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.
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.
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.
There’s a system that’s really fucking old but never ever breaks down so they absolutely refuse to upgrade it. It’s been modified to keep up with regulations over the years but it DOES NOT BREAK. I did some poking around and I think I have a decent idea of what this machine actually is and if I’m correct, it will outlast our patients, all employees, it will outlast their offspring, probably the damn company. It’s a bitch to use but it’s super reliable. It doesn’t get confused, it doesn’t do batshit insane things because an AI told it to. It doesn’t choke on windows updates or even run windows at all. It will survive the heat death of the universe. And we fucking hate using it. But the priority is patient care and this does that better than any of the modern shit so it stays and we suffer. It is rigid, inflexible, literal. It is brutally straightforward and that is the only thing I can truly appreciate about it. There’s no guessing why it rejects a claim. It tells you exactly what it’s pissed about and we can help you or your provider feed it what it wants within reason.
Generally it’s a matter of something was presented to it in a weird way legal wouldn’t like so it rejects it now rather than surprises people with lawsuits later. We actually catch a lot of things months before Medicare does. (If you are on Medicare, look out for catheters you never ordered from Florida. It’s a thing and our system is catching damn near all of them. Fuck these scammers.)
So rather than spend money on keeping up with everyone else, they spend the money on patient care and just brace for impact for the day all the developers of that old system die off. It’s a big priority here that we spend as much as possible on patient care, which leads to some annoying situations where some things get outsourced that really shouldn’t be, but less money spent here means more money spent on medical care.
That old system is the fastest piece of tech we have in the entire operation. It gets all the pampering and attention. And while that TUI is a bear it’s never been wrong. It’s battle tested. It basically says yay or nay based on how it’s been programmed to evaluate a claim. EVERY rule it uses to evaluate claims is in the documentation given to providers while they are signing contracts to go in network with us as well as the messages it tells us to relay to callers. It has no secrets. It has no magic approve button. It doesn’t need one. We know there are a lot of rules, that’s why both patients and providers can call us.
It’s the only damn thing that reliably works around here honestly. All the new shit bolted onto it sucks ass. We are changing the front ends used to access it to modernize but it’s a really broken Microsoft product trying to tie into this old IBM mainframe and it’s just awful at it. As janky as the old stuff is, it works. The new stuff is easier to use but broken in so many different ways we take forever boxing with it only to go back to the mainframe and ask it directly what it wants.
Could have been worse. They could have gone with Oracle.
Anyway to your situation.
There are firm rules to these contracts. They are cold and lifeless. There is no humanity in them because we just can’t afford sympathy. We would approve everything that comes in. That’s why we have this system. It keeps things locked on to the terms of the contracts. But the contracts make things predictable, something our company can plan for and prepare for. While some companies can and do want to fuck you over to give your surgery money to some fucking shareholder, not everyone works that way, not even within those companies.
Fun bit of trivia you might appreciate: you know how insurance companies insist on physical therapy before certain surgeries? There’s actually a couple VERY good reasons for that.
Sometimes, people don’t need surgery at all after physical therapy. That means far fewer risks for our patients as therapy is much less risky.
Patients who struggle through physical therapy, no matter how badly it goes, have dramatically better outcomes after surgery. They heal better. They recover faster. They have fewer complications. Yes it’s an asinine thing to ask and in some cases seems ridiculous but nobody wants to fix this because we’ve seen the data and these people do so MUCH better long term when they put in the effort beforehand.
That didn’t just help the patient either. The surgeons numbers look better, meaning they are less averse to performing the surgery in the first place. Some surgeons outright refuse surgery without PT happening first. They don’t care how much improvement you get out of physical therapy. It’s more about preparing your body to heal. That means we can send more people their way to get care. It costs less for us too because the outcomes are better so we spend less on the individual patients, so we can cover a greater number of total surgery patients. It slows the rate of healthcare costs increases.
