• Flying Squid
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    398 months ago

    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.

      • Flying Squid
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        148 months ago

        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.

        • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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          48 months ago

          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.

    • Billiam
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      118 months ago

      That’s what you get for not being born rich. Maybe next time you’ll make a better decision vis a vis your parentage.

  • originalucifer
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    268 months ago

    sad.

    “richest country in the world” is #1 in medical bankruptcy

    go usa

    • Flying Squid
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      218 months ago

      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.

      • @BrianTheeBiscuiteer
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        138 months ago

        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.

        • Seraph
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          68 months ago

          This is heart breaking - it must be so hard to watch your little one suffer and be helpless. I truly wish you the best!

        • Flying Squid
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          8 months ago

          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!

        • @Sanctus
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          18 months ago

          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.

      • @[email protected]
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        28 months ago

        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?

      • @rdyoung
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        08 months ago

        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…

        • Flying Squid
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          48 months ago

          Because there’s less than 100,000 people in this small city’s metro area and not very many neurologists.

          • @rdyoung
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            38 months ago

            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.

            • Flying Squid
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              38 months ago

              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.

              • @rdyoung
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                8 months ago

                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.

                • Flying Squid
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                  -18 months ago

                  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?

    • @ITypeWithMyDick
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      78 months ago

      A second orphan crushing machine, and your job is to make sure neither of them every stop for any reason. Think of the shareholders!!!

  • @Evilcoleslaw
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    178 months ago

    Health care professionals recommending panhandling. Glad we’ve got the best healthcare in the world.

  • Xariphon
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    148 months ago

    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…

    • @BrianTheeBiscuiteer
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      8 months ago

      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).

  • Philo
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    -18 months ago

    I know it isn’t everybody but 2 of my ex-coworkers opted out of our employee health plan figuring they would get off cheaper paying the penalty (this was like 6 years ago) and if necessary, starting a GoFundMe. One of them ended up going bankrupt.