I'm super grateful in this regard to live in Germany, where free doctor visits are not a benefit of something but fucking minimum for literally everyone. Even though it may take a while for specialists. I even get benefits for going to free appointments at the dentist. Safes money and pain later, leading to more productiveness as well.
Was really weird watching "Breaking Bad" just as I had cancer myself years ago (Cancer-free today 🙂). Being in a hospital, receiving anything I needed just by showing my insurance card (for which I didn't have to pay anything either as I was without a job at that point). And as long as our government ain't complete dicks I'm more than glad to pay that back.
The US just weirds me the fuck out. I don't get this selfish lack of solidarity towards your fellow humans.
What's worse is that millions of people actually find the idea of paying a dime for anyone else's healthcare disgusting. And we don't even get to have a super low tax rate. We just spend our tax money on murdering children across the globe instead of caring for our own. Millions of us see it and oppose it but our society is just sick enough with enough asshole republicans gaming the system in a way that keeps us from doing a fucking thing about it. I wish we were as civilized as nations like Germany.
It's all manipulation, Americans are not quite as psycho and as selfish as we seem outwardly. In general, unless you're talking about bigotry and deep-seated prejudice, most of the dumb stuff Americans believe, we have been essentially force fed.
In this case, for historical reasons I don't remember ATM, it became normalized for employers to offer health insurance and for that to be the primary way people obtained health insurance. Combine that with the strategy to teach poor white people to hate on minorities, as a way to feel superior to someone and thus less angry about their own lot, and you can start to see how the link between employment and healthcare can be seen by some as a moral situation - the person without the good job to get the healthcare must be lazy, and since we don't want to encourage laziness, it's therefore acceptable (even preferred!) not to take care of them.
I can't stress enough how much effort is put into teaching a huge portion of America to fear and hate, constantly. We wouldn't be this bad otherwise, we're pretty normal folks by and large. Even pretty kind and generous, often. We've just been really fucked up, and very deliberately.
It was during the Great Depression and WWII that employer-provided health insurance took off. The fed instituted a wage freeze to combat inflation in the 40s, and as a result, employers had to start offering other incentives like health insurance to attract/retain their workforce.
FDR wanted to pass universal healthcare (along with a lot of other progressive policies) under his Second Bill of Rights, but it never came to be. Had his ideas been enshrined in law, we'd have universal healthcare, a minimum livable wage, adequate housing, the right to work, and several others.
Americans are not quite as psycho and as selfish as we seem outwardly
I would argue that there has been a shift to exactly that, and it's tied to everything happening alongside for-profit health care. America has a fetish for "self reliance" that has IMO been corrupted into "You're on your own, sucker. Got mine." instead of the ability to build a life from the land, which is likely part of the reason self-reliance ever became so important. Self-reliance also gets pushed by those who have the luxury to say it, already safe in some kind of wealth, or at least to those they look down on who have a hard time rising even to a modest level of financial self actualization. Self-reliance is pretty much the same as "picking oneself up by his/her bootstraps" these days.
The grind of the Capitalist Machine gets worse every year with the never-ending pressure to make the quarterly report better and more profitable, infinitely. That improvement comes at the cost of, well...ever increasing costs, more expensive benefits like healthcare, and having to work more for less buying power. All that on top of the fact that one bad event in one's life could send you into poverty because that self reliance twisted into bootstraps has dictated slashing taxes, and slashing those taxes has had a focus on destroying social programs that help people not be so poor, because it's your fault if you're not self-reliant, and people have decided that it's better to hoard what they can, particularly their money, and blame others for being have-nots. Why should I help some lazy (fill in the blank) when I have (insert difficulty here)?
Yes but also the brainwashing wouldn't be effective if Americans didn't eat it up, which they do. It takes two to tango and the population here is really ignorant on many fronts, and that's not just the media or government's fault.
And arguing that Americans aren't really psycho doesn't work that well especially with the elections and their beliefs in general. Americans seem the most psycho to me, but hey I just live here.
Was really weird watching “Breaking Bad” just as I had cancer myself years ago (Cancer-free today 🙂).
Congratulations, friend! 🎊
And as long as our government ain’t complete dicks
By "complete dicks" you mean people like Friedrich Merz?
Fotzenfritz
Merz, Lindner, Söder… pick your poison. Anyone who wants to dismantle our solidarity systems instead of fixing (or even expanding) them.
We can only hope for our politicians to learn enough from the utter disaster in places like Britain to at least leave them be.
