Any american here? this may not be strictly lefty politically related but I dunno where to ask this so here it goes.
Basically I'm an immigrant living here and I don't know how this country is supposed to function. My main concern is that in my 3rd world country healthcare was not free, but it was cheap as fuck and you usually would get attended in the same day and leave the hospital with a prescription. In contrast, every medical appointment here in America (from what I can tell) takes at least 1 or 2 months, and that is just to see a general doctor. After that you have to wait even more to be referred to a specialty clinic. By that point you either are dead or your condition complicated more, and the only thing keeping you alive is emergency room which takes forever and 90% of the time just monitor your vital signs, do an x-ray, and leave you with some over the counter prescription. Only other alternative I see is seeking private clinics which are about 6 to 7 times more expensive than in my country, and let's not even get started on the price of medicines. The whole private insurance business seems complicated to me (I dont understand how it works) and I only have a part-time job anyways (which by the way I just lost, yay)
Surely no one can live with such an atrocious system right? so please Americans, reveal me your secrets. How does healthcare work for a regular American? I ask you guys because I trust you will have a better opinion than Holla Forums, considering the American right wing position seems to be "not letting everyone die is communism"
Actually, the single best thing about the American system is that we have no wait. I have no clue where you got this idea, but someone can walk into a clinic seven days a week and be seen by physician, or if it's at odd hours, go to the ER. If you need specialty care, you might wait a week or two to see a specialist. If you need surgery or imaging done, that can usually be scheduled right away.
Jackson Bennett
Maybe its a states thing? I live in Texas and what I have is a sort of insurance (it isnt called like that though) that covers most of the cost of getting attended in the county hospitals, but each appointment takes forever and I said in the OP. When you take off the cost that this basic insurance covers, each appointment in the county's hospitals would cost like 70 or 80 dollars which is ridiculous. The main advantage of this is that it also covers the cost of medicines.
Those walk in clinics you are talking about, do you need an insurance to go there? or they just rip off your wallet to get attended?. I know I'm being cynical but so far healthcare in America has been a frustrating experience.
Andrew Garcia
PS: We do have walk in clinics btw, but they attend really minor stuff like headaches or feeling nausea. They don't do tests besides blood tests either.
Liam Brown
You can pay out of pocket (a rip off) or provide insurance. Why are you in the U.S.? If you're a student or something I'd say go to the school's clinic for free
Bentley Morris
Private insurance works like this: you can use any hospital or clinic you want with significant price reductions if you use certain hospitals. You pay a monthy fee for the insurance, which is usually had through a deal with your employer. Doctors visits usually have to be booked a certain ways in advance. It depends from place to place how far in advance you have to book, but it is usually pretty fast. If you have an emergency, you go to the emergency room at the nearest hospital.
It seems pretty sensible so far, doesn't it? Now here is how they fuck you.
While the doctors themselves are usually really good at what they do, they are also commissioned salesmen. If you frequent a particular doctor or hospital, you will notice that they tend to prescribe certain brands of medication often, even when it may not be particularly helpful. That is because… get this… pharmeceutical companies give doctors commission for prescribing their drugs! That is why American doctors hand out drugs like candy. Oh, and you pay for a portion of your prescriptions.
But wait! There's more! Just because you have insurance, that doesn't mean that your doctor's visit is paid for. Oh no! All but the top-shelf insurance plans have these things called "deductables." Deductables are fixed amounts of money that you are required to pay out of pocket before your insurance company will start paying for anything. Often, particularly with the cheap insurance plans, deductables are so prohibatively high that you will be completely unable to afford them. You may have to pay $5,000 in a fiscal year before you insurance company writes a single check. What, you don't have $5,000 lying around? Of course you don't! That's why you got the cheapo insurance in the first place! Well, tough titty to you. The insurance company will garnish your meager wages until they get their $5,000.
Disgusted yet? No? How about this: once you lose your job–whether you quit, get laid off, or are outright fired–you no longer have that insurance. You cannot see a doctor unless you are still working for your boss. Liking those chains, prole? Now that you are unemployed, you had better hope that your state has a decent Medicaid plan, because otherwise any illness you suffer will put you in the poor house for the rest of your life.
CAPITALISM
Mason Peterson
How does American healthcare work? In a word; badly.
Carter Cox
Wow I didn't realize Canada had such a shit system
Noah Fisher
I just want to chime in for anyone else that has a chronic illness or may get a chronic illness in the future: don't be too prideful to beg. Your doctors will get samples from pharmaceutical companies all the time and it doesn't hurt to ask them for any extras they have.
