supplies, or any kind of random shit that wasn’t technically covered by the original bill.
The medical community needs to come up with a better word than encounter. “Encountering” one’s doctor makes it sound like you should be filling a police report.
Also it results in billing codes like “sucked into jet engine subsequent encounter.”
and the rest of the economy is heading in this direction soon. Rent seeking needs to be outlawed
Let’s start with outlawing lobbying. That’s how you get started on getting rid of “rent seeking”.
The problem with that is that some lobbying is good it’s just that the EFF for instance can’t compete with Google.
How abut outlawing that corporations can lobby? You have to be a non-profit and ran by people not affiliated with any corporations. CEO has to make a low threshold per year. We can work around that.
ran by people not affiliated with any corporations
i get what you mean, but i worked with a lot of corporation soles. usually single practitioner medical practices, for the primary purposes of: limiting liability and ease of sale (when the MD/DDS wants to retire). i’m not bothered by small business corps, since you have to register as a corporation (in the US) to be a charitable organization.
it’s just that the EFF for instance can’t compete with Google.
Exactly. Bad causes are so overrepresented in lobbying because lobbying as a concept is authoritarian, even if it can be occasionally used for good.
You forgot that if you don’t have a good job you are deemed not worthy of netflix and have to pay more atevery single step listed.
So… Pirate?
/j
Yaaahr hold still on the kitchen table. I be removing your appendix with a steak knife
That’s what a real pirate would do
A real pirate would also die at 37 from scurvy.
“You wouldn’t download
a carhealthcare.”The fuck I wouldn’t!
Fuck that. Im not paying Dwayne Johnson shit.
Dwayne the doc Johnson
I can’t smell what he’s cooking…that’s why I’m in hospital.
how does a dog with no nose smell?
He got me at “Imagine paying for Netflix”
Thankfully my Insurflix covers that.
I dont get it. In what way netfix related to health insurance?
Netflix is becoming an HMO.
Sounds crazy, but hey I wouldn’t have believed my online bookstore would be delivering my psych meds 20 years ago either.
In the US healthcare system, sometimes you’ll end up seeing a doctor that isn’t in your insurance network. You have no way of knowing this until after you’ve seen the doctor, usually in an emergency or because they’re a specialist. Then because they’re not covered by your insurance, you get a surprise massive bill.
The insurance is Netflix’s subscription, the specialist is the unsigned actor, and the bill is the bill.
…it’s not. Hence the imagine part. With US medical insurance you pay a monthly fee, then you pay more for a hospital visit, and then if a doctor’s out of network there’s more fees.
It’s not, it’s an analogy.
The OP basically is saying: Monthly health insurance premiums == monthly subscription fees.
Insurance in general is a subscription for a range of protections against certain events if they happen. That itself isn’t the problem. It’s the many companies setting different subscription prices and rules, and then having or finding loopholes in the rules to say “oops, sorry, can’t help you there”. For health It’s also where some of them have deals with companies to give benefits for the company to use as a retention tool for employees.
Now we (talking US) could take the parts of both for health insurance and widen the pool of people to everyone, while also having regulation over a single type of insurance that would be able to cover the worse situations because it can spread the cost over the larger pool. This would also have a subscription, but one that would be lower for everyone and even waived for those at the lowest income.
However such a single payer insurance threatens the industry of health insurance as well as pharma, and guess who has lots of lobbyists in Congress to protect their interest.
Replace “netflix” with “health care” and re-read the post. Th point is it’s stupid to pay for something 3 times over but thats how (American) health care is.
Didn’t get read many stories as a child, did you?