Even here, "cosmetic" dental work can be pricey. IIRC, my braces were covered by insurance, but the retainer wire after that had to be paid up front by my parents with some kind of "insurance will pay back 80% of it after ten years" clause. One has fully broken off and should have long been replaced, the other broke partially and should be replaced too, but I don't really have the money to drop 600 on that right now if I don't know how much I'll get back.
I'm super grateful in this regard to live in Germany, where free doctor visits are not a benefit of something but fucking minimum for literally everyone.
Stimmt so aber nicht ganz. Die meisten Leute glauben bei uns wäre die Krankenversicherung verpflichtend, aber nicht jeder Staatsbürger ist krankenversichert.
Shit, das Problem habe ich tatsächlich übersehen. 🫣
Zumindestens ist das Problem auch als solches deklariert, da müsste definitiv nachgebessert werden. Ich würde jedoch behaupten das, im Vergleich zur USA, hier die Ausnahme die Regel bestätigt. Rein rechtlich hat hier jeder Krankenversicherungsschutz, es müssen "nur" diese Löcher gestopft werden durch die manche Menschen fallen.
I'm Italian and here public healthcare gets worse every day, thanks to continuous budget cuts and political incompetence. Nowadays if you want get blood tests in my region you have to wait months, or go through insurance, usually provided by... Your employer. Fuck them all.
Ouch. There is a big medical school here and there is a decent amount of medical offices in the area. I can walk down the road in the morning for standard blood work and view my test results on my phone by the afternoon. Specialists can still be months of waiting though.
I'm sorry to hear that… I expected something like this the moment the fascists won though. As far as I know you also lost social security (as in money for the jobless), right?
We probably have this in our future as well. Despite our government generally doing a good job (despite & except the neoliberal dick who once was our finance minister and just got fired) in this last legislature, far-right media propaganda is simply overwhelming. A christo-fascist outcome isn't too unlikely next time. 😔 It will wreak havoc on everything.
Here in privatized US it takes ages to see specialists AND regular doctors!
It's not even selfish. It bites the people who fight for it in a thousand different ways.
It's just silly. If they were any good at being selfish, they'd want people to have healthcare, because everybody else's shit makes your world better or worse regardless of your money or whether you acknowledge it.
The USA is The Land of Personal Responsibility™
I’m an American immigrant in Germany, and solidarity is exactly the word I’ve been using to describe the difference between the cultures. I work in a bakery part-time (as a salesperson) while studying, and it’s very different working in customer service in Germany from how it is in the US, because people here see you as a part of society in a way they don’t there.
I don't get this selfish lack of solidarity towards your fellow humans.
It's because the US is far too big. People in one part of it have a very different culture to people in a different part of it, as a result they find it hard to empathize with them because their lives are so completely different. The problem is that they are all one country and operate under one government.
The individual state governments help a little bit (except when they're trying to write laws to one-up each other), but basically the US government is trying to implement laws that will apply across wildly different cultural ideologies.
From the highly religious almost zealot south (Texas, Florida), to the mostly secular north east (Washington), to the liberal west (California), to the farming belt in the Central regions.
Not everyone. Not if you have private insurance.
Even if I did go to a doctor, it might be because most insurance covers seeing a doctor but not dental shit.
Those are luxury bones!
It's sad. They're not just luxury bones in the US either. National healthcare here in Estonia only covers dental until you turn 19 and then all you get is a tiny annual benefit, rest is out of pocket. I believe that most countries don't give adults dental coverage :/
Essentially the health board is completely fine paying for cancer treatments, broken bones, or to have a suspicious mole removed. They'll subsidize prescription medication. But TEETH?!?!?! WHO NEEDS THOSE????!?
It's such a stumble of history that teeth were historically associated with barbers and not doctors, causing the dental practice industry to evolve separately from all other medical practices. Bullshit how a vestige of that lives on today in dental insurance coverage being its own special snowflake thing.
Judgmental bitch. Dental insurance coverage is so much worse than medical it's can be basically non existent
Privilege is blinding. The dentist can't fathom how a "normal" person they are speaking to couldn't afford to go to a dentist. It doesn't even register. The dentist then must assume it was pure laziness or apathy.
It is laziness or apathy. If for 30 years you were unable to spare $100 for a single checkup, then you are either sick or suck at managing money. And if you still can't afford that for 30 years, there are organisations that will do it for free - you just need to reach out to them.
Being unable to put aside $100 for a year, year and a half - sure. Being unable to put aside $100 for thirty years? Yeah, nah.
I HAVE dental insurance, NO ONE FUCKING ACCEPTS IT.
