Pre.cook.ur.brats👏
this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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Here in the U.S., we let billionaires tell us which of two candidates are "electable", and we then argue over which one is "better".
A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil.
I was living in Germany in the '80s. My mom, a civilian US citizen, had to get a hysterectomy. She chose to go to a German hospital (as opposed to the US Military hospital) and just pay whatever it cost. She mentioned the other day she doesn't think they ever sent her a bill.
Acknowledging that leaving your dystopian hellhole called home is not a possibility for many people why are these people not on the streets protesting?
Diabetes care is criminal.
Maternity leave is criminal.
Labour laws are criminal.
And yet Americans writ large take it in the ass without batting an eye. Why?
We're slaves, it's hard for slaves to liberate themselves in a police state.
I agree though, we have to fight back
What little care we can receive is contingent on having a full time job. Putting food on our tables and keeping a roof over our heads is also contingent on having a full time job, if not a second job on top of that. Everyone is working all the time. We don't have time to go out onto the streets and protest. This is by design. This is our shitty system working exactly as it's intended, and it's designed to keep itself intact by forcing the people it fucks over to struggle to survive, so that we're so preoccupied with existing that we can't realistically enact change.
And there is much eye batting, don't get it twisted. It's just that batting eyes is about all we have energy for at the end of the day.
I work a salaried full time job that provides me absolutely zero health care coverage of any kind. I'm on the ultra-budget tier of healthcare.gov benefits and my taxes get brutalized every spring because I "earn too much" to be on it.
Given the opportunity I would gladly push a guillotine around town, and when that's done I'd push it toward the state capitol and beyond. That opportunity will never come.
Even in Canada and Mexico this mostly works the same
IIRC, an ambulance here in Canada costs 80 dollars, any treatment in hospital is free
A single accident or illness can ruin your life and your family
Spending a single day at school can kill a child
If they live though that day, they might learn that abstinence is great sex Ed
Police officers can kill you without reason with impunity
Your leaders are all millionaires who will do anything to squeeze money out of you and you never even protest?
The US is a god godawful place to live
as a European it blows my mind that this is not the norm is many parts of the world :(
I know expensive, shitty healthcare in the USA is a stereotype, but in my experience it's also largely true. Maybe it's because I'm not wealthy or connected enough to have access to the good stuff, though?
The bills for my latest medical emergency are rolling in now.
The $1,000 USD ambulance bill is almost a relief, since I've heard others say their ride cost several times more than that. I declined pretty much all medical care in the ambulance and all offers for medication/treatment, though, so maybe that's part of it. Had I lost consciousness, I likely wouldn't have been able to say no.
The $2,000 USD emergency room bill? That's just the part that I have to pay out of pocket. The actual price they charged my insurance is $6,000+ for my slightly more than 90 minutes on a stretcher in the hallway. And it doesn't seem to have covered anything specific because the imaging (which I didn't even need), treatment, medications (which I would have refused if I knew how much they charged but they don't know that and can't tell you ahead of time), individual nurses, etc are all billed as separate line items. I was even charged thousands of dollars by a doctor I never even saw in person. I joked in another thread recently about $45 tylenol, but that's actually true. I'm paying $45 for 800mg of tylenol.
Months later, the billing part isn't even finalized. New claims/bills showed up literally 2 days ago, well after I thought I was done paying. Thousands of dollars out of pocket, on top of paying a thousand dollars a month for insurance.
At least the medical professionals that treated me were great.
I know expensive, shitty healthcare in the USA is a stereotype, but in my experience it's also largely true
I had a brain injury from a bicycle accident. The fact that my health has bounced back, but my finances likely never will, tells me everything I need to know about our system. One injury, and I now have a lifetime of bills to pay off. I guess it makes sense in some sick way, I do owe them my life, but man, they don’t let me forget (even if my broken brain tries).
Over 60% of all private bankruptcies in the US are due to medical issues. The system is broken
Two major studies in California found 70% of the homeless were employed "productive" members of society before injury/illness forced loss of income, then housing. Yes the system is broken.
The system is working as designed.
It’s designed to be predatory and evil.
At least the medical professionals that treated me were great
last time i was in the hospital in the states the nurses and the hospitalist intentionally tried to kill me via malpractice.
I've had good hospital experiences, but not in the last ten years.
As someone who hasn't been to a hospital since he was 13 I would love to hear wtf I'm in for when it inevitably happens. Why would they do that? What did they do? Was it subtle? Stupid?
short version, not subtle, very stupid. i had an acute condition with one and only one accepted course of treatment. nurse put in orders to do something very different, which likely would have caused a massive organ rupture if i wasn't keeping track of every minutiae they did while trying to treat me. i refused the new treatment and wasn't harmed, but the MD signed off on it. as it was i left the hospital severly dehydrated because they were refusing me IV fluids while i was NPO.