Unless you have exceeded some cartoonishly high limit, we will NOT turn down physical therapy. It’s the cheapest, most effective, lowest risk way to dramatically improve health outcomes. Seriously, if you saw the numbers you would understand why we have conversations like ”we understand your knees feel like sandpaper but the physical therapy will help, please continue.” It DOES help, but sometimes the benefit shows up later.
So yes, we know you need the surgery. Yes we know the bureaucracy is annoying. But in some cases, like physical therapy, there is a very good reason we do not change it. If it isn’t actively killing you, people, just do the PT.
How does this relate to your case?
Well you tried a pharmaceutical approach. It works for the most part but it sounds like it’s not fixing a problem so much as trading it for a different set of problems. That’s not helping you. It’s not helping your insurance company either. The surgery is a one-time expense whereas medication has to keep being paid out until someone dies.
You ever watch Mike Holmes back in the pre-flatscreen TV days? He was a Canadian contractor who had a TV show where he fixed houses and he was strict about do it right or pay more to do it twice. That’s kind of what’s happening here. It costs less to get the surgery than to drug you up forever.
At the end of the day, remember this: health insurance companies are very good at math. They all agree on one thing. Dead people don’t pay premiums. The more people you keep alive and healthy, the more additional people you can serve the same way and the lower your risk. It’s in our best interest to keep you well because your death means missing revenue not just for you but for everyone else we have to care for. It’s literally in everyone’s best interest we take care of you. And since my company has no shareholders, I get to focus on doing just that. :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I’ve been saying that what the world is seeing is not the good people but instead the tens of millions of awful people. That said, I spoke mainly to the people who want me to pity them and their country just because they think that they’re nice. I have spoken on the fact, in this thread, that I do not believe Canadians are above criticism but I would also argue against other Canadians trying to do the same escape-plan bullshit. This is the primary difference between us, I can accept that the effect my country has on itself and others is something that I am tied to and I don’t expect other people to put up with our collective nonsense just because myself and my friends are good people.
You have no self-awareness and refuse to hear anything that won’t make you a victim. It’s enbarrassing, and I hope you do not try to come to my country while thinking you’re some highly desireable paragon of morality. Congratulations on barely passing the minimum bar of decency, and I’m sorry that your country has warped your perspective so badly, but I don’t really want you here if that’s how you’re going to behave.
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.
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.
Socialism doesn’t preclude the end of Private Business.
If the government controlled all private businesses where would they get money to operate? How woukd they collect taxes? How do you encourage innovation? philanthropy?
Like in health care, the businesses continue to make money. The government can continue to tax its businesses or use all profits.
Innovation is usually the argument against government healthcare. If that is not a problem for you, why should there be one in other areas? However, most research is publicly funded anyway.
Philanthropy would also have to shift to the state. The state funds theaters and museums. It could take care of more causes.
It appears you’re arguing from a fundamental misunderstanding of the system you’re defending. You’re describing expanded government programs inside a market economy. That is not socialism. That is social democracy.
Under actual socialism, the state owns the means of production. There is no private sector to tax. There is no flow of revenue from independent businesses because those businesses no longer exist as independent entities. Your points about taxation, profit collection, and philanthropy only make sense inside a mixed economy, precisely the system you claim to be replacing.
In other words, you’re defending a model that isn’t the one under discussion. You’re arguing for more public services, not socialism. These are completely different frameworks, and conflating them is why your reasoning keeps circling without connecting.
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.
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.
Its exactly the same if you ask most conservatives about Obamacare versus the Affordable Care Act.
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.
There isn’t an approve button.
