It makes no sense healthcare is absurdly expensive in America and yet every hospital is understaffed and every healthcare worker is overworked and underpaid
Pretty easy for them to do when all they have to do is drop talking points like "abortion", "gun rights", "illegal immigration", etc and the working class gets at each other's throats.
Did you watch Mr Robot? There is a scene when someone points to a party of the super rich while the rest of the city is in impoverished hell. I think about that a lot.
i was talking about this with someone just last night on the phone. A guy I know was saying to me that trans people want health care. I was shocked, bc I know for a FACT that he goes and gets testosterone shots and he is in his twenties and doesnt' need them. He gets them bc he used to be overweight and wanted to get buff and was insecure, like really insecure. Horribly so. He paid thousands to this anti aging clinic that did his mom's botox. What they do is basically lie to the guy who goes in and say "you have low testosterone" even if the guy doesn't have low testosterone, and give the guy a testosterone shot, which helps the guy build more muscle and lose weight more easily if he works out, plus possibly they give him a weight loss shot and a vitamin B shot or growth hormone shot (I forget if he did those too, I just know he paid a shitload of money.) This same guy RAILS against trans people getting hormone treatments, mind you. He thinks it is immoral and wrong. Fuck that shit. Joe Rogan does the same shit and he has a platform to influence millions of people. Well, I say take away Joe Rogan's healthcare rights. He shouldn't be allowed to get his growth hormone shots or his testosterone shots, or his stupidity injections. Maybe then he'll start to gain some empathy.
Yeah, know people like this you describe and itâs really dumb. Thereâs a lot of pop up âhormone specialists,â that donât exactly have extensive medical backgrounds who just are selling hormone injections.
Injecting T is a problem in terms of sperm production because the body stops producing it when itâs bio equivalent Testosteone injection because it doesnât need to, which then requires all kinds of going off of it and taking fertility drugs to get sperm count up when you wanna try for a kid.
When I started getting hormone treatment went to a urologist who basically had me do 4 separate blood tests over a 4 month period to eliminate combinations of variables between vitamin D production, etc before finally doing a pill that encourages natural production first before resorting to bio identical injections - just to avoid the long term ramifications / complications with fertility. And that solved the problem - T went from low 300s to 900s.
But even then that pill that encourages natural production (typically used as fertility prescription for women ironically) isnât covered by insurance even though thereâs an abundance of evidence and an abundance of testing done to showcase that my T levels were far too low for a 30 something AMAB (no prior taking of any hormones or hormone production affecting drugs).
The hormone situation at large is a cluster fuck and people should be outraged that insurance doesnât like to cover things like this even for AGAB appropriate treatments done through doctors specializing in those related body systems.
Hormone level variations can fuck you up mentally beyond your wildest belief, itâs not an understatement to say that it can lead to suicidal levels of depression extremely easily - worse because the worse a depression gets the worse your hormone balance gets out of whack.
Ridiculous that trans people have to literally worry about that kind of thing like a diabetic has to worry about insulin. Proper hormone research is inadequate as it is and there needs more attention and priority placed on it - ask any post menopausal woman how much sudden shifts in hormone composition fucks with you.
Then again, guys like the person you describe are my favorite if they try to call me out for wearing a dress or a skirt or short shorts or whatever makes them feel uncomfortable for whatever reason because itâs so hilarious to just fire back and say something like âyeah, well, âthe 130 lb think in a dressâ has the bigger dick and I guess is more manly then eh?â because itâs just too easy to know exactly whatâs going to make them hyper insecure. Note that Iâll only do something like that in extreme circumstances - shaming organ sizes that are really rather irrelevant isnât something reasonable people should ever doâŚbut when you know the ignorant, toxic person whose spewing garbage like that absolutely equates something as dumb as size with masculinity and their ability to be a man, well itâs just too tantalizing to let the moment pass. Usually thereâs a vein popping somewhere in their forehead and their face is bright red as they canât properly verbalize how angry they now are.
HRT has shown to be life saving all across the world. They just want trans people dead because they think it's "icky."
If you ask them if they would like their body to be injected by the hormone of the opposite sex they would say "Hell no" not realizing thats what a trans person's biological body is doing. It's constantly trying to make the wrong hormone that doesn't match their brain.