I have type 1 diabetes and insulin costs are insane in this country. The major insulin companies all collude and have raised their prices together by a ridiculous amount. In the last 15 years the costs for insulin after gone up by more than 200%. I get by through constantly asking my specialist for any insulin samples they can spare. I'm also lucky enough to have relatives that work in doctor's offices I can ask too.
Eli Gray
What the fuck are you doing, Brits?
Hunter Turner
It works brilliantly for the insurance companies and pharmaceuticals.
Elijah Martin
This shit right here makes my blood boil. And yet, somehow having insurance is conflated to having healthcare.
Nathan Butler
This is the reason that ACA sucks ass and is able to inflate the American situation to better than it really is.
William Anderson
Laughed more than I should at this. Tbh I don't how it manages at all.
Isaiah Morris
America manages to function off of pure hatred of some great Other that changes often.
Anthony Harris
And from what I understand is that the AHCA is this + a tax cut for the wealthy (which will benefit all those ghouls that run insurance companies) + gutting Medicaid/Medicare + replacing the individual mandate and it's annual fee by forcing people to stay insured or face having their premiums raised by 30% the next time they try to get insurance + allowing insurance providers to charge the elderly 5x as much + allow insurance companies to charge people with pre-existing conditions more
Jaxon Nelson
Yep so we go from suck ass ACA to eat shit AHCA
Xavier Miller
On a macro scale America is incredibly resilient. Things that are precious in most other countries, like culture, history, and communities are disposable items in the US. The fact that it generates millions of personal tragedies in the process doesn't matter one way or another. It's an incredibly brutalising and dehumanising country. Good luck.
Nathaniel Ortiz
So this is the power of accelerationism?
Aaron Williams
this takes >americans to a whole new level
Carson Ortiz
the insatiable lust for aryan blood has its consequences.
Nathan Brown
They drink way the fuck more than Americans.
Lucas Howard
I don't believe that this isn't Holla Forums or something worse, but I'll bite
Americans who don't complain about healthcare get healthcare from their parents, who in turn get their healthcare from their employers. Most people who pay for their own healthcare are upper middle class or upper class. The middle class who are oblivious to healthcare costs all depend on their employers offer healthcare coverage as part of their benefits. You, assuming you are an immigrant, currently do not stand to get healthcare from your employer as I assume you are not currently being employed fore skilled labor. If you get a full-time job at a higher end low skill employer, like many grocery chains, you can get health care coverage. So if you need healthcare, go get a full-time job at one of these low-end more humane companies. The average person however and people who work for themselves and who are contract workers are fucked. That's just how unfettered capitalism works. To be fair in African and Latin American countries people literally just starve to death, whereas in America you live till you're 50 and then you die in the street from your untreated medical conditions. Still evil, and unpleasant, but its kinder certainly than many populations' life experiences. well you're an immigrant who doesn't have a job but wants gibmedats for your unspecified healthcare needs. I don't even go to the fucking doctor and I have healthinsurance, which I'm required by law to have.
Tyler Harris
Yes, and they will use this funding cut and "state control" over Medicaid to ward off any movement for Medicaid for all in the future. States will remove people from the rolls, limit already barebones care, etc. etc. and then they'll use the failing system as proof of why it shouldn't be expanded.
Isaac Allen
anything that results in dead americans is a good thing
Bentley Rodriguez
This will backfire massively though.
Parker Rivera
It's working in Britain with the NHS
Also, I don't think Medicare is being touched, only Medicaid. I'd agree with you that it would work if they fucked with Medicare, which would have the AARP mobilizing the olds against Congress in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, Medicaid is just for the poor and disabled, and no one really gives a fuck about them.
James James
Well, it helps that all of the phrasing for a single payer system thus far has been "Medicare for All" not Medicaid. If the DNC has any modicum of sense left, then they need to jump on board 100% pushing for single payer. At this point, I don't see anything else saving their party.
Christopher Bennett
Family and american dream meme
Will look if my university has something of the sort (doubt it).
Sounds retarded. In my country private insurances probably work in a similar way, but we also have 3 other ways to get attended besides the private sector.