There’s a system that’s really fucking old but never ever breaks down so they absolutely refuse to upgrade it. It’s been modified to keep up with regulations over the years but it DOES NOT BREAK. I did some poking around and I think I have a decent idea of what this machine actually is and if I’m correct, it will outlast our patients, all employees, it will outlast their offspring, probably the damn company. It’s a bitch to use but it’s super reliable. It doesn’t get confused, it doesn’t do batshit insane things because an AI told it to. It doesn’t choke on windows updates or even run windows at all. It will survive the heat death of the universe. And we fucking hate using it. But the priority is patient care and this does that better than any of the modern shit so it stays and we suffer. It is rigid, inflexible, literal. It is brutally straightforward and that is the only thing I can truly appreciate about it. There’s no guessing why it rejects a claim. It tells you exactly what it’s pissed about and we can help you or your provider feed it what it wants within reason.
Generally it’s a matter of something was presented to it in a weird way legal wouldn’t like so it rejects it now rather than surprises people with lawsuits later. We actually catch a lot of things months before Medicare does. (If you are on Medicare, look out for catheters you never ordered from Florida. It’s a thing and our system is catching damn near all of them. Fuck these scammers.)
So rather than spend money on keeping up with everyone else, they spend the money on patient care and just brace for impact for the day all the developers of that old system die off. It’s a big priority here that we spend as much as possible on patient care, which leads to some annoying situations where some things get outsourced that really shouldn’t be, but less money spent here means more money spent on medical care.
That old system is the fastest piece of tech we have in the entire operation. It gets all the pampering and attention. And while that TUI is a bear it’s never been wrong. It’s battle tested. It basically says yay or nay based on how it’s been programmed to evaluate a claim. EVERY rule it uses to evaluate claims is in the documentation given to providers while they are signing contracts to go in network with us as well as the messages it tells us to relay to callers. It has no secrets. It has no magic approve button. It doesn’t need one. We know there are a lot of rules, that’s why both patients and providers can call us.
It’s the only damn thing that reliably works around here honestly. All the new shit bolted onto it sucks ass. We are changing the front ends used to access it to modernize but it’s a really broken Microsoft product trying to tie into this old IBM mainframe and it’s just awful at it. As janky as the old stuff is, it works. The new stuff is easier to use but broken in so many different ways we take forever boxing with it only to go back to the mainframe and ask it directly what it wants.
Could have been worse. They could have gone with Oracle.
Anyway to your situation. There are firm rules to these contracts. They are cold and lifeless. There is no humanity in them because we just can’t afford sympathy. We would approve everything that comes in. That’s why we have this system. It keeps things locked on to the terms of the contracts. But the contracts make things predictable, something our company can plan for and prepare for. While some companies can and do want to fuck you over to give your surgery money to some fucking shareholder, not everyone works that way, not even within those companies.
Fun bit of trivia you might appreciate: you know how insurance companies insist on physical therapy before certain surgeries? There’s actually a couple VERY good reasons for that.
Sometimes, people don’t need surgery at all after physical therapy. That means far fewer risks for our patients as therapy is much less risky.
Patients who struggle through physical therapy, no matter how badly it goes, have dramatically better outcomes after surgery. They heal better. They recover faster. They have fewer complications. Yes it’s an asinine thing to ask and in some cases seems ridiculous but nobody wants to fix this because we’ve seen the data and these people do so MUCH better long term when they put in the effort beforehand.
That didn’t just help the patient either. The surgeons numbers look better, meaning they are less averse to performing the surgery in the first place. Some surgeons outright refuse surgery without PT happening first. They don’t care how much improvement you get out of physical therapy. It’s more about preparing your body to heal. That means we can send more people their way to get care. It costs less for us too because the outcomes are better so we spend less on the individual patients, so we can cover a greater number of total surgery patients. It slows the rate of healthcare costs increases.
Unless you have exceeded some cartoonishly high limit, we will NOT turn down physical therapy. It’s the cheapest, most effective, lowest risk way to dramatically improve health outcomes. Seriously, if you saw the numbers you would understand why we have conversations like ”we understand your knees feel like sandpaper but the physical therapy will help, please continue.” It DOES help, but sometimes the benefit shows up later.
So yes, we know you need the surgery. Yes we know the bureaucracy is annoying. But in some cases, like physical therapy, there is a very good reason we do not change it. If it isn’t actively killing you, people, just do the PT.
