I may have to do this myself. We're already well over $10,000 in medical debt and I'm going to the Mayo Clinic in March. We have supposedly good insurance too.
The system so, so incredibly broken and our leaders have no interest in fixing it.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
186 points (98.9% liked)
politics
19104 readers
3600 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
our leaders have no interest in fixing it.
Only half right. Half our leaders are actively working to dismantle it faster
I'd say over half. There are plenty of Democrats doing their best to let the Republicans get away with that. And you know that the health insurance industry is lining their pockets too.
Health insurance companies employ about 500,000 people directly, many of whom are live in blue cities or purple suburbs. Nobody who shuts down a major local industry gets re-elected, even if it hurts people.
Those jobs would still be needed in a functional health care system.
Not all of them. I don't think most of them.
That's what you get for not being born rich. Maybe next time you'll make a better decision vis a vis your parentage.
sad.
"richest country in the world" is #1 in medical bankruptcy
go usa
Oh, but we have "the best healthcare system in the world" and "the waiting times are so long in Canada."
I had to wait a year to get an appointment with a neurologist after my old neurologist retired. A year.
My 2yo can't really hear properly due to fluid build up in his ears. He can barely speak and it's obvious compared to his peers. ENT can't see us for 4 months.
This is heart breaking - it must be so hard to watch your little one suffer and be helpless. I truly wish you the best!
I'm so sorry to hear that. How awful for a 2-year-old to have to suffer through that! It's ridiculous that something that should be fixed quickly and easily is going to delay your son's development!
EDIT: Does your ENT have a cancellation list? If they do and you're not on it, get on it ASAP!
The fuck is the point of any of this shit at all if we aren't helping those who need it? I wonder thos every day.
My local dentist has a nine month wait list for new patients.
This is something I don't fully understand how it works tbh. In Aus you very much can still pay for health insurance if people care about time that much and they have the money for it.
So the only difference is that we have both if you dont have money, and that we still spend less per capita in healthcare?
The US spends more on healthcare than pretty much anyone else.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/
I had a couple of seizures about a year ago and I just recently got around to seeing a neurologist to get me on something full time. It took some work (mostly by my wife) but I was able to see someone within a couple of weeks of looking. It took some calls to find one that didn't require a referral.
I wonder why it took you that long..
Because there's less than 100,000 people in this small city's metro area and not very many neurologists.
I'm in a city of 250k. If we couldn't have found one in the city, we would have looked at the 3 cities with about an hour and half drive from us. Sometimes you have to widen your search parameters.
Must be nice to have a job that gives you the time off to drive an hour and a half there and back plus wait and exam time to a neurologist.
Unfortunately, I did not at the time.
You make it work. You do what you have to do to get shit handled. Thankfully we didn't have to go that far out, but, my wife did have to take my stepdaughter a couple of hours away for a new psych doc and will probably have to go once a year to get prescriptions renewed.
I run my own livery and my wife works from home. As I said above, you figure shit out.
You took a year to get things handled instead of expanding your search radius and being willing to drive to a nearby city. You already had to take off for the appointment and that can be an easy couple of hours as it is. What's an extra hour or so in drive time? My appointment took a good 2+ hours with most of that waiting while he looked over my history and dealing with other patients. That day was cut really short for me as it was, losing another hour or so wouldn't have changed much.
You took a year to get things handled instead of expanding your search radius and being willing to drive to a nearby city.
Yes, because that would have taken 3-4 hours and my job wouldn't let me off for that long. I get that you have a good job that lets you do that. I did not.
You already had to take off for the appointment and that can be an easy couple of hours as it is.
Except it never has been once. It's been at most an hour and a half total.
Do you think maybe you don't know the situation I was in?
Do you think maybe lecturing someone about how they didn't do what you think they should have done when you don't know the situation they were in is courteous or considerate?
Dude. Check yourself. I've been further down and out than most people realize. Every job I've ever had you could take a day off for things like medical appointments. You say you have decent insurance which means a somewhat decent job, that means you should be able to put in for time off, especially if its a month or two out instead of a year out. You find someone to drive you if needed, cover a shift,watch the kids, walk the dog, whatever.