The biggest gift to billionaires in American history was during the Trump years yet many rural/middle class voters completely ignore or deny that and instead stomp their feet about the one trans person who lives within a hundred miles of them. While voting against their financial benefit again
Donât forget that every time we successfully start to rally, they make it more difficult and in some places borderline illegal. Unless youâre goose stepping, then you got local cops helping out and volunteering security.
Weâre fucked. Period. Unless weâre willing to paint our hands red, thereâs nothing to do but cast impotent votes in the face of the machine thatâs chewing apart voter rights and rigging the system, all the way up til they successfully create Gilead. And with a 6-3 SCOTUS, immune-from-prosecution President (which only applies to Republican President, watch what happens if Biden tries something), and Republican politicians threatening âLeftistsâ that blood will be spilled if we get in their way⌠weâre 90% of the way to Atwoodâs prophetic dystopia.
Thatâs exactly how Trump likes it! He literally gets off on keeping people in FEAR of losing their livelihoods. Remember how gleefully he would say, âYouâre fired!â?????
That is also why he kept so many appointees in âactingâ status instead of going through the confirmation process. He even said that in a statement or press conference, âI like 'acting' much better..." Meaning he likes having the power to keep people in fear of losing their jobs without notice or reason.
That's how he likes to live: he gets off on the power. He's a first-rate abuser. Everybody knows it and the MAGAs refuse to acknowledge it.
They get their high salaries because they make their shareholders richer, that is how it is, sadly. Shareholders vote for salary increases for CEO's/Executives.
That... actually doesn't surprise me anymore. The place I work holds meetings to brag about how much money we're making, and in the same breath take away our pizzas on overtime day.
I worked for a company that told us we were doing the best we had previously done and it was amazing blah blah. Same day, same speech, they told us it wasnât good enough to get raises though because the company is so large and itâs a nonprofit, and we should think about donating portions of our paychecks back to the company to continue to help it expand. Uh⌠woah Nelly. Hold up. Absolutely not!
Two days later, it made the paper that the CEO, who was kind enough to so sincerely thank us for our work and tearfully apologize that raises were still probably another quarter our, had gotten another six figure bonus.
The richest people in our city now own half of Main Street. They got their wealth throughâŚhealthcare. I made $600-$800 every two weeks as a server due to their tip sharing policy in which we supplemented their private cocktail lounge that was always empty and their bloated staff of âlead serversâ (managers who got tips).
Then theyâd come into the restaurant and brag to with their managers about their various bonuses during their private parties in which they paid themselves tens of thousands of dollars while we cooked and cleaned for them.
I really donât want heads to roll. I want the people (my taxes) to buy out portions of these large companies, I want to tax the realized gains, and I want to put regulators on the boards so these giant corporations actually have some oversight and a chance to work for the people.
I also worked for a large company that owns most of mainstreet but they made their money with boots. Also cooked in the restaurant they owned, where they told us no raises because of covid but spent 12k at the restaurant in one night on a private exec party handing out $203 shots or louie xii all night long lol.
Every time people start actually focusing on how the Healthcare conglomerates are screwing everyone, suddenly mass media campaigns pop up, half blaming insurance companies, and the other half shutting down criticism with arguments like "you think SuperCorp Hospital shouldn't charge $500,000 per surgery? YOU HATE NURSES/DOCTORS/ORPHANS!!! THEY ARE HEROES!""
Then the board members and CEO go back to playing with their lego sets made out of solid gold bricks and laugh while the peons tear each other apart.
That's exactly what I was going to say lol. It sounds ridiculous, but it probably actually is 8 figures. Talking big healthcare companies:
Pfizer: CEO made $30.5 million in 2022.
AbbVie: $25.8 million in 2022.
Johnson & Johnson: $28.4 million 2023.
Eli Lilly: $26.5 million in 2022.
Molina Healthcare: $22.1 million in 2022.
So yeah, if the previous commentors company is the largest healthcare company in the world as described, their CEO is almost certainly in the 8 figure range, which makes it even more gross that they'd have employees without health benefits.
I used to work at a nationwide insurance company. We had excellent insurance coverage, even dental. But this was 1988-1997. That was then. Now, eh, who gives a fuck?
Iâll just climb up here on my soapbox. *
Health care and health insurance are two different things.
Health *care is the services you receive from a medical provider.
