I stopped paying for health insurance years ago, no way I can afford it now. I just get it through my state system.
I hear you. How does one pirate health insurance?
Given how highly adaptable Americans are I am very surprised to not seeing more of you trying to make a life for yourself in Europe. A plane ticket to any eu country is far cheaper than an ambulance ride to er…
Sail the seven seas to medical tourism
Universal healthcare is so hard that only 32 of the 33 highly developed countries in the world do it.
Maybe we should try voting harder for representatives that are owned by the corrupt insurance companies and their shareholders
After recently apartment hunting, I have a (slightly tangential) gripe to add on here.
When I was getting my income verification (to prove I could afford the proposed rent), it went off gross income - what you make before taxes and so-called “benefits” are taken out. The hundreds I pay each month for the “benefit” of being insured make a significant difference between what I make and what I take home. Do I make 3x a given rent? Well technically, by gross income, I do. But my net income is where that rent payment comes from, so the chunk of my take-home going toward rent is absolutely higher than 1/3 of the net income I can actually use.
I have no choice but to pay for this “benefit.” Notice I keep using quotation marks. That’s because I think the term is bullshit. I think a work-sponsored benefit should be something work provides. Yeah, maybe they got a “deal” to offer insurance to employees for lower than it’d cost to buy for ourselves, but come on. If work really wanted to call it a “benefit,” they should pay us more so the numbers even out on our take-home. We’re forced into these situations, yet employers have the nerve to use a term that implies they’re offering some special bonus to us.
Okay, enough ranting for now. No, wait - prescriptions! That’s another health-related cost that isn’t deducted, that I still have to pay for, despite having insurance.
The screws keep tightening around us workers and there’s no escape. I really hope Mamdani sparks inspiration across the country, because this shit is untenable.
https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie
Basically, stuff that used to be cheap has been turned into “market” and now the entire middle class is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
Fantastic article! I’m bookmarking it to share.
It’s much worse because you can choose not to watch Netflix but you don’t have much choice if you are sick.
It’s more like receiving a bill for songs you hear on the radio in the grocery store, on the bus, in other people’s cars passing by. You didn’t ask for the benefit, could not really negotiate it, but it was useful to you when you got it. You could maybe avoid it by not leaving your house.
you can choose what hospital you go to
Not when you have a stroke and are found unconscious by the side of the road. You can ask my father about it, when he learns to talk again.
Not always
Imagine paying for Netflix.
So this sucks but you can avoid this with a simple trick. Call your insurance company first with the CPT codes for what you need done and where you plan to get it done. Your doctors office can give you the codes. They aren’t a trade secret or anything. Get diagnoses codes too if you can. Have the insurance company run the codes for you before you go. This does a couple things:
- You verify everyone involved is in network (be wary of anesthesiologists)
- You are getting a quote on a recorded line. The end price won’t be exact (especially is if the claim involves a hospital, fuck them, go to smaller providers whenever you can)
- if you get sticker shock anyway, you can call the insurance company back on that same recorded line and say the word “misquote”. This triggers an investigation that can strengthen your appeal.
- You now have evidence you can file internally with a quality of care/quality of service complaint if the provider did something shady with the billing, or with your state’s department of insurance if your insurance company is being bitchy.
Ideally, we would have single payer insurance, but we instead have a government that pays itself to make private enterprise do its job, then the shareholders in that private enterprise make sure nothing ever gets changed. -sigh-
In the mean time, if you really want to fuck them over, consider switching to health insurance company that does not have shareholders. In many states, they are legally mandated to refund any profit they make over a certain percentage at the end of the year and without shareholders, it’s harder to hide the money, which puts much more pressure on them to spend it on patient care.
United Health Care want you to believe their way is the only way to do this. They are wrong. A shareholder-free insurer still isn’t perfect but the pressures are different without the parasites.
Any tips on finding an insurance company in your state that doesn’t have shareholders? A big part of the insurance issue is that you have to practically be an industry insider to navigate… Anything in insurance, really.
is this seriously what you americans have to do?
Most of us bend over and die.
jfk. I had to take someone to the hospital yesterday for an acute problem (which turned out ok). When leaving, after 7 hours at the hospital, I started to reach for my wallet and the lady looked at me and said wtf are you doing put it away. And the two presriptions- free instead of the usual $5 each. I laugh when those repubs call my country a “social hellscape”
Yes. Everything is a fight against the rich.