The "in-network" thing is anyoing. As long as the place has a license and hasn't been a issue, they should be "in-network".
Having insurance tied to a job doesn't help either. if you/family member needs specialist care, so you find a fantastic doctor, but oops your job changed insurance provider and now your doc is out of network.
Complaints aside, if you're actually having trouble finding a dentist; go to your insurance's website, they probably have a "find a dentist" tool or something.
I hear you. The challenge is what the insurer is willing to pay for the services the dentist provides. At the end of the day, the deal is "we are bringing more patients to you by being in our network, so you'll take less money for your services in exchange." And sometimes the numbers just don't make sense for the doctor to accept.
This is why dentists in the US decided to not make themselves part of the same system as other medical doctors-- The ADA vs AMA. They get to make their own rules and more importantly, deals to get paid.
And full cash money rules over whatever any insurance company decides to pay you.
Mine still submits to my insurance, I just have to pay on the day and I get a check in the mail later
Get a credit card
Use card to pay for getting your teeth done
Burn the card
Wait 7 years
Repeat till dead
What ?
You can declare bankruptcy every 7 years. I believe that's what OP was referencing.
Going to the doctor half the time feels like a waste anyways. No matter how sick I am, I’m never given medicine or antibiotics and I’m always told to wait a week to see if it gets worse. It already had to be a big deal for me to go the first time around, I’m basically done after that and resigned to suffering without help. The worst was when I had been perpetually sick with something for 5+ weeks right before Covid first hit, never got anything and doctor was just like, “Yeah, some colds or flus can go for that long.”
For physical injuries though, that shit is important and that seems like something they can treat, but anything else it’s just, “You’re on your own, good luck!”
Antibiotics for colds or flu will not help because those are viral, not bacterial. A general doctor should have given you a referral to a specialist. But Antibiotics would be stupid
Maybe. But after 5+ weeks, you run the severe risk of secondary infection. A "cold" that runs that long, isn't the virus anymore, but the secondary infection taking hold. Antibiotics may not be the right call, but they might be. A "stick it out" attitude on a respiratory infection is the right path, if your goal is pneumonia.
Edit: source- my doctor, when I didn't want to take the antibiotics for a respiratory infection that I had had for 8 weeks. It cleared within 5 days of starting the antibiotics...
The last time I went to the doctor was over a year ago, and it was because my mouth/throat was in so much pain I called my friend, who lived 30 minutes away, and begged her to come take me to urgent care while bawling my eyes out.
The initial nurse that comes in is this dude, and I hate male medical professionals when I'm male-presenting: it's like this fucking machismo bullshit. He's trying to do the thing where they swab your throat or are just looking back there, and he's asking me to open wide, and I'm trying but I'm in excruciating pain and apparently couldn't open wide enough.
So he drops his hands in this exasperated/annoyed gesture and goes, "C'mon man, it's not that bad, open up."
I lost it. "Get the FUCK out of this room and send the actual fucking doctor in here! How dare you tell me I'm not in fucking pain when I can't fucking swallow or breathe without tears welling up! Get the FUCK away from me, NOW!!!!" Funnily enough, my mouth was open plenty wide after I lost it on him, and he scurried out the room as soon as she got his swab.
Woman doctor comes in a few minutes later, sees me bawling my eyes out while my friend is comforting me. Doctor doesn't give me any shit while she's examining me, and turns out, I had a serious infection behind my tonsils, not strep like douchebag kept telling us it probably was while telling me to "man up."
Doctor gave me some steroids and told my friend that my, "throat was in really bad shape," and that she was putting in a rush order for antibiotics at the pharmacy. I was to take the pills immediately when we got home, and again roughly 4-6 hours later (this was around 4 o'clock).
She ended our visit with, "Listen, if you take the second pill around 10, and if you're not feeling any better by 10:30, you need to go to the ER for emergency surgery, those tonsils are gonna go septic." But "c'mon man, it's not that bad." 🙄
The pills worked, I survived, but my blood boils just thinking about the whole situation and how comfortable that dude was in his attitude towards patients in pain.
Good on you for blowing up at that jackass.
I hate going to hospitals, especially in cities. They really don't seem to care unless they can physically see how injured you are. I saw an independent nurse and a walk in clinic before they both said to go to the ER when I tore something inside my abdomen. Waited 15 hours to be seen, struggled to breath without pain, and passed out from pain during the Xray. The Dr said I passed out from anxiety and sent me home with nothing and no advice.
