A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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Full title: 92% of American adults aren’t going to a doctor because they cannot afford it. The health insurance industry must be dissolved & all of its executives criminally prosecuted for murder, conspiracy, and treason.
Can we please gets some socialism up in this bitch already?!
They will never give it to you.
You will have to take it by force.
Actually the Luigi way. Trust me a couple or 10 dead easy to put some strain. They’re not in fear of their mortality.
A lot of times, you just get a big bill without them doing anything useful for you.
Patient: "You misunderstand, the diagnosis isn't behind a lock, the medicine is."
Doctor: "Fair enough, I'll permanently label you as 'drug-seeking' and this isn't libel somehow."
Which they have to keep an eye out for because doctors fell for drugmakers' lies and overprescribed addictive opiates while claiming they aren't addictive (which makes it even easier to get addicted).
Or they just use that as an excuse to not have to deal with an annoying case they can't flash diagnose and then get offended if a patient decides to do their own research because the doctors they see can't be bothered.
I always think back to the time my ex was trying to get a diagnosis for a rare condition that matched her weird symptoms very well. She got a new family doctor, a young new doctor, and he would always dismiss her when she brought up wanting a referral to a clinic that specialized in it so they could diagnose her or rule it out. One time I went with her, she brought it up again, he said he didn't think she had it, and all I did was ask what made him think this wasn't the case and he admitted he didn't know much about it and would do some reading. On her next appointment, she didn't even have to ask because it was as obvious to him that she probably had it as it had been to us, he just gave her the referral.
So his justification for dismissing her belief she might have that condition was jack shit, probably involving imagining House saying "it's never lupus" or something like that. Like yeah, rare conditions are rare but some doctors treat that as if it's impossible instead of rare and then don't even bother learning how to tell.
The Dunning Kruger effect seems to be particularly strong in the medical field. Though to be fair, they do have to deal with their share of idiots and liars, but it makes them jaded rather than sharp.
"shocking"? I feel like anyone living here could tell you this 💀
Yes, not "shocking" at all when literally everyone you know is doing this...
Edit: with the exception of Boomers on Medicare.
What's shocking is our inaction.
92% not going and yet I still have to wait 6-8 weeks for a visit with my PCP, to be mostly ignored and referred to a specialist, then 6+ months for a specialist to be told I need to go back to my PCP to redo all the diagnostics they did at referral because the results are too old now...
People pay a fortune in premiums, then another fortune in deductibles, before they can even use their insurance. Most families never actually get to that point unless they are "lucky" enough to have a family member who gets sick or injured badly enough to meet the deductible. Then you can finally use your insurance for the rest of the year.
We paid for years, and got literally nothing out of it, until I fell off a roof and got a bad concussion, and a big enough bill that our deductible was met. That was in September, so for the next few months we went to every doctor we needed, got every test we'd been putting off, etc. It was the only time we got full use of our insurance, so we took advantage of it, after paying in tens of thousands of dollars for years.
Medicare 4 All would give us full use of our insurance on January 1 every year, without having to worry about any deductibles. It might cost a couple of hundred extra dollars in taxes, but you'll save $600 month in health insurance premium, and $4500 per year in deductibles, so you'll come out far ahead, and have actual health insurance.
As an outsider seeing the US from the internet, can I guess that you didnt get Medicare 4 All because people went :
"4 All? But like, not those people too, surely? Oh hell no. Something something socialism bad."
No, we didn't get it because our politicians are partly owned by the insurance companies.
The majority of people want Medicare for all and even more if you explain it without including the name.
That's the meme, but I think it's more that insurance companies spend fortunes to ~~bribe~~ lobby for politicians to vote against it, not to mention fortunes in propaganda to push the narrative that universal healthcare is more expensive.
I didn't even get to use my insurance.
We met our deductible for a baby. A month before birth our company switched insurance providers. Back to zero. I'm still paying hospital bills 7 months later.
All of the hospitals in my state were purchased by Atlantic Health.
My friend works for the hospital. The highlight of their quarterly meeting is how much profit the hospital now makes.
Why do hospitals need to make profit?!
Why are corporate owned hospitals even legal?!
I hate this timeline.
Brits love to complain about the NHS, and rightly. After 14 years of right wing governments underfunding it it's on it's knees.
However if someone tried to replace it with an American style system we'd make the way the French protest look tame.
Sorry but I doubt it. Brits are really not good at standing up for themselves. They are replacing it with an American style system, just a little bit at a time. In the last 30 years it's come about half way, and it might take another couple decades to really finish the job, but I think it's likely they'll succeed in the end.
No you won’t. You’d take it like we did.
The survey that the article is based on seems pretty fishy to me. It's conducted by some financial services company that is mostly involved in selling financial products, not doing research. The methodology section is pretty threadbare and they don't provide the survey data itself.
The figures are also way out of line with more reputable research organizations like the KFF which estimates that 17% of Americans delay or avoid healthcare due cost.
Is 17% still really high and an unethical travesty in the wealthiest country on earth? Yeah. But there's no way that 92% of people are skipping the doctor due to cost. Just as an example, the top quintile of earners in the US make more than 300k per year. I doubt that anyone in that group in delaying or avoiding healthcare due to costs and yet the survey would mean that a good chunk of them are.
There's no way it's only 17%. The percentage of uninsured was estimated over 8% in 2024, before insurance premiums skyrocketed and Republicans voting to kick millions off of Medicaid.