I've worked in a few US hospitals (in the lab, but we worked closely with nurses and doctors) and by far the biggest danger I observed (other than insurance practicing medicine without a license) was nurses and doctors making mistakes due to sleep deprivation. Doctors and nurses will work 14 hours, get called in to the ER multiple times throughout the night, and then try to work another 12 hour shift without sleep.
Another huge risk factor was overworking nurses by giving them too many patients to care for. Nurses need patient caps of 5 or 6 because each additional patient increases the risk of someone dying by 20%
This is crazy. I once stayed at a hospital for two months, countless ultrasounds, even an invasive procedure where they sent probes down my veins, two MRI's and the final cost was around 5k... payed by state supplied insurance. I payed 0 and even got payed 80% of my wages... cause that's the law.
9 months of chemo, countless tests, scans, meds, consults, two stints in ICU....$0
'Straayaaaaa
I once was visiting Detroit and got very drunk My airbnb. wasn’t far from the bar and I was way too loaded for a taxi to take me back, and it was a nice night so I decided to walk back to the airbnb I made it about 200 steps and felt something Hit me in the head. Someone was grabbing at my pocket and I guess I successfully stopped them from stealth by my wallet since it’s all ripped.
Anyway my head is split open and there’s blood fucking everywhere. I tried dialing 911on my phone. Not sure if you’ve ever tried making a call on a bloood covered phone when you can’t see because you’re blind drunk and your vision is obscured by blood but it’s impossible. Anyway, a couple of people see me and get me an ambulance.
Now, I’m from Canada, and I THINK that I had international health insurance from work but I’m not sure. Anyway, they deal with the blood and tell me I’ll need stitches in the emergency room but I’m still loaded and the bleeding stopped so I ask if I can just leave and they’re like: no.
I call my buddy who shows up to take me back to the airbnb but I tell him: I’m not getting stuck with a fucking American hospital bill. Fuck this. Just walk out and I’ll meet you out front. I wait until the nurse is out of eye sight, crouch low and run past the admissions desk and out into the street, where my friend calls a very kind cab driver who sold us some decent cocaine.
In general, you're allowed to refuse treatment. That's bodily autonomy in action.
They'll want you to sign a form saying you're leaving AMA (against medical advice), but other than that and arguing with the nurses and doctors about leaving vs staying for treatment, they really can't keep you.... Unless you're under arrest, which, it does not sound like you were.
In any case, it's your life and your body, you can choose to, or refuse to, do whatever you want with it, provided that you're not breaking any laws by doing so.
Bodily autonomy? In the US?
Friend, your body belongs to the state, which belongs to the corporations. That’s called freedom.
I mean I believe you but the nurse told me I wasn’t allowed to leave so.
An ambulance for food poisoning? Really?
In civilized countries, if you feel sick enough that you don't think you can make it to a doctor or emergency room on your own, you call an ambulance
Yeah, imagine being a parent and your kid is in a foreign land has a medical emergency but you don't know what it is and whether your kid is going to live or what.
I certainly can imagine myself calling an ambulance. But maybe it's my "socialist" mind thinking here...
I recently had severe food poisoning in Cambodia, like, really really bad, followed by a severe stomach infection. I just went to a doctor. Ambulance is for when you're not able to go to a doctor/hospital yourself and/or you need immediate care. I don't consider food poisoning in that category, but I wasn't there so I don't know what the condition of the kid was.
You obviously know better than the German paramedics.
In America, it's actually cheaper just to discard the kid and start over.
This is the most “American abroad” story I ever read lol
I am not going to defend the US Healthcare industry, but EMS is often? usually? a service of your local government in the US.
Here in Maryland, our ambulance are stored in the firehouses next to the fire engines and staffed by the firemen... Paid for by the county.
When I went to Austin for a bachelorette party, one of the girls passed out and hit her head and the ambulance that came to check her out was also free of charge paid for by the city. Now, their dismissive paternalism was also free of charge because it was Texas, but my point is: emergency services are frequently not part of the predatory American healthcare industry.
t EMS is often? usually? a service of your local government in the US.
wow awesome. no one cares what level of beurocracy they are getting fucked by.
This is basically
Weed is legal in the united states
Yeah no. Not fucking federally. Not everywhere. Until that service is done the way the civilised world does it, you guys need to shut the fuck up
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