One of the absolute worst experiences I've had at a hospital, and all I wanted was to make sure it wasn't my gall bladder. Of course they also charged the obscene US prices too
People at my new job talk about how great our dental benefits are. I found a dentist, scheduled a new patient exam (4 month wait). They told me I needed a cleaning and scheduled it for 3 months in the future. Two months after that, they stopped carrying my insurance.
I found another dentist, 6 month wait for an appt this time, was told I needed a cleaning, got a call the following week that they were no longer accepting my insurance.
I’ve discovered over the years that middle class people have absolutely no idea how most of the country lives.
Well, most people think they are middle class.
This. Americans are all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires, of course.
We are all working class
Yeah but some of that “working class” has a house, regular medical care, vacations, savings, etc.
That’s different than people living paycheck to paycheck, paying rent, praying, googling, and biohacking for their medical needs for lack of doctor access, never having been outside their own state or city, nor had the PTO to travel or relax in decades.
The best part is the entire food industry is geared towards selling as much sugar and carbs as possible to produce as much dental decay as possible and as quickly as possible.
No, its geared to be as addictive and pleasurable as possible.
It just so happens that both carbs and sugar are pleasurable, and by coincidence also the cheapest part.
by coincidence
By government subsidies
It is designed to be addictive. This is accomplished by gearing it for simple carbs.
Gearing is a configuration thing.
I'm not murican so money isn't the problem for me.
Its a crippling fear of doctors founded by a single dingle berries mistake over 10 years ago causing a year of problems and a skin transplant.Many countries outside America does not cover dentist in social public health services.
They like premium bones or something.
In my country we have public healthcare but not dentists. If you want teeth you have to pay.
, Care to share? So we can learn from your mistakes?
I don't think its possible to do actually.
It was a mistake cause he removed a little thing from my skin that ended up causing me to be sick for a week cause he didn't close it up properly, it than went on to come back twice as bad.
If I'd have to turn it into a lesson, maybe triple quadruple check online if your the doctor you plan on going to has zero negative complaints?
I am well on my way to this... less about insurance and more about the only dentist i ever had my entire life retired 5 years ago. He was a family friend and great. I'm still not sure how to get another one and also be great.
Look for an office that advertises "pain-free dentistry". Not because they're willing to drug you up if need be, but because that willingness also translates into more attentive and caring providers generally
It is so hard to find a good dentist. I feel you there.
I'm super grateful for my union job with great dental benefits.
I paid $2900 for my mom to get dentures.
I haven't been to the dentist in probably ten years. Still follow the routine, but, yeah.
I protest the high prices of dental treatment by traveling abroad. It's not only cheaper, but also a great opportunity to travel.
I do have insurance, as we're legally required.
Haven't been to a dentist for years even tho i need it, the money isn't there. Insurance only covers it for a small amount if you pay a premium, which i'm not doing obviously.
I went to my childhood dentist after being unemployed and homeless, dad was convinced the government would get me a house and when i lived with him they told me "no, that's the old system". He didn't believe me so he kicked me out because he was so sure of himself.
When i got to the dentist after a couple of years he started pointing out what premium things i needed and how i could afford them after saving the money from the years i didn't go. I tried to explain to him like an adult that i had lost my savings and was pushed into homelessness and unemployment.
He then decided to get his ego bruised and started calling me names.
I got pretty sick of his childish behaviour and decided to never come back.
I tried a differenr dentist when i was actually ready and could see myself build up the funds again, but i ended up having to move for a job and life has only gotten more expensive while my wage stayed stagnant.
Right now i'm making more, finally but it's at a job i'm not sure i can physically handle. It's been 4 weeks now and it's 4 weeks of backpain and painkillers to keep going.
That's Canada now... Has been for a while.... I hurt myself 9 months ago. It took 5 months for an MRI, and I'm still waiting for the specialist. I'm partially paralyzed...
Sorry to hear that, I hope you get treatment soon. Isn't it amazing how the world thinks our medical system is so great? There have been multiple deaths at the hospital near me of people waiting to see a doctor in emergency... not to mention people I know who would still be here today if the doctors in that same hospital were halfway competent, but since they can't be sued for malpractice, nothing happens...
I've been working nonprofit for a couple of decades but it hasn't supported me well. I haven't been to the dentist in 22 years. I'm thankful I don't have any tooth pain. My wife is in the same boat. We had worked side jobs and hustled during COVID to put away some cash for it, saved up $19k. Only to need massive foundation/waterproofing work on our home. Now we're broke, my job contract ends in less than a month. I was worried about my teeth, now I'm worried about my family being homeless.