And they are still paying for that insurance they can't afford to use.
It is cheaper to keep people healthy through preventive care than it is to treat illness. From a taxpayer point of view, a single payer system would save us money.
But people are so propagandized in this country that they seriously think private insurance is the better option.
I don't have data, but as a pharmacy worker one thing that seems very apparent to me is people with non-european/white names getting way more insurance rejections.
Also, insulin and inhalers should not be so consistently headaches to deal with. Inhaler insurance issues make me want to rip my hair out.
Is this true? How do people vote for parties that don't change it?
Many are convinced you can't have freedom and an affordable doctor at the same time. Americans are subjected to extraordinary levels of propaganda.
I don't think the freedom part is accurate, but the propaganda certainly is. The news tells them what to think and they don't try further. They are convinced the United States has the best healthcare in the world, so nice, it cannot be put into a more affordable model without becoming unusably bad. They believe the Magic Market has created the absolute best and cheapest option out there, and the government can only mess that up. Individually, to those who use it, you almost always get complaints as we find ways to make it MORE inaccessible and MORE expensive (eg, concierge doctors), but even those people believe this is the best and cheapest way to do it. They themselves just got unlucky for their personal and not unique situation. The news told them so.
Propaganda has some people convinced that universal healthcare means having to wait for weeks for a medical appointment, and also that even that (made up) problem is worse than not being able to afford to go to the doctor at all
Meanwhile, even if you can afford it, you have to wait for weeks for an appointment under the current system anyway.
For roughly 40 years now, no party has been all that serous about changing it?
They don't have preferential voting in the US so they're effectively limited to two parties
Time off work is also a huge factor
If you're screwed up political system that's responsible. I'm pretty sure the US is the only country in the world where bribes are actually legal. Bribery is illegal even in Russia even if it isn't actually enforced but at least they don't pretend that what they're doing is right.
You won't move over to green energy even though it's more economically viable because of lobbyists.
You have private health care because of lobbyists.
Your food would be considered toxic by every other nation, but it's allowed because of lobbyists.
By all means shoot some health insurance CEOs nobody will shead the tear for them, but they are the symptom not the cause. If your country allows lobbying then don't be surprised that you get lobbyists.
I just spent 5grand out of pocket because the doctor made me take a sleep test. They charged insurance nearly 20 grand.
They told me they found nothing and I was fine. I pointed out some flaws in their test but they weren’t interested in my opinion.
I cancelled my follow up appointment bc I can’t afford it, at least until this is paid off.
Also, I am not fine. I am very very tired.
Did you know if you meet your deductible they will won’t pay until you also meet the Out of Pocket Maximum? What’s the point of the deductible? I have no idea.
The health insurance industry must be dissolved & all of its executives criminally prosecuted for murder, conspiracy, and treason.
I think the end of the states is more likely and easier at this point. That broken ass system is just embedded too deep.
70,000 Americans die every year due to lack of access to health care.
How quickly do you think an issue would be addressed if it killed 70 billionaires a year?
Such a big task infront of future american generations if it survives. I was baffled the other day when I heard an american be surprised the rest of the world have unfavorable opinions of them. I think the first issue to tackle is education.
For me, I think it's more the unpleasantness of being ripped off than affordability. It's such a fucking scam.
This is the exact set up for a Black Plague event. I know people tend to hold a grudge over the Covid Lockdown, but do we really need to see bodies topple on the street before realisation is made?
This makes every zombie movie way more realistic than it has any right to be.
also some doctors are jaded asf, if they see a couple times in a row they become frustrated and annoyed with you.
Remember, billionaires are nothing without their enablers like your local news anchors lying to you, their protectors like your local PD, or your neighbors in the military who would take orders to kill you for standing up for yourself and your community. Billionaires are inaccessible, their protectors and enablers are not.
Smells like freedom. No wait, kinda like burning toast? I'd go to the doctor but it's too expensive.
Even for me, with health insurance, one of the reasons I tend not to seek health care is due to the surprise and unpredictable costs. I've already fallen into that trap twice this year alone.
The very first thing I did when I was choosing a plan for this year was filter the list down to the ones I could afford which said they covered all my prescription meds and for which my current health providers were "in-network". That left 2 options.
When I went to get my first round of refills, several months into the year, they said I had to have prior authorization for one of my meds. After going through that process several times, provider who writes the prescription has to jump through the hoops with insurance to get the authorization, the insurance finally came back and said "we don't/won't cover this prescription." My provider was able to find a cheaper, older alternative that works, but I pay out of pocket 100% for it.
Then came my annual physical, which is free with insurance. Because of the meds I'm on, the nurse said they needed to do some blood tests to check for signs of problems. Never mentioned that those tests would cost me extra and obviously I did not know. Wouldn't have mattered, because they wouldn't have been able to tell me up front how much it would cost so that I could make a financial decision about it. In the end, that free annual visit cost me almost $400 that I was not anticipating. The bills started showing up months later, so it completely blindsided me.
Last year was even worse. I had one of the best insurance plans offered through the ACA. Then I had an accident that landed me in the hospital. The ambulance ride was not covered at all, the service was "out-of-network" so I had to pay 100% of that. The 2 tylenol I was given for pain management in the emergency room cost me $40 because insurance would not pay for them without prior authorization. I hesitated to even call for help, hoping I could stop the bleeding myself, because I knew it was going to be an expensive trip to the ER and boy was it ever. Not to mention the follow-up appointments and treatment that was required.