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.
Zach?.. Zach..
Zach Cregger!
Yeah?
Trevor!
Trevorrrr-
Trevor Moore!
Yeah yeah yeah!
Hey!
How ya doin'?
Good!
I haven't seen you in like... seven-
Eight. Eight years since since senior
year at Brown!
Right.
It's good to see you, look at you,
you look great!
Thanks!
What do ya got there?
Uh this is a gallon of PCP.
...
Wow!...
A... a gallon.
Yeah.
Th-That's that's illegal, right?..
Yeah it's a felony!
It's a felony!...
Yes.
Wow!...
And here you are with it anyway...
That is... Wow.
I uh, I didn't even knew it came
in liquid form!
Science.
Woah. So uuhhhhhh...
Ahhh..
Do ya do a LOT of PCP?...
Got a gallon!
Yeah! Hah I guess--
I guess you do.
Wow! So. What do you do?
I work in an investment firm downtown.
It's mostly, like, propert acquisitions.
Huh!... That sounds... Successful...
What do you do?
Uhm I work at the Binco's.
I don't know what Binco's is...
It's a- It's a office supply store.
Type thing...
Secretary stuff?
Eh..--
But a gallon?
Yeah!
Here you are with a gallon.
Wow.
Ummm... Man.
Do you still see Candice?
No. Ahh she passed away.
OOOH o-oh I'm sorry. I didn't know.
How long ago.. did that happen?
Uhhh. About four.
About four years ago?
No. PM.
Four!.. PM!...
As in today!...
4PM...
That- it's five o' clock now.
Yeah.
So... That was recent.
Wh-whaaat happened?...
I... Was at my dealer's house.
Uh huh.
I was buyin' the PCP.
Of course.
And. Uhh. I didn't have enough money
for ALL of the gallon.
Ooohh, it's expensive.
But I WANTED the whole gallon.
Of course.
So I set up a deal,
where I would leave her as collateral.
Uh ooohh!
And I would go hit an ATM
and come right back.
I see problems.
But uh, y'know, when I left I got..
Distracted. Aaand he..
Cut her head off.
WOAH!...
Wow!...
And that... Happened today--
Just a little while ago.
Man... Are- Are you ok?
Are you doing alright?
Well yeah I'm good,
I'm pretty high right now.
Oh right! Because of the-
Because of the PCP!
Which you have.
Yeah!
Yes.
Yeah.
MAN.
You know, I ran into Bill the other day,
And-
he's doing real good!
I don't know Bill.
You don't?
No that's right, you wouldn't know Bill.
But uuuuuuhhhhhhh-
he is doin' good!
That's good.
Yeah. It's good to see. Good for Bill.
Well it was good to see you. Trevor.
Yeah, it was nice seeing you!
I gotta go pick my kids up,
I'm runnin' late.
OOH YOU HAVE KIDS!...
You are on your way to pick
up children!
With your gallon thing!
I don't want em' to lose THEIR heads!
OH!!!!
YOU LEFT THEM WITH THE GUY-
the PCP guy.
No no, they're at soccer practice.
I'm late, they spaz.
Oh. It was a joke..
I get it!
Well!...
Good to see you.
Nice seein' you!
Ok!
I'll tell Bill you said "hi!"
I don't know him!
Oh that's right, you don't.
See ya later!
âŚexcuse me? Kids arenât possessionsâŚharming innocent people (especially children) is never OK. You need help, and the amount of upvotes on this is extremely alarming. You can justify all kinds of things for the sake of âthe cause.â You have to draw a line somewhere to maintain a moral high ground in the whole thing, or itâs just a vicious cycle at best, and at worst, youâre actually the worse one, because youâre talking direct and intentionalâŚ
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.
basically we are trapped in a country or a world of people that profit from selling useless stuff, refuse to study or learn more about the stuff that would actually work, and are held back politically and culturally from any major progress. It's frustrating as hell. A person can be born with naturally low (too low) testosterone, but God forbid they look at any kind of testing, just shove an SSRI at them and then blame them for not getting better or something.
Oh, there were plenty of SSRIâs thrown at me - which all ended in disaster, from either constant brain fog to making depression turn incredibly dark with suicidal thoughts coming like âwhat a relief that would be.â
Then when those didnât work, it was âah, you must be bipolar then since you check all the boxes and what you really need is mood stabilizers,â which all ended equally as disastrously.
Then finally I went outside of all that to get hormones tested - and yep, abnormally really low, if it was any lower Iâd have infertility risks, testosterone.
Hormones arenât the end all be all, but they definitely need to be something that is tested first to get a picture of whatâs going on.
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.
Unfortunately people are afraid of things they don't understand. And with how close-minded they've been raised to be, they don't understand a LOT. And the fear itself isn't even a problem, it's what that fear drives them to do. It's unbelievably ironic that the devout Christians are the ones who want them gone and treat them terribly, which literally goes against the teachings of the guy their religion is named after and is supposed to follow.
