Yeah, like the guy was saying the way they were walking people out and leaving them just off the property is like how you’d leave a bag of trash out on the curb in New York.
Such inhumane treatment of patients, and it’s awful they are sending patients to missions ill-equipped to deal with the medical issues that should be addressed and cared for at the institution they’re being moved out of.
If that is what the US medical system calls proper healthcare, hospitals would be better off investing in garbage trucks over ambulances.
Seems like a decent place to complain about my long experience. I had an undiagnosed problem with eating, which felt like an allergy that made me really tired. I couldn’t figure it out for years and I got more and more rundown. I’d ask doctors when I saw them for other stuff and they’d give me really useless answers or blow me off with something like “ONE problem per visit”. I was self-employed, no insurance, and a visit to UC was $400, which was over half the mortgage on my house at that time.
So anyway, finally I got too sick to work. It had already harmed my career, several relationships, my finances. It turned out I had Celiac disease and it was doing a lot more than just making me tired… causing skin problems, hair loss, nutrient deficiencies, headaches, chest pain, digestive instability, heartburn and more. Finally I got it under control after being diagnosed and then.. got really sick, which turned out to be type 1 diabetes, which is the autoimmune form. Pretty sure I only got that from having celiac undiagnosed for half my life. Almost died again.
Thankfully I have health care paid for now, but in the meantime the lovely American system almost killed me 2-3 times and completely ruined my career and productivity, all so some insurance people can make money and other people can pay less taxes. All in all the health care system is a huge drain on society. Back when Obama tried to reform it, hearing people say “it’s the best in the world!!” was such a joke.
like there’s a part of the most scrutinized, debated piece of legislation in the last 50 years that just whoopsiedoodle forgot to do the thing that was the primary purpose of the bill. that was no mistake, that was american citizens being sold down the river.
The ACA has subsidies for health insurance that increase the lower your income is. Except if your income is too low, then you get no help affording health insurance. There's millions of Americans in this pit.
If your income is that low you should qualify for Medicaid theoretically. Not that that isn’t its own hell to get and keep with red states kicking people off for simple paperwork issues. 'Merica.
That sucks. Here in Spain I’m free to go to the doctor, she’ll tell me “sorry, we only have 10 minutes, you can get another appointment for next week and we’ll continue”… but at least it’s something.
doctors only have 10 minutes in America, too. They need to see as many patients as possible and make as much money as possible for the practice. The difference is that in American that 10 minutes costs you 12-20 hours worth of work to pay for.
From what I’ve heard, US doctors don’t see that much out of that money either, but here at least they take it out of our taxes… which, somewhat interestingly, are at about the same rate as in the US.
The u.s. government spends more on healthcare per Capita than any other country as well. They give money to private insurance to cover people on public assistance such as the elderly and veterans. They don’t pay directly, so there’s a ton of administrative bloat.
If we could just cull the insurance companies we could harvest their organs and solve a lot of problems.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s far from all rosy in here. Specialist visits are hard to come by, I got one for next year, and only by calling over and over to check for any cancellations, got lucky to have it moved to next month. Still got another one for next year, no luck moving it so far.
But otherwise GPs are like that: 10min visit every week with an appointment, or a home call if you got a documented history, or… well, as a walk-in you either go to the ER, which gets everyone through triage right away, but after that can take hours for someone to see you (some even have died waiting, mostly during the pandemic), or have to wait until the last appointment at the local clinic.
It’s been getting somewhat harder over the last couple decades, and they keep trying to do some cuts to push for private insurance, and some services are still not covered (like optician, therapy, or dental only covering extractions) but so far the GP and ER are free for all and reasonably accessible.
And our mental health services are horrid too. A friend has been on one guy’s waiting list for a couple years. They finally were just recommended a few other therapists and have been on their waiting list for a few months, though maybe soon…
when I needed a new PCP because I finally got insurance after a decade of just hoping nothing went too badly wrong, I ended up having to wait 8 months after 3 local practices weren’t accepting new patients at all.
One time I had to schedule a doctor’s appointment so far in advance that by the time my appointment was coming up, I knew it was going to conflict with my final exams. The semester hadn’t started when I made the appointment. When I rescheduled, it was going to be another five months. So I said fuck that, and that was nearly two years ago. Not sure what the answer is supposed to be.
It’s actually the other way around. You have insurance? Let’s check with them, okay it looks like we need to put you on a mild antibiotic (for your potential stage 3 cancer after they denied proper coverage), you should see improvement in 3-6 months.
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