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I'm really sorry for her. This just remained me again how utterly shitty US healthcare system is.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
It really seems that if you aren't in the upper income brackets you are just one major health problem away from bankruptcy.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Well, if you are low enough in the income brackets, you get medicaid to pay for it all. On the one hand, medical expenses are the number one cause of bankruptcy, we've all heard that. But on the other hand, if it were really as bad as it seems, why don't we do something about it? I guess the answer is tribal politics. Amazing how we can all be turned against each other so effectively, while a small portion of the population, who needs help the least, has no problem whatsoever advocating vigorously for their own benefit.
  - Uehreka 5y ago
    > if were really as bad as it seems, why don’t we do something about it? This sounds like a person in a burning building saying “if it was that bad, wouldn’t I have left the building already? Maybe there’s a reason I’m in here?” Like, yeah, our politics are tribal. But one side is debating back and forth about how to fix this situation (with some good points on both sides, I’d be cool with an NHS, a Canadian single payer system, or even a German public/private combo system honestly), while the other side seems dead set on acting like the burning building just needs more gasoline and it’ll turn out alright.
    - kaczordon 5y ago
      Despite the snark about the “other side” your proposed solutions are equally blind to the actual problem. Even if we had single payer(not to mention that places like Canada rely on the drug and treatment innovations from the US) that doesn’t fix the system. The problem is hospital billing and financial scams pulled by hospitals, a majority of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health. I highly recommend reading The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care and How to Fix It to understand the real issues with healthcare in the US today.
      - bserge 5y ago
        It seems to me that insurance companies are the main problem, the hospitals just take advantage of that.
        spaetzleesser 5y ago
        All players in the US system are corrupt and take advantage. Insurance , hospitals, doctors, ambulances, drug companies, medical device companies, various middleman, construction companies and more. No need to point out a single player. I think you would have to work hard if you tried to build a worse system if you decided to build a system that’s more opaque , unpredictable, bureaucratic, cruel and expensive.
      - willvarfar 5y ago
        There ought be a bot to keep replying to people saying that the high margins in the US fund healthcare innovations. This is a popular narrative promoted by the US medical industry. However, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Just the first debunking I find in a google search is https://www.mhaonline.com/blog/healthcare-debates-funding-medical-research https://www.mhaonline.com/blog/healthcare-debates-funding-me... I think the big profits to be made on _treating_ diereses in the US is probably a perverse incentive preventing those companies from developing preventative measures.
        kaczordon 5y ago
        The article you linked disproves your point: In 2016, the US was responsible for 57 percent of new chemical entities worldwide. From this perspective, ensuring increased investment in R&D seems logical.
  - tcmart14 5y ago
    I'd say we can't do anything about it because the one with the power to do something about it are more worried about the thousands of other frivolous social policies (BOTH SIDES) for show while they pad their pockets with lobbying money and benefits.
  - emmelaich 5y ago
    Hold up ... it's probably overstated. "Myth and Measurement: The Case of Medical Bankruptcies" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/ also https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/28/sanderss-flawed-statistic-medical-bankruptcies-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/28/sanderss-...
  - californical 5y ago
    > Amazing how we can all be turned against each other so effectively, while a small portion of the population, who needs help the least, has no problem whatsoever advocating vigorously for their own benefit. I know it wasn’t your main point, but this really made me think. Is it possible that these traits are somewhat correlated, in the sense that people who are more likely to advocate for their own interests & needs (in a persuasive way) are more likely to be successful in other areas (financial) as well?
    - spaetzleesser 5y ago
      Sure, being selfish is good trait if yiu want to be successful. Especially if you are good at convincing others with “facts” that are beneficial for you.
  - swayvil 5y ago
    Speaking as a person on medicaid. Our local dental clinic. "Sorry, we are not accepting new patients at the moment" But there's a local veterinarian that has a sideline in tooth-pulling, if it gets too bad. USA is medieval.
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    I know people on Medicaid. The coverage is very spotty, super bureaucratic and it’s hard to find a doctor who will treat you. Definitely not a desirable thing
- tcmart14 5y ago
  Something dad always told me growing up, 'most people are one bad accident away from the poorhouse/welfare.'