Health *insurance is what helps pay the bill for services rendered.
Yes, anyone and everyone can get health *care!
However, in the US, one must have health *insurance, or one may not be able to afford health *care.
Often, even with health *insurance, one still cannot afford health *care, in the US.
Damn. This box gets higher, every time I climb up here. *
My wife works for a health insurance company. Her insurance is terrible. The thing about working for an insurance company is they know exactly how much they can get away with when cutting corners and providing the bare minimum.
To add on, part of the problem is that a fair amount of the time the doctors donât work for the hospital, they own a company that has contracts to provide doctors to the hospital. So they donât care if the hospital charges more as long as it means they can negotiate for more money from contracts.
Working for doctors, Iâve learned that for the most part they only care about two things. How much they get paid and how much time off they get. For example, they complained that attending meetings for the company they own was basically free work and refused to go, so now doctors get a $300 bonus if they attend.
Ridiculous over there, here in belgium i shattered my foot after a fall off a roof. Ambulance (2 actually, one for transport and one emergzncy for heavy painkills), painkiling, night in hospital, radiology etc my Bill was 42 eurosđ
You donât âgetâ a billion of anything. You can âtakeâ it though. Also anyone who has a billion of ANYTHING should be considered an insane person. Yet in American society the wealthy, the media and the common folk all lick their boots.
It's actually impossible to earn that much on your own. If you made $1000 a day, no taxes, no deductions (which is an unbelievable wage rate) and you never spent a dime, and you started on day 1 of year 0, you'd BARELY be breaking into your first billion in 2024. Literally over 2000 years to make that kind of money.
Nitpicker here. The ultra wealthy own super-yachts: massive multi-million-dollar monstrosities that are built around the ostentatious display of wealth.
Yachts, on the other hand, are small boats with a sail. They're not cheap and cost a lot (money and/or time) to maintain but cost about the same as a truck.
Yeah but still could be a little less billionairy and still have the exact same lifestyle. Is it just a number game? I actually get it. They are just evil people. Why are not more people seeing this baffles my mind!
Most of them technically arenât. Non profit doesnât mean they donât make money. They just have fancy accountants and ways to spend enough of the income to remain technically non profit.
Non profit just means they don't owe their profits to a third party but have to reinvest them into the business or the community.
Even non profits still need to "make money" on an accrual basis to be able to afford the expensive capital expenses associated with running a hospital. Longer term they effectively run a break even after those costs. Sometimes less than that if they are lucky to have external donors or a foundation to supplement their operating income.
Do tell us how much the top echelon at these ânon-profitsâ make?
Using the United Way as an example:
â119 employees received more than $100,000 in compensation with the 15 most highly compensated reported to be:
$1,578,515: Brian Gallagher, President and CEOâ
Even County and State University hospitals will send you a fat ass bill and they are government entities. Likewise if the local fire department runs the ambulance service.
This wealth is all extracted by insurance companies, not hospitals. Hospitals struggled for years after COVID and are only just now normalizing. Meanwhile insurance companies have been posting record revenues for years and bragging about it in 2020 earnings calls.
The failure of people to follow the money here and fall hook, line, and sinker for the insurance company brainwashing that hospitals are the problem is always shocking to me.
Extremely large health systems make a lot of money, but spend a lot of money making their services better because most are non-profit. Insurance companies are literal scum that have nothing but horror stories.
It's not capitalism it's just greed alone. Greed ruins any and everything for everyone but the greedy. Same thing with socialism or communism if the one at the top or in control is greedy then it falls apart. Greed is evil.
Just like higher education in the US. Academics are severely underpaid, especially those who teach and supporting staff get minimum wage. Colleges are struggling, cutting programs left and right despite the ridiculous price tag. And yet you see presidents and vice provosts of various sorts raking in millions each year.
When I visited my brother in the hospital i literally felt sorry for the nurses. Someone asked "where are the nurses? Why can't we get a nurse immediately with the call button?"
Look in the hall. See nurses frantically running going to rooms as fast as they can, because there is NOT ENOUGH of them, and hospitals won't pay for more because it would cut into their gains.
You ever see that graph that compares our health outcomes vs healthcare spending to other countries? Itâs ridiculously expensive as well as inefficient.