How does this relate to your case?
Well you tried a pharmaceutical approach. It works for the most part but it sounds like it’s not fixing a problem so much as trading it for a different set of problems. That’s not helping you. It’s not helping your insurance company either. The surgery is a one-time expense whereas medication has to keep being paid out until someone dies.
You ever watch Mike Holmes back in the pre-flatscreen TV days? He was a Canadian contractor who had a TV show where he fixed houses and he was strict about do it right or pay more to do it twice. That’s kind of what’s happening here. It costs less to get the surgery than to drug you up forever.
At the end of the day, remember this: health insurance companies are very good at math. They all agree on one thing. Dead people don’t pay premiums. The more people you keep alive and healthy, the more additional people you can serve the same way and the lower your risk. It’s in our best interest to keep you well because your death means missing revenue not just for you but for everyone else we have to care for. It’s literally in everyone’s best interest we take care of you. And since my company has no shareholders, I get to focus on doing just that. :)
Wow, this was super interesting to read, thanks for taking the time to respond.
Living amongst these people is a baffling and frustrating experience.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I’ve been saying that what the world is seeing is not the good people but instead the tens of millions of awful people. That said, I spoke mainly to the people who want me to pity them and their country just because they think that they’re nice. I have spoken on the fact, in this thread, that I do not believe Canadians are above criticism but I would also argue against other Canadians trying to do the same escape-plan bullshit. This is the primary difference between us, I can accept that the effect my country has on itself and others is something that I am tied to and I don’t expect other people to put up with our collective nonsense just because myself and my friends are good people.
You have no self-awareness and refuse to hear anything that won’t make you a victim. It’s enbarrassing, and I hope you do not try to come to my country while thinking you’re some highly desireable paragon of morality. Congratulations on barely passing the minimum bar of decency, and I’m sorry that your country has warped your perspective so badly, but I don’t really want you here if that’s how you’re going to behave.
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.
Then who do you think is going to fix it, if not for us who care?
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.
I never said or even implied that the controlled opposition in Congress was or is “good”: they are as complicit as the openly destructive.
If protests are sanctioned, why are protesters being surveilled and jailed?
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.
K.
Hey, some of us Americans just elected democratic socialists as our mayors.
I’m confused as to who you think made this post. You figure it’s a French dude?
Stupidity is highly infectious
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.
Why should only healthcare work if run by government? Government could run all industries.
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not… If you’re not that’s the most brain dead thing I’ve ever heard in a long time.
Why can’t the government serve the public and provide all needed goods and not just healthcare? Where is the limit that prevents socialism?
Socialism doesn’t preclude the end of Private Business.
If the government controlled all private businesses where would they get money to operate? How woukd they collect taxes? How do you encourage innovation? philanthropy?
Like in health care, the businesses continue to make money. The government can continue to tax its businesses or use all profits.
Innovation is usually the argument against government healthcare. If that is not a problem for you, why should there be one in other areas? However, most research is publicly funded anyway.
Philanthropy would also have to shift to the state. The state funds theaters and museums. It could take care of more causes.
Where do you see problems?
The system you describe only works when it is exporting goods and services.
Can you explain why, please? If the state sets the prices correctly or allocates enough resources, it should work.
It appears you’re arguing from a fundamental misunderstanding of the system you’re defending. You’re describing expanded government programs inside a market economy. That is not socialism. That is social democracy.
Under actual socialism, the state owns the means of production. There is no private sector to tax. There is no flow of revenue from independent businesses because those businesses no longer exist as independent entities. Your points about taxation, profit collection, and philanthropy only make sense inside a mixed economy, precisely the system you claim to be replacing.
In other words, you’re defending a model that isn’t the one under discussion. You’re arguing for more public services, not socialism. These are completely different frameworks, and conflating them is why your reasoning keeps circling without connecting.
How would socialism keep track of value? The USSR had money.