As I already said. I work for myself. Any time not spent working is lost money. I don't have pto or fmla to lean on. My wife is now on w2 but was IC for decades. She came with me and took time off work but because she is now a manager of her team, this put her behind for the day. We still made it work.
I'm just continually amazed at how few people are willing to put tbe work in to take care of things. If it doesn't line up or seem easy from the get, they just give up and let their schedule be dictated by others.
For my job, I regularly get people who traveled to my city for health care. People travel for medical all of the time. Taking a day off work to travel to another city is worth it long term if it means you get the care you need.
Every job I’ve ever had you could take a day off for things like medical appointments.
Every job you've had has been better than the job I had. You do know they don't have any legal obligation to do that, right? It's almost if you didn't have the job I had.
You say you have decent insurance which means a somewhat decent job
No, it means my wife has a decent job.
I’m just continually amazed at how few people are willing to put tbe work in to take care of things. If
You don't fucking know me or my life. You have no idea how much work I've put into my health. I'm going to the Mayo Clinic in March due to illness. Do you know how hard it is to get into the Mayo Clinic? Do you know how much work and effort that takes?
No, you fucking don't. Because you've had a cushy job and a cushy life.
Holy fuck dude. You are fucking mental.
I've been broke and struggling my entire life. My parents fucked me over, my father gave all of our money (what little we had) to the church of scientology. I've worked retail, restaurants, run my own pc repair service, helped a few people build websites, delivered furniture, did outside sales and more than I want to go into here. My last "real" job was as a utility locate tech making $12.50/hr. Now I work for myself (again), yesterday I made $250+, today I'm at $90 8 hours in. Does that sound cushy to you?
You have to stand up for yourself because no one else will. When I worked foodlion I literally wrote on the time off calendar that I wouldn't be in the state and if they scheduled me that's on them. And yes, they legally have to allow you to take off for health stuff. There is also fmla which they can't deny.
Seriously dude. Stop being a fucking victim and whining about how bad you have it. We all have our issues and personally I've been able to survive being out of work for over a year without being evicted or losing weight. I've had 2 sets of seizures that fucked my back up, the last one I also busted a shoulder. I've been hit by a car biking to work and more and I'm still around and not bitching about how much my life sucks (except venting to my wife when I need to). As I said up chain, you make shit happen when it needs to happen. Or you can sit back and bitch and whine like a toddler.
You might consider spending less time on here and more time figuring shit out. It's clear by how active you are on here that you are tantamount to a shut in. You can't actually be working a job that let's you spend all your time on here but doesn't allow you to take time off for medical stuff.
I'm done here and I'm going to block your whiny victim ass because I have to actually work and keep building my business so I can maybe, sometime in the future, not be worried about my day to day finances. Oh and I'm dealing with a headache just shy of a migraine that is probably related to the dilantin I was recently prescribed. So basically, you can fuck off with your (my life sucks worse than yours) bullshit.
Lecturing me, then insulting me, not one single question about my situation. Just assumptions about my life and what I was able to do and not what I knew I would get fired for.
I mean for fuck's sake.
Also, I just love that you see our broken healthcare system and think people who are unable to get the care they need are just whiny and need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
What do you get when you mix orphan crushing machine with a boring dystopia?
America.
A second orphan crushing machine, and your job is to make sure neither of them every stop for any reason. Think of the shareholders!!!!!
Health care professionals recommending panhandling. Glad we've got the best healthcare in the world.
Isn't this ultimately just national healthcare with a lot of unnecessary extra steps?
Oh but it's okay because there's a for-profit corporation involved...
If we have gofundme for insurance why do we even bother paying predatory companies like UHC.
Honestly, health care co-ops (basically a perpetual GoFundMe) are starting to look better all the time. I almost considered it a few years ago when I had really crap insurance. The scary part is that they're not really regulated and if they just decide not to pay because _____ you really have no recourse unless you know a lawyer willing to work for free (because you pretty much wouldn't join a co-op if you had money for health insurance).