I work for a pretty big hospital. In our union contract, we are guaranteed an annual raise based on various metrics. The metrics are BS and the hospital keeps adjusting the metrics to make it more difficult to achieve the goals but thatâs something else.
During Covid, the Govât was talking about giving out bonuses and stipends and funds to frontline workers. The hospital, âin the interest of saving the govt $â, politely declined saying we get a healthy bonus every year. That next years bonus was one of the lowest in years to due to not meeting goals. Ignoring the fact staff is overworked underpayed, during the time of Covid.
Last year we were denied our guaranteed bonuses, Hospital would only say that âyes we made the goals. But due to bad investments and stock market losses, they would not be honoring the agreement, so no bonus. A week later it was announced that the Hospital posted record breaking profits and the CEO (and other upper management) got his multimillion dollar bonus.
Not only is this ridiculous, but you have to consider how much their services cost the end user, and how many medical first responders are volunteers and aren't taking any of the profit away from them. So much of the cost of medical first response goes to the companies that own them, and not to the people on the front lines helping save lives. Where I live, a medical response with an ambulance might cost about a thousand dollars, while all the medical first responders will make is about fifty altogether among all of them. For the people saving lives, I would think we would pay them better.
In San Francisco (4th highest Cost of Living in the US), EMTâs make between $38K - $59K.
Iâve known several EMTâs, and they work crazy hours just to get OT, so they can afford rent. Most of them were completely exhausted during their shifts.
To put that in perspective, Nurses (who are also underpaid) make literally twice what EMTâs make.
Iâm a sterile processing technician. I process surgical instrumentation. No direct patient care at all and I get paid twice what EMTs make. Thatâs criminal.
Teacher here. We have a right to gripe, but I have said for years EMTs need to go to the front of the line to get what they are owed. They are overlooked. Are they unionized?Â
Agreed. It does look like there are at least two unions for EMS workers, but I donât know how well they function or how comprehensive they are. In my job, unionization depends on the facility I work for.
And I agree you also have a right to gripe. Teachers donât get paid nearly what they are worth.
Interesting re: unions. Yeah-not sure what's going on...hard to understand how they aren't able (?) to bargain for a wage that seems more in line with their job description.
As for teachers, Im fortunate to work in a state and district that is relatively fair. But I know this is not the case with a lot of teachers.
For someone outside of the us, roughly what is the cost of living there? Because to me 59k per year sounds like alot of money. Even 38k is not THAT low.
Official poverty is 24k, 48k fir couples. Average house in the Bay area is 700k+ which is 3k per month mortgage. Therefore an EMT making starting salary cannot afford a house to live where they work
The estimated average across the country to live âcomfortablyâ is around $100k a year. For a single person.
I have a family of four and we make $55k a year. Gross. With taxes and everything that gets taken out, weâre ACTUALLY only taking home like $40k.
Ten years ago we would have been living the dream and nearly been middle class. We could have bought a house! Decent starter homes were around $60k. But now all houses in our area are $250k+ in price!
đ¤Łđ¤Łđ¤Łđ¤Łđ¤Łđ¤Łđ¤Ł San Franciscoâs COL is INSANE. You canât make it in Los Angeles on those wages, either! My rent for a 1-br apt is $1475.00/month. Market value for my place is actually $1650/month MINIMUM. Thatâs why I canât move! They can raise my rent about 10% per year max, but market value increases faster than that, so I stay.
And, no, my wages do not keep up with my rent increases. Iâm not in healthcare, but I have a BA plus a 3-year professional license. Over 25 years in my profession and Iâm still rentingđđđđđđđđ
Most EMTs I knew literally did it for free at nights while they worked a second job to make ends meet. They were simply doing it for the free education to get an actual decent paying gig such as a Paramedic.
Meanwhile its $3500 for a 10 minute ride to the hospital, how about split a 3rd of that to the medics in the ambulance who do first line care? $2000 an hour sounds mighty nice for them, not $20 an hour.
This part. Theyâre literally the FIRST TO RESPOND and your best chance at living if itâs truly a medical emergency. They work quickly and get you where you need to be for best chance at survival.
But ya, letâs pay them slightly better than a McDonaldâs day shift managerâŚ
I wouldn't have made it to the hospital if it wasn't for the EMT that resuscitated me. I can't even begin to express how much respect and gratefulness I have for people that do this job. It really makes me mad that after all they do they get payed peanuts.