Freedom isn’t free
The fact you have to jump through these hoops at all IS FUCKING STUPID AND ISNT HOW IT SHOULD WORK.
Agreed. But the fact is there is a lot of money in paying for medical expenses that keep going higher and not a lot of money going to the pot that pays it out. Single payer would address all of that instantly but the rich would be unhappy so we basically have to pay a survival tax to insurance companies every month.
I hate it here.
It’s like they’ve made the system so convoluted that you have to be an underwriter to receive services.
There are those of us in n this industry that want that changed but we don’t have as much power as the bigger companies do so the best we can do is play by their rules. :(
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.
I’m confused as to who you think made this post. You figure it’s a French dude?
I didn’t build this fucking hellscape. I was born into it and I’m doing my best. Unless all the boomers and billionaires die off, we are trapped like this.
10 years ago, we almost had medicare for all as a public healthcare option. We were soooo close. But congress fucked it up necause they were lobbied by ins companies who knew everyone with a brain would flock to the public option.
And what the insurance companies got instead was literally a law forcing everyone to buy their shitty products. Imagine the tobacco companies being so successful at lobbying that they got a law passed requiring everybody to smoke.
Team Trump floated that as their healthcare plan a few days ago as well
What, requiring people to smoke?
Forcing everyone to pay premiums
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.
I work in healthcare. I feel like more and more people are wanting some sort of universal healthcare in the last few years, even if they are conservative, even if they’ll vote against it, and even if the term “universal healthcare” will have them up in arms. But the concept itself? They’re all for it, they complain that healthcare is too expensive and insurance companies aren’t covering things and the system needs to change. They’re getting there. It’s taking them getting fucked over for it to happen and most of us may be dead of completely preventable causes first, but they just might get there.
I work the other side of this. We do everything we are legally permitted to do to get this shit paid but there are limits. A big one is while we can tell a provider what’s wrong with a claim and why it denied, we can’t tell them how to bill. It’s illegal. We have to be very careful how we tell them to correct a claim.
This process is inefficient and we hate it. But it’s so much worse when they hire overseas call centers to process their billing for them. I have no doubt there are many intelligent Indian people who can do this but a big local hospital in my area goes out of their way to avoid hiring them. So they fuck up a claim. We tell them, as much as we are legally permitted to, how to fix it. They either do not understand the language we are speaking (not a racist remark, a literal statement. Some of them can speak English but cannot understand it spoken to them.) or refused to follow directions and just keep telling us to do it again.
I get it. I work for the devil. But the overseas reps (and now AI bots) make this so much worse. Nobody is saving any money by doing it this way.
Please please please legislate us into obsolescence people. If I hear one more old lady tell me she can’t afford insulin anymore I’m buying a noose.
I have a question, how much leeway do you have to get things covered? If the old lady calls you and says her insulin was denied and she can’t afford it, can you “accidentally” hit the approve button?
I had to have surgery for a medical issue. It was technically being controlled with medication, but the medication was expensive, difficult to get, and the side effects sucked and some of them were known to cause permanent damage. The permanent fix was surgery, and while that surgery was listed as covered under my insurance I figured that I was going to have to fight like hell to get it approved because my symptoms were under control with medication. I got home from work one day to a letter from the insurance company and I remember thinking “oh boy, here we go” and when I opened it and saw “your procedure has been approved” I was genuinely so surprised I sat down on the floor and had to reread it. I’ve always wondered if whoever did the pre-approval from my surgeon’s office was just that good or if someone at my insurance company was having a great day.
Living amongst these people is a baffling and frustrating experience.
Hey, some of us Americans just elected democratic socialists as our mayors.
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.
You are consuming far too much of the exact same mainstream media narrative that got us into this mess. All you’re really telling me is that you are from a country Putin is not interested in, or your own friends and neighbors would be going batshit crazy too.
And before you excuse yourself thinking you’d never personally do that, that you are just way too smart for propaganda to ever be swayed by it, given your own propensity for unambiguously consuming media narratives and attaching your personal emotions to whatever caricatures of reality you’ve been shown, like you’ve just demonstrated in your comment, you’d probably be first in line to fall for the right-wing foreign-funded propaganda we’ve been flooded with for decades now.
EDITED a comma
Ok.
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.
