this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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It was three weeks after Christmas when the bombshell letter arrived. Guy Shahar and his wife, Oksana, looked at each other in stunned disbelief.

They had followed the Guardian’s investigation into the carer’s allowance scandal that has left thousands of families with crippling debts and criminal records. Not once did they think they would join them.

“Important,” it read in big bold type. “You have been paid more carer’s allowance than you are entitled to. You now need to pay this money back”.

In some weeks, she was paid just 38p more than the threshold – but for that tiny infraction she is being forced to repay £64.60 each time, the rate of carer’s allowance at the time.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

terf island again being shitty

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Wait... An outrageous medical bill in the UK is ~13000 USD? An ambulance ride here costs 8k alone...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago

That's not an outrageous medical bill. It's an outrageous bill for clawing back government benefits for those whose full time care for family members prevents them from working.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You linked the same article from the post.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago

Maybe the person I replied to will read it this time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I (USA) literally can't get my tooth fixed because I don't have dental insurance or a spare $2,000 for the root canal, not counting the crown which is probably another grand. We live in hell and now there's some Brits feeling our pain, and all I can think is "yeah it ain't so funny when it happens to you, is it?"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It costs $8k without insurance or with a high-deductible plan. Marketed hospital prices are not the same as what patients pay. Yes, a lot will pay around the $8k, but a lot more will pay a few hundred dollars.

I'm not saying the US has affordable health care, but if you're going to criticize something, you have to keep the nuance.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I think an ambulance ride on my plan is covered 80% by insurance before my deductible, so I pay 20% out of pocket until I hit my deductible and then they cover it all.

So at most I’d pay $4000, but my neighbor took a ride to the hospital when he fainted and it only cost him a few hundred bucks (obviously our insurance coverage isn’t the same so it’s hard to cover like for like)

The real cost is the nearly $700 a month I pay for insurance just to have insurance to “negotiate” prices for me to pay. My $4000 deductible shakes out to like $8400 a year out of my pay for them privilege of paying “negotiated” prices for the first 4000.

I may end up with a $300 ambulance ride but I w already doled out $8k+ for the luxury of being allowed to only have to pay 20% of that ambulance ride.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

I lived in the UK for over a decade until Brexit, and frankly I think that by the time I left they were one of the most far-right countries in Europe, just in this English-upper-class style of posh words and the oppression done "elegantly" via extreme "rules" rather than the direct violence of the (not posh) populist far-right, - people are still made to hurt for the crime of being poor, and the system is designed to hurt anybody who would defy the local elites (just notice the conviction to years in jail of of Environmentalist demonstrators for blocking a road) but all the Ts are traced and Is are dotted, all prim and propper - so people from the outside don't really notice how so very close to Fascist Britain already is.

("It's the Law", say the far-right muppets over there, same as Nazi enablers would say in Nazi Germany.)

Rules on social security explicitly designed to make it likely that people make mistakes (this allowance apparently changes depending on a person's weekly income, which floats if you're in insecure employment, which is exactly the problem of the working poor, and it's down to the recipient to figure it out precisely, down to the pence, with no help) and then punishing them disproportionatelly hard for the error is exactly the style of "by the rules" hurting of people for being poor (and human, hence making mistakes) beloved by the Posh Fascists and their followers (of which there are many, as proven by Brexit which was the product of a campaign of Racism and Nationalistic Exceptionalism).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago

The cruelty is the point. I fucking hate this country.

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