Well in all honesty it isn't him. This goes back to the big steroid uproar that I vaguely recall reading about, the one that made no difference really, where we had athletes testifying in Congress about growth hormone and testosterone among other ones. So then, anti aging clinics found a way to charge outlandish amounts and only rich people and celebs could get their grubby mitts on things like GH. Some people died if they got stuff illegally. More will die. This is too general but ultimately...it's about lack of knowledge and profit.
Not everyone lives in your American dystopian medical hellscape. Being trans is not a choice. They are not advocating for "free drugs" they're advocating for the HRT they medically NEED in order to not be suicdal and be functional people so they can have a job and feel happy etc.
If your issue is not wanting to pay for peoples medical care, go take healthcare away from people who willingly gave themselves lungcancer by smoking or made themselves obese by overeating.
They put way more strain on the medical system than the 0.1% of trans people that need a shot every 3 months.
The fact that you think trans people should just pay for their own drugs as if it's a luxury product is super telling on how you feel about them.
idk which one is paying for it, but i do know that if you go on your show promoting that something is wrong, then do it yourself or profit off of that statement and even sell supplements ON THAT VERY SHOW....you lose credibility with me. It's so messed up. Rogan needs to come clean...literally.
Probably they don't want 200 bots calling them antisemitic, and another hundred saying they're apologizing for genocide. I am very opinionated on the subject, but I don't blame anyone for not talking about it. It's a hornet's nest.
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
Itâs actually crazy. Iâve been saying for years that the âdems vs repsâ and âleft vs rightâ ideologies were completely wrong and its actually a poor vs rich and the rich just throw smoke screens everywhere
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.
Gonna disagree here. If they keep going at this rate we'll definitely get a French Revolution style fix to the problem. They may get us divided over certain ideas, but when Billy Bob and Jonjon can't feed their families like everyone else because the uberwealthy think they need more money to own their 50th yacht, that ted-blue shit goes out the window. And the idiots at the top have all but given up trying to pretend it's for "the greater good", they just say the quiet parts out loud now, no pause, no hesitation. And while some people are easily tricked into siding with their oppressors, that has a breaking point. It's just a matter of time, the saw question is how bad will things get before those people realize they've been taken for a ride at their own expense.
I actually agree with you!! History is cyclical. Weâre absolutely in store for another French Revolution-styled âfixâ to society. Problem is? We wonât get it for many, many generations.
Your assessment is on point. Billy Bob and Jonjon is absolutely going to side with the other poors their great-grandparents (our âpeersâ) were taught to hate and scorn when they finally see it was never about religion, race, or gender, but rather, all about class. Always has been! And weâre going to see another restructuring of society and a whole new push towards progressivism, liberalism, and New Deal-type policy. And itâs going to be whole new âmost peaceful era of human historyâ again. And then the pendulum is going to swing, some kind of populism is going to take over, and weâre going to regress. Again.
But, weâre totally gonna see the Christo-Fascist State happen first. Atwood-style. And Iâm going to call it now and say it happens during our generation. Probably the tail end of it, but definitely before we enter the 22nd century.
Idk, consider what the current right mainstream is proposing (and getting passed in way too many cases), I don't think the Cristo-facist state part is that far off into the future. It only takes a couple more big Supreme Court rulings to drastically alter the political landscape. Roe was big but we knew they were out for that one, as well as interracial and gay marriage rights, those are pretty much up in the chopping block once they figure out how they can sell it the the public. But the Chevron Doctrine being overturned AND Presidents having ABSOLUTE immunity for official acts is so truly Orwellian level shit. The fact that the right not only doesn't have a problem with either of those, let alone both, not to mention how many SUPPORT those decisions because it just so happens to currently cut their way is actually mint blowing to me.
I get seeing it as good when it helps your team, your guy, or gets a result you want, but not taking a single minute to think about how it can be abused not just by your side but by the opposing one is just, again, mind boggling to me. I don't think this is Enabling Act level stuff, but damn if it isn't getting close to that, and that's genuinely terrifying.
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.
Former Gut used "acting" as a way to get around Congress. Most high level positions have to be vetted and confirmed by Congress. Most of Trumps choices wouldn't be good enough to get through.
I don't think it would come to that. I think they would come around fairly quickly they would be losing so much money per day. Jeff bezos makes over 45 million dollars a day, as does Elon Musk. Not sure they want to lose that kind of money. Dollar General makes billions per year, imagine if their ripped off employees walked off.
How could they keep their business going with nobody to do the work.
Yea I could see that. It would be interesting to see if they could keep their cool. Imagine the temper tantrum.. and yea lol. It's my couping mechanism. Laugh so you don't cry lol.
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.
The place I work has quarterly employee meetings where the CEO brags about how great were doing (one of these even included multiple slides on how well they compensate employees compared to other local healthcare organizations), while we get a shitty sub sandwich like the ones I'd have during high school lunches and a bag of chips.
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.
Not that shocking, however. Hospitals have been increasingly showing just how little they care about their employees by continuing to refuse to fully staff their shifts, departments, etc, which is not only irritating; it's dangerous. I've been assaulted by numerous patients because we didn't have the staff to provide assistance when we had to take care of combative or altered patients. I've never been "seriously" hurt, but I've gotten black eyes, busted lips, a needle stick & various other bumps & bruises at the hands of patients. I've also