Canada, and I will readily admit to us also being quite fucked up and getting worse. I’m disappointed in our behaviour, but at least we don’t go around acting like we’re hot shit. It’s not the US’s problems that piss me off, it’s their dogshit attitude about how great they are while sucking at almost everything they can’t just throw money at and then use to make even more money.
Canada
I’m genuinely sorry to hear that, not just because I actually know how far our right-wing shit has reached into your country, but because I am aware that we never had a better friend than Canada, and without Canada to the north and Mexico to the south the 20th century would not have been nearly as meteoric as it was: without Canada we would have FAR less to brag about. I hope you are aware of just how many of us are on your side, how many of us are the ones telling you to “keep it up” with the boycotts and yelling “Elbows up!” when we see or hear another way Canada has decided to resist, because we are not represented in the media.
Canada has never been anything but the best friend my country ever had, from helping us in disaster to joining us in war, and you deserve far better than the neighbor from hell to the south. And while that does not make what you wrote correct or even anything less than arrogant and entirely dependent on stereotype, it does make me genuinely sorry, because we’ll never have a better friend on the national stage, and it will be a cold day in hell before Canada forgives us. Deservedly so.
I think you guys need to understand that no one gives a shit about the good individuals you have if the outward effects of your country are so violent and disruptive. Like, I’m sorry for the good people who live in the States but the instution of the US and the 100+ million people who either zealously support it or don’t think it’s that big a deal are big fucking problems. And far-right groups export that ideology all over the world, especially to my culturally similar country, and I am in no way obligated to pity you while your country threatens the safety of my own and others.
I do not care how many of you are “on our side” because you are effectively useless. Strongly worded letters and some sanctioned protests do nothing for us when you’re largely too cowardly to stand up for yourselves in even the smallest of ways. The US is a shithole country, and I’m sorry you live there, but I’m not gunna change my tune just because reality makes you sad.
I also have very strong words for my own country along similar lines. At least I know how to admit it.
When you cannot see individuals because of the group they are in, and you have grouped them that way in order to “other” them, to place on them the burden of your own anger and ill-will, congratulations! You are propagandized.
I saw it in your first comment, but now you’re tripling down like the best of the Fox News crowd, so okay.
that no one gives a shit about the good individuals…
Then who do you think is going to fix it, if not for us who care?
I do not care how many of you are “on our side” because you are effectively useless.
Then why are you battering the “useless” with your words, where they will either do no good at all or tire out what little goodwill we have left?
Where are your words when it comes to those creating and doing this great evil? Because I see ZERO in your screeds.
Strongly worded letters
I never said or even implied that the controlled opposition in Congress was or is “good”: they are as complicit as the openly destructive.
and some sanctioned protests
If protests are sanctioned, why are protesters being surveilled and jailed?
the 100+ million people who either zealously support it or don’t think it’s that big a deal
Here you are again, consuming media that serves your own partitioned worldview just as much as anyone on the right: this is what the media wants you to believe, that you should hate average people like yourself, believe no one can change anything, that all effort is wasted, and that the best possible outcome is that you personally get to shit out your own dissatisfaction with your own life via strong words that might as well have been scripted for you by Fox News were it not for the anti-authoritarian slant. You probably think that orange fungus got elected and we still have fair and aboveboard elections, lol.
And I note that you personally can’t do shit in Ottowa, or you’d be there doing it instead of dunking on the only people who can actually change anything for the better in the US: those of us who DO give a shit.
You’ve given up. And worse, you have an exceptionally selective idea of reality. You really need to pull your head out of your self-pity, because you are not helping, you are only dragging the people who actually care down, without having a single idea of how close you personally are to having your own government yanked out from under you in similar fashion. While you think it’s a matter of mockery to watch a country turn to full Nazism, you’re not exactly doing so from a safe distance: how long do you think you last if we lose?
And where, oh where, is your contempt for the actual doers of all this evil? You have plenty of shit to fling at anyone trying to effect change, but ZERO for the leaders of this filth. Where is that? And a better question is, doesn’t your lack of censure for people actually doing what you claim to hate just make you another lazy hypocrite of the kind you despise down here, another lounge chair warrior “too cowardly to stand up for yourself in the smallest of ways” when you personally have nothing like ICE cruising through your neighborhoods, picking people up on sight?