Option 1: You are a worker and instead of choosing a private insurance, you choose the government insurance. Every month a part of your salary is taken from you to pay for that insurance, and you have access to government hospitals covered by that insurance. It's pretty good but waiting times can be annoying. Nowhere near the waiting times I experience in 'murika though Option 2: Maybe you are a student and don't have time to work, or maybe you just don't want to get money deducted from your salary each month or don't want to deal with the waiting times of the gov. insurance. Well, the city has a program that is half paid by the city and half funded by private companies where everyone can walk in and see a doctor, no strings attached besides showing your ID to identify yourself. Not only that, but if you want you can walk right in specialty doctors without needing a referral from a general doctor. The cost is very affordable and waiting time is 1 day most of the time. Rarely you have to book an appointment for the next day. Only downside is that there's no ER Option 3: Not only you don't have a private or government insurance, but you also are such a poorfag you can't even afford option 2 (which is like 10 bucks to see a doctor in a couple of hours and medicine is cheap even without insurance anyways). Well, the government also runs hospitals that are even cheaper than option 2 (between 3 to 5 bucks to see a doctor) and the medicine is even cheaper in the pharmacy of these hospitals. Downside here is that the equipment can be outdated and the hospitals aren't pretty, and I think you need to be refereed by a general doctor to specialties.
==Still capitalism== , but at least I get to see a fucking doctor damnit.
Matthew Lewis
single-payer healthcare is one piece of socialism i could live with. we have the money to make it happen.
Alexander Carter
Has it? That makes sense. Old people seem pretty content with it.
Hunter Roberts
But what about the debt user!
Wyatt Price
In my country the concept of "gibmedats" doesn't even exists. Everyone pay taxes and everyone gets the basic governmental coverage and the city/private coverage as well. The fact that you exist and buy, travel, study, work is enough to "entitle" you to not dying.
I come from Latin America though. People starve to death, I guess, but that's mainly people who live in the middle of nowhere so they don't have access to hospitals or clinics, or live in the city and can't get a job because overpopulation so they can't even pay for the 3 bucks healthcare that I described above. This happens in 'murika as well though (and in fact I have noticed the number of homeless has been rising in murika)
Gavin Ortiz
Passing this disgusting health care legislation while simultaneously cutting taxes for the wealthy and expanding the military budget better wake some of the classcucks in this country the fuck up.
Wyatt Perez
faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat as fuck holy shit
Christopher Anderson
Housing has been completely commodified and financialized. People (and by "people" I of course mean the bourgeoisie) have started purchasing property as investments again, which is causing the price of housing to explode in the few remaining economically vibrant parts of this shithole.
Gabriel Davis
We need to somehow get Trump to cut the military's budget and then we could seriously have an actual revolution on our hands.
Mason Rivera
why would anyone be concerned by a government stimulating investment by incentivising wealth creators, and protecting the american homeland by upgrading defensive capabilities? sounds pretty responsible. don't you want to protect american lives? don't you want wealth to trickle down to you?
James Barnes
People only like the idea of "incentivizing wealth creators" when it isn't at their expense. Lots of middle class white people have been driven into bankruptcy by health care costs.
Wyatt Cox
I don't see how anyone who understands the housing market can stay a supporter of capitalism. It actually provides a very salient, modern and relevant example of the inherently irrational nature of commodity form vs use value.
Robert Moore
who cares? they're probably scum anyway.
Jaxon Russell
oh you~
Levi Bailey
It isn't.
Jose Miller
It functions fantastically for the bourgeoisie.
Jackson Nguyen
You have what Americans call a "public option." It is the exact same system that Hillary Clinton tried yo push through Congress in the 90s. Of course, she completely disavowed it in her most recent run at the White House, because she is a contemptable mercenary neoliberal cunt.
Brayden Johnson
i don't. what do you mean?
Jacob Roberts
obligatory "fuck off, we're full" for the OP
Bentley Morgan
Shut the fuck up, retard
Landon Cox
someone had to say it.
Dominic Kelly
Check:
Jacob Powell
property speculation?
Sebastian Evans
I know Jaden Smith's girlfriend through a rando debate program I was in, clueless members of the bourgeoise, I've never met bigger airheads in my entire fucking life. Indigo children need the gulag tbh.
Man, in a way I feel kinda sorry for these bougie kids who grow up completely isolated from the real world. I mean, they're bound to be fucked in the the head the same way as some kid whose single mother never lets him leave their old suburban home or something. And there's no better example of "fucked in the head" than Jaden himself. In a very real way, he's a victim of the system.
Why? The only downside is a strong allergy to trucks.