What does "coming to Canada soon" mean? Is there an impending change in the system? Or is it the certainty that public health can't possibly work because the USA is the only major industrialized country that doesn't want it?
The public health system here in Canada is very broken and the politicians have been pushing to move towards a more privatized system like the US. It's only a question of time before we get the same problems. Here in quebec my wife has had to get a private doctor because she simply couldn't see a doctor in the public system anymore.
Good luck with that. I have good insurance in the US and am having to schedule routine appointments 3 months in advance. During my last routine checkup I told my doctor there were several things I wanted to ask him about, and he said something to the effect that we only had 12 minutes but we'll see how much we can get through. Wtf? I think the problem is that most doctors are corporate employees now. Similar to being public employees but with CEO bonuses and shareholder profits.
From what I've seen on here, there are some areas where the same bullshit brainrot has started taking hold
It has in the UK too, but that doesn't mean it'll go anywhere, or that there is a risk of the system changing. There's always going to be angry shouty people who are being angry and annoying because they're not getting what they want.
But they all insist on being as hard right and as fascist as possible, which works in the US with it's broken system, but probably isn't viable anywhere else.
It’s a sentence from the point of view of the person at the doctors (or of the original poster relating with that person) implying an imminent move to Canada.
Too bad the person doesn't know dental isn't covered in Canada.
Docs tend to lose sight of the fact that everyone is not able to pay their fees, some even with insurance.
People with mild discomfort (e.g. a persistent cough) fill up most of the emergency rooms where I'm from, since the hospital is free. Unfortunately what this means is if you have a non life threatening problem, you have to wait in the same room as people with colds and flues that should be in bed waiting it out and eating soup.
to be fair, if you have a bad case of the flues you should be in the ER.
A bad case, yes.
Here in the states, people fill up the ER not because its free... its because they legally cant turn you away without looking at you first...
I've been coughing for like 6 months now. Long covid, and I've been told it can last over a year.
That's obviously not what I mean.
Meanwhile here is the U.S. I destroyed my ankle falling down a flight of stairs and I never had x-rays or any treatments and couldn't afford to lose hours at work (where I made $8 / hour), so I bought a cane at Walmart and went to work on my foot. I had a permanent bursa as a result and I never found out what happened.
Years later when I finally had access to healthcare through insurance partially subsidized by my employer, I was getting another x-ray on the same ankle (because one injury makes future injuries more likely) they found out that tendons had ripped bone off during the original injury. :-(
In Canada the public health cover doesn’t cover dental so you’ll have little luck in that category. You might get a free cleaning and scan but little else. It’s like one of the few things they’ve been dragging their feet on still.
A lot of people live on Advil until the tooth falls out on its own. Or if they can afford the cheap option: have it pulled.
You still need to get private coverage for anything more.
It's a good thing teeth aren't part of the human body!
Paywall locked bones.
There’s a recent federal Canadian dental health care plan that expands the options for people who make under 90k a year or something along those lines.
Might be worth a look
For the bulk of the population (between ages 18 - 64) the program doesn't start until 2025 ... so soon.
Which no dentists support. You need all sides to make that work.
Having public healthcare is a miracle!!. You should be grateful for that.
The UK's dental care is also not really covered by the NHS beyond a few emergency procedures, and even when it is (assuming you can get onto an NHS dentist's register) it costs a significant amount of money (70+ for checkup and dental work) once you turn 18, so I can imagine that most people just don't bother.
I've already resigned myself to getting most of my teeth removed or replaced, as painful as that is, because I spent years without dentist cover thanks to COVID and generally refusing to spend the costs on checkups (as bad an idea that was)
I had dental treatment on the NHS and it was £20 or so charged as a flat fee (so irrespective of what the actual problem was/what needed doing), definitely not £70? If it's gone up that much since then, that's absolutely crazy.
EDIT: nvm, just looked it up, you get charged one of 3 'bands' (lowest is £26.80 which is what I was charged, and the highest is £319.10). I never knew it was so pricey, as I ended up having to go private after moving anyway, since nobody was taking NHS patients...
I might need to consider private insurance at this point. What pisses me off is that corpo jobs will offer health insurance but NOT dental, even though most people can probably brave a GP waiting list but everyone has to pay out their arseholes for Dental.
The again, maybe I'm the minority with my fucked up teeth lmao. I'm just thankful my wisdom teeth grew in straight!
I've got to be like that after being almost killed by doctors in my first years. Unless it's something urgent or cosmetic, I struggle to trust them. I feel like it'd be the same even if I move to a better country.