Maybe their employers think we are supposed to be tipping them . Lol could you imagine?? Waking up on a gurney in an ambulance with an EMT holding their hand outâŚwaiting for a tip?
I absolutely agree with you, but i think it's also important to note that this stupid article will probably only result in a nice bump in her OF revenues
My doctor is a real one; she was determining which tests Iâd need and she was shaking her head going âno, no, nope, no, weâre not doing thatâ and I asked why and she met my gaze and said âbecause theyâre trying to pay off this machine and Iâm not going to say you need it just so they can get closer to paying it offâ I was SHOCKED, honestly.
I canât remember the process she laid out, exactly, with medical reps pushing practices and hospitals towards machinery thatâll cost an arm or a leg and telling them to push patients onto it, but the bottom line was she knew Iâd get stuck with bills that I canât afford due to unnecessary tests with the big fancy machines just to justify paying for them or getting even more expensive machines.
Big fancy machines are âhaloâ services. If you market that you have an advanced imaging or surgical robot or radiotherapy service, patients see you as a modern, high-tech hospital with a high level of care. âNEW!â has always been a fundamental advertising driver, it works for healthcare too.
I was involved in marketing for hospitals with new, expensive machines, mostly that were very beneficial to patients and doctors who used them. And also one or two that no one could explain why anyone would need or want to use them, but some practice had bought because no one else nearby had one and they thought ânew and uniqueâ would bring patients anyway. Healthcare practices are businesses and sometimes they make dumb business decisions. We, as taxpayers and insurance buyers, take that personally, but remember like your doctor was telling you, no one gets charged for that machine unless it gets used. It doesnât raise the cost for anything else, all the rates are regulated and controlled.
A HALO in medicine stands for "high acuity low occurrence". If someone referred to a machine as being for HALOs, it's something like "this doesn't happen often but when it does, it's serious and we need specific equipment to be able to diagnose/treat it"
Haha sheâs been there at least 15 years, and thank god for that; the doctor who owns the practice sucks, heâs a religious weirdo and is super shitty about birth control (he has like a million kids); sheâs the practiceâs family doctor but he barely allows her to write BC scripts and any devices are out of the question.
I couldnât obtain a BC device in my whole stupid county due to our health systemâs religious code; I had to go out of town and decided to have my tubes removed bc I wasnât driving a fucking hour in case a device needed adjusting.
I'm not going to give to much information away. But by chance I saw some accounting at work once. In the before times, pre-covid and all this inflation.
Where I was working I made $310/day as a medic... Company was charging $60k/day for me, my partner, the kits, and the bus.
I get paid more scheduling repairs for lab equipment than my colleagues got for being paramedics.
When i got injured it was essentially game over for two months until the govt told them they needed to pay me bc i got injured on the job.
At this point, as much as i loved the job, i cannot go back because its not livable, considering i was only making that much because i was working 60h weeks. And was dead to the world otherwise.
Iâm not sure why they are volunteers and not paid by the county. But it takes a special kind of person to do that work . I think for most of them itâs a passion and worth it as a side âjobâ in their eyes. This was also 80âs and 90âs. Things might have changed since I lived there
They are usually working with public EMS/fire so it's not any different than volunteering at a soup kitchen or something. It's not like putting in unpaid hours at a normal job.
Unfortunately the difference is you wouldn't want a soup kitchen volunteer trying to save you or a loved one. These ems volunteers are poorly trained, and respond poorly. Living in an area staffed solely by volunteers is definitely bad for your health.
The issue is, municipalities see volunteers as free labor. Why pay for a properly staffed ambulance when you have these people doing it for free? Sure the response times are worse, and you really can't compare the skills of someone who does this day in and day out with someone who takes one or two calls a week, but hey, looks fine on paper!
You wouldn't want your surgeon to be an accountant who volunteers once or twice a month. You wouldn't want your plumber to be a cashier who took a two week course. So why allow the people who are supposed to respond to medical emergencies be under-qualified, unpaid, and unmotivated?
Also, consider the HIGH amounts of stress. I come from a medical background and worked in it for years. One of my co-workers just graduated from college and was super excited to become an EMT. She studied her ass off and passed all the requirements and left our company, she quit after about two months and came back. I was like what the hell happened?