I may love your country, but your own position and actions are contemptible. When you can do something other than your personal best to discourage anyone else from even trying to change anything, even as you suck on the media’s warm tiddy of manufactured narratives and caricatured Americans, let me know. Until then, keep “doing your own research” and “telling it like it is” and “just asking questions” because what you claim to hate, you have already become.
I wish you would have said that you were from France or Sweden or something it would have been a lot harder for me to find crap about your country because France and Sweden are better countries than America.
But you’re from Canada…
Throw money at it that’s absolutely beautiful Canada has some of the most predatory car loans probably in the world…
I grew up in Detroit so I’ve been to Canada a lot. You having anything bad to say about America is the most clinical definition of the pot calling the kettle black I have ever seen.
Your comeback is about predatory car loans…? Buddy we got all kinds of garbage here, especially bad shit imported from the US, and that was the first thing you jumped to? We also have a housing crisis that our leadership largely ignores, why not go after that?
I’ve already said, multiple times, that we are not doing great up here. The difference is that I can readily admit it but every time I say anything negative about the US one of you nasty weasels shows up and all you can do is deflect, deflect, deflect because you know that you have nothing to say.
The US is a shithole. Deal with it.
every time I say anything negative about the US one of you nasty weasels shows up and all you can do is deflect, deflect, deflect because you know that you have nothing to say.
You’re not actually saying anything so much as whining, throwing out pejoratives, and dunking NOT on the guilty, but on anyone who actually cares enough to do anything from the safety of your own porous border, while we have unmarked govt cars rolling through our streets picking up undocumented and citizens alike, and Palantir hoovering up our data, surveilling all of us.
You’re intensely critical of everyone and everything EXCEPT those actually tearing everything down. You talk about the danger the US represents to your country, but you have ZERO words of censure for the individuals actually creating the danger you speak of.
Why is that? Why so full of fire and brimstone for those trying to change anything, and none for the actual perps?
You have an exceptionally selective grasp on reality, crafted by the mainstream media, without ever guessing that Americans are no more the exact same person than Canadians. You are as propagandized as anyone south of you, and don’t even see it. You are exactly what you claim to despise, wrapped in a maple leaf. Congratulations, I guess that makes you better?
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.
In Taiwan, I pay for Universal Healthcare because I own a business. 5800nt(185usd) every 2 months for a familyof 4. It would be 3000nt(100usd)for 2 months if it’s just myself.
The copay is 10usd for everything. Fever? Food poisoning? Chemotherapy? All the same cost. This includes all the medications and all incidental costs.
If you worked for a Taiwan company, you don’t have to pay the 5800nt. But the copay is the same.
Taiwan sounds amazing!
My entire mindset of Healthcare had to change when I moved here. Previously in America, when I got a fever or a rash or a major allergy, I would see if its worth it to go to a clinic and sit for a few hours with other sick people and pay 75USD for them to tell me to go to a drug store and eat some Tylenol.
Now, I go into the clinic downstairs even if I have a cold. 10USD and they gave me a week’s worth of meds. It’s normal to go back to the doctor 2 days after if your condition worsens or if you just had a question.
I have yearly check ups and my doctor told me I needed to do a colonoscopy. If I opted for staying awake during it, its 10USD. But I elected to be put to sleep. It was 310usd.
Come visit us on your next vacation! The people here are very polite and pretty happy.
in Spain , if only one out of x people in their family works, all the rest of the family members are insured for universal healthcare, as long as they are legal residents or citizens of course.
In Canada, you pay nothing for anything that isn’t elective as long as you’re a resident. You just need to register for a healthcare number which can be done at admittance.
I am Canadian too. If I remember correctly, you had to get your family doctor to refer you to a specialist for anything major. During this time, your condition can get worse.
I guess I need to look into tiwanese citizenship
Sadly enough for you, the whole nation just died by syntax error.
I don’t follow.
It’s not stupid, it’s nefarious. Free Luigi!
Just imagine living in a first world country where they provide free Netflix instead of maintaining an insanely large military.
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.
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.
You’re being downvoted due to being aggressive for no reason.
"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
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.
But then we wouldn’t be able to murder a bunch of random Venezualans or lose wars that we started against overwhelmingly inferior opponents.
The country needs more diversity. Please visit us first and bring your culture.
oh no Netflix is getting ideas
Fuck the American healthcare system and fuck Netflix
