I’d like to know other non-US citizen’s opinions on your health care system are when you read a story like this. I know there are worse places in the world to receive health care, and better. What runs through your heads when you have a medical emergency?
A little background on my question:
My son was having trouble breathing after having a cold for a couple of days and we needed to stop and take the time to see if our insurance would be accepted at the closest emergency room so we didn’t end up with a huge bill (like 2000$-5000$). This was a pretty involved ~10 minute process of logging into our insurance carrier, and unsuccessfully finding the answer there. Then calling the hospital and having them tell us to look it up by scrolling through some links using the local search tool on their website. This gave me some serious pause, what if it was a real emergency, like the kind where you have no time to call and see if the closest hospital takes your insurance.
NGL, I was offended at first but I’m not sure you’re wrong.
There’s honestly this constant apathy that the vast majority of people take towards politics. Then some of those people are simultaneously apathetic and regular voters. It’s kind of like a fan of Ferrari that doesn’t really pay attention to Ferrari or its competition; they’re just sure their car is the best.
Then there are those that are completely crazy.
Then there are those that actually pay attention.
It’s gotten worse the past few years because instead of getting more people that paid attention we’ve gotten more apathetic but yet somehow passionate Ferrari lovers.
That plus people don’t seem to understand Congress is where stuff actually gets done. There’s so much hoopla about the president but Congress is where the focus should be. Way too many people have no idea what their reps are doing.
Yea I didn’t write it in the politest way but I was going more for directness than anything.
I think knowing the problem is an important starting point.
People got shot at and died for things like the 5 day work week. But now people just think universial healthcare is beyond their abilities. I haven’t heard 1 story from America about a universial healthcare protest. Maybe they exist but not to the level of other things.
If it really mattered to the people I think they should do something.
People have been convinced that their votes don’t matter, protests don’t matter, etc etc etc
“They’re both the same” (in reference to parties) is the extent of most people’s political sense.
It’s also one of those things where there are enough safety nets and things that for most people it’s never really that bad. I don’t know anyone personally that’s actually lost everything from medical debt. I know it’s a possibility and that’s scary… I even know some people that are on every aid program out there basically but those programs are paying out the thousands of dollars in monthly medical bills (i.e. in the instances I know the system actually “works” on some level albeit uncomfortably and with a lot of stress).
To put things into context for someone who doesn’t live here … car crashes, cancer, heart attacks, and other rare “inescapable” things like that are all much much more prevalent than crazy medical debt, getting shot, or going homeless.
It’s not a dystopia … most people are living at least decent lives. That’s kind of the problem, it’s not bad enough for an overwhelming majority of people to actually care.
That leaves some number of people who actually care for the sake of others and some number of people that care for their own sakes to deal with the problems and the propaganda that influences the (mostly) apathetic faction. The people at the bottom of the whole thing are also in the worst possible position to do anything about it because their time and credibility is ultimately judged and scarce when it comes to doing things like going out and convincing people to vote in their favor.
The 5 day work week is largely dead for the working class. Employers either keep nearly all of their employees part time to avoid having to give them health insurance or have weekly mandatory overtime to keep the headcount down because it’s cheaper to pay the overtime for 60-80 hr weeks than to give another employee benefits. We’re going backwards in most places that we had made gains.
Since when?
I know this is kind of a joke about how dysfunctional Congress is/can be, but it’s exactly my point. Whether it’s functional or not, without Congress you don’t get money for your projects, and you don’t get changes to the law.