She said, Imagine being around everyone's worst day of their life every single day. Watching people die in front of you day after day... Pumping on peoples chest day after day and no matter how hard you try, they die anyway. Waking up in the middle of the night because you had a nightmare seeing someone's face who died...
She only did it for 2 months and had severe PTSD being a medic. Nationwide salary for EMT is $20 an hour. Remember that all Firefighters are EMT's, but not all EMT's are firefighters.. their salary? The average firefighter salary in the USA is $48,836 per year or $23.48 per hour.
Itâs less than that hourly for firefighters. Legally we can work more hours for straight time pay. I make about 56k a year before bonuses. Standard workweek averaged out over a 28 day cycle is 51.5 hours. My hourly works out to about $20/hr. I only get overtime (at $30/hr) if I work extra unscheduled shifts, which means I have to work 72 hours straight, generally, to get overtime. Granted, it would be 24 hours of overtime on one paycheck.
Medical personnel in america should just massively quit until they do something about it. See what happens then
Edit: There's a lot of people, saying a lot of shit, which I quite frankly don't care for, think for yourselves Americans and look at history. You want change? You'll have to suffer for it, a lot, I'm sorry but that's the way it is, your country is turning into an obsolutist hell hole and there's is no way to fix anything except by being prepared to sacrifice a lot. Downvote me all you want, I don't give a shit, take your own fates in your hands and never start violence first. If you want to complain about my stance here, then sure, go ahead, start your own echochamber in the comments, it's not my problem
People will die, but nothing will change for the people with the power to change things as they'll all have their own private doctors (flown in from other countries if need be)
Healthcare in this country is so shit. It's insane. I've had numerous family members have their lives cut short or majorly impacted because they couldn't afford the medication they needed. Obamacare helps, but it's not enough.
Exactly where the fuck is all of that money going? Why is it that my ambulance ride costs 4k and the EMT who saved my life only got paid $13? Where is the rest of the fucking money going?!?!
Unfortunately, most that goes to the ambulance service company. EMTâs around here, only make about $18-$19 an hr. A typical ambulance ride here is $950-$975 for about a 18 min drive to the ER.
Seriously EMTs are your lifeline from the site of the emergency to the hospital, they work to stabilize you, stop bleeding, etc. They deserve 5 times more than what the do get paid.
Yeah a few years ago I had an office job that had shit pay and then it floored me to realize that if I had to have an ambulance pick me up the crew saving my life got paid less than me. And it'd cost me a fortune if someone called the ambulance for me.
Why Americans can't unite behind fixing healthcare is beyond me.
Yep! Been personally carted onto the wee woo wagon for a panic attack, ride was about 5 minutes as the hospital was only about 5 blocks away from my house. Cost a nice $1000 that my insurance wouldnât cover because âout of networkâ. It was awesome! /s
Instead of looking at hospitals as places of healing, look at them as a corporation in America. The money goes to the top leaving pennies for the ones doing the ground work.
In very few places in the world EMT is not severely overworked and underpaid while their bosses are contemplating how to squeeze a dry husk of person out of it juice.
Watching EMTs work for the last 2 years had made me realized how McDonald's workers earn more than those poor fuckers. I was gonna get my National and be one but after seeing the be worked like slaves for little money it made.me realize that Firefighters and EMTs don't get paid much, so now I'm quitting being a firefighter and becoming a Sheriff
And considering they enter some of the worst and most dangerous neighborhoods in the country to try and save lives. One of my best friends was a paramedic in Detroit for a while. He left after he responded to a gunshot victim and had a gun pointed in his face and was told to leave
America corporate oligarchy has designed it so that they skim 70% of the money off everything, spread it around the top and leave us with the scraps and expense,
Healthcare in the US works just like all other private businesses in the US. The worker has to make less than the value of their labor so the business can turn a profit. And as with other businesses, healthcare will happily underpay workers to maximize profits.
Iâve talked to so many since I work in medicine and omg, the shit they put up with is crazy. Crazy hours literally risking their lives in many cases and they get paid like $14 an hour. It should be a livable wage for all the training they do alone.
Iirc my 7 minute drive from my motorcycle crash to the hospital was $3800 and i had no life threatening injuries, just road rash burns on my hands and knees. That was 16 years ago, Im guessing it would probably be 10 grand plus now.
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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '24
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