disabled 5y ago
If you want a good read about how the *****y the US healthcare system is, this is a very worthwhile read. Ironically the author is the writer of “Girl, Interrupted” and the story she writes is about how her son got screwed by the US healthcare system and is titled “Boy, Interrupted”. It also shows you how desperate people get for specialized care, and will shell out unfathomable amounts of money for “treatment” at sketchy places: https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/boy-interrupted-a-story-of-akathisia/ https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/boy-interrupted-a-story... Ironically, the last straw for me, when it came to living in America was my diagnosis of akathisia (just like the linked story), which is 1000x worse than it sounds. I have severe depression and I had been taking my medications as prescribed. Because of my taking these medications, I developed severe akathisia. Literally, before all hell broke loose from the severe akathisia (of which I likely had to varying degrees for years) my highly respected neurologist in movement disorders immediately wrote a scathing report of my situation with the diagnosis. He also gave a ton of recommendations. He also wrote letters to all of my doctors. He did this all within an hour and took the situation extremely seriously. Unfortunately, even though he is technically a high powered doctor, the US healthcare system has taken a tremendous amount of power away from doctors in general. So a scathing write up in my medical record plus letters to all of my doctors (with recommendations) was all he could really do for me. I literally ended up in the ER 6 times in a week, with improper help. I kept on being discharged over and over again without any further help and even got in to trouble with the law multiple times. One time, after being drugged with Ativan (a benzodiazepine) and Ketamine (a general anesthetic) in the ER, from which I had been discharged. I had called my mother and she was going to pick me up from the hospital. She was well on her way for picking me up. Honestly, I thought I was just waiting outside on the sidewalk right next to the ER, for my mother, but something very wrong had happened. All of the sudden I see a cop car pull up about 30-40 feet away from me and they were headed my way to talk to me. Obviously the number one rule is to never talk to the police under any conditions. Traffic stops are a good time to practice that, by the way. The best thing you can do is say “no comment, I need to talk to my lawyer first.” Anyways I was drugged up to the extreme so it was not like I was not talking and running my mouth to both of the cops observing the situation. Obviously I had caused some sort of public disturbance and somebody had called the cops on me and clearly I should have never been discharged from the hospital. Honestly, I have no idea how, when, or even where the public disturbance occurred (obviously this is public record but it is not healthy for me to investigate the situation further). Anyways, after the cops talked to me, they said that an “emergency detention order” was being issued and that I was going to be forced to get treatment at the ****hole hospital which had improperly discharged me after being hella ativaned and ketamined up. Long story short, I had 3 interactions with the cops in 1 week. Prior to that I had only had 2 interactions with the police in my adult life (+14 years). Both were traffic stops, but neither were for moving traffic violations (burnt out headlight and expired registration during COVID-19). I was tremendously lucky that I was never charged with anything over that week from hell, and the cops managed to see that something was “off”. Anyways, like in the above link (excellent storytelling by the way so it is a worthwhile read), there are common denominators that I share with the writer’s son. I am a dual US|European Union (Croatian) citizen and I fled the US after the final hospital trip (from hell actually...it was the worst hospital trip of all time and I am hardcore chronically ill just in general) for Croatia exactly 21 days later (I had to obtain legal documents). Because of my training in electrical engineering, which I am profoundly fortunate to have, I do LORETA (technically sLORETA) neurofeedback training completely on my own to help heal my brain, just like the person in that story. Anyways, there is much more to the story that is better not put in writing. Just know that there is nothing that will bring me back to the USA.

It really seems that if you aren't in the upper income brackets you are just one major health problem away from bankruptcy.

rootusrootus 5y ago
Well, if you are low enough in the income brackets, you get medicaid to pay for it all. On the one hand, medical expenses are the number one cause of bankruptcy, we've all heard that. But on the other hand, if it were really as bad as it seems, why don't we do something about it? I guess the answer is tribal politics. Amazing how we can all be turned against each other so effectively, while a small portion of the population, who needs help the least, has no problem whatsoever advocating vigorously for their own benefit.
- Uehreka 5y ago
  > if were really as bad as it seems, why don’t we do something about it? This sounds like a person in a burning building saying “if it was that bad, wouldn’t I have left the building already? Maybe there’s a reason I’m in here?” Like, yeah, our politics are tribal. But one side is debating back and forth about how to fix this situation (with some good points on both sides, I’d be cool with an NHS, a Canadian single payer system, or even a German public/private combo system honestly), while the other side seems dead set on acting like the burning building just needs more gasoline and it’ll turn out alright.
  - kaczordon 5y ago
    Despite the snark about the “other side” your proposed solutions are equally blind to the actual problem. Even if we had single payer(not to mention that places like Canada rely on the drug and treatment innovations from the US) that doesn’t fix the system. The problem is hospital billing and financial scams pulled by hospitals, a majority of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health. I highly recommend reading The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care and How to Fix It to understand the real issues with healthcare in the US today.
    - bserge 5y ago
      It seems to me that insurance companies are the main problem, the hospitals just take advantage of that.
      - spaetzleesser 5y ago
        All players in the US system are corrupt and take advantage. Insurance , hospitals, doctors, ambulances, drug companies, medical device companies, various middleman, construction companies and more. No need to point out a single player. I think you would have to work hard if you tried to build a worse system if you decided to build a system that’s more opaque , unpredictable, bureaucratic, cruel and expensive.
    - willvarfar 5y ago
      There ought be a bot to keep replying to people saying that the high margins in the US fund healthcare innovations. This is a popular narrative promoted by the US medical industry. However, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Just the first debunking I find in a google search is https://www.mhaonline.com/blog/healthcare-debates-funding-medical-research https://www.mhaonline.com/blog/healthcare-debates-funding-me... I think the big profits to be made on _treating_ diereses in the US is probably a perverse incentive preventing those companies from developing preventative measures.
      - kaczordon 5y ago
        The article you linked disproves your point: In 2016, the US was responsible for 57 percent of new chemical entities worldwide. From this perspective, ensuring increased investment in R&D seems logical.
- tcmart14 5y ago
  I'd say we can't do anything about it because the one with the power to do something about it are more worried about the thousands of other frivolous social policies (BOTH SIDES) for show while they pad their pockets with lobbying money and benefits.
- emmelaich 5y ago
  Hold up ... it's probably overstated. "Myth and Measurement: The Case of Medical Bankruptcies" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/ also https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/28/sanderss-flawed-statistic-medical-bankruptcies-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/28/sanderss-...
- californical 5y ago
  > Amazing how we can all be turned against each other so effectively, while a small portion of the population, who needs help the least, has no problem whatsoever advocating vigorously for their own benefit. I know it wasn’t your main point, but this really made me think. Is it possible that these traits are somewhat correlated, in the sense that people who are more likely to advocate for their own interests & needs (in a persuasive way) are more likely to be successful in other areas (financial) as well?
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    Sure, being selfish is good trait if yiu want to be successful. Especially if you are good at convincing others with “facts” that are beneficial for you.
- swayvil 5y ago
  Speaking as a person on medicaid. Our local dental clinic. "Sorry, we are not accepting new patients at the moment" But there's a local veterinarian that has a sideline in tooth-pulling, if it gets too bad. USA is medieval.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  I know people on Medicaid. The coverage is very spotty, super bureaucratic and it’s hard to find a doctor who will treat you. Definitely not a desirable thing
tcmart14 5y ago
Something dad always told me growing up, 'most people are one bad accident away from the poorhouse/welfare.'

disabled 5y ago

If you want a good read about how the *****y the US healthcare system is, this is a very worthwhile read. Ironically the author is the writer of “Girl, Interrupted” and the story she writes is about how her son got screwed by the US healthcare system and is titled “Boy, Interrupted”. It also shows you how desperate people get for specialized care, and will shell out unfathomable amounts of money for “treatment” at sketchy places: https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/boy-interrupted-a-story-of-akathisia/ https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/boy-interrupted-a-story... Ironically, the last straw for me, when it came to living in America was my diagnosis of akathisia (just like the linked story), which is 1000x worse than it sounds. I have severe depression and I had been taking my medications as prescribed. Because of my taking these medications, I developed severe akathisia. Literally, before all hell broke loose from the severe akathisia (of which I likely had to varying degrees for years) my highly respected neurologist in movement disorders immediately wrote a scathing report of my situation with the diagnosis. He also gave a ton of recommendations. He also wrote letters to all of my doctors. He did this all within an hour and took the situation extremely seriously. Unfortunately, even though he is technically a high powered doctor, the US healthcare system has taken a tremendous amount of power away from doctors in general. So a scathing write up in my medical record plus letters to all of my doctors (with recommendations) was all he could really do for me. I literally ended up in the ER 6 times in a week, with improper help. I kept on being discharged over and over again without any further help and even got in to trouble with the law multiple times. One time, after being drugged with Ativan (a benzodiazepine) and Ketamine (a general anesthetic) in the ER, from which I had been discharged. I had called my mother and she was going to pick me up from the hospital. She was well on her way for picking me up. Honestly, I thought I was just waiting outside on the sidewalk right next to the ER, for my mother, but something very wrong had happened. All of the sudden I see a cop car pull up about 30-40 feet away from me and they were headed my way to talk to me. Obviously the number one rule is to never talk to the police under any conditions. Traffic stops are a good time to practice that, by the way. The best thing you can do is say “no comment, I need to talk to my lawyer first.” Anyways I was drugged up to the extreme so it was not like I was not talking and running my mouth to both of the cops observing the situation. Obviously I had caused some sort of public disturbance and somebody had called the cops on me and clearly I should have never been discharged from the hospital. Honestly, I have no idea how, when, or even where the public disturbance occurred (obviously this is public record but it is not healthy for me to investigate the situation further). Anyways, after the cops talked to me, they said that an “emergency detention order” was being issued and that I was going to be forced to get treatment at the ****hole hospital which had improperly discharged me after being hella ativaned and ketamined up. Long story short, I had 3 interactions with the cops in 1 week. Prior to that I had only had 2 interactions with the police in my adult life (+14 years). Both were traffic stops, but neither were for moving traffic violations (burnt out headlight and expired registration during COVID-19). I was tremendously lucky that I was never charged with anything over that week from hell, and the cops managed to see that something was “off”. Anyways, like in the above link (excellent storytelling by the way so it is a worthwhile read), there are common denominators that I share with the writer’s son. I am a dual US|European Union (Croatian) citizen and I fled the US after the final hospital trip (from hell actually...it was the worst hospital trip of all time and I am hardcore chronically ill just in general) for Croatia exactly 21 days later (I had to obtain legal documents). Because of my training in electrical engineering, which I am profoundly fortunate to have, I do LORETA (technically sLORETA) neurofeedback training completely on my own to help heal my brain, just like the person in that story. Anyways, there is much more to the story that is better not put in writing. Just know that there is nothing that will bring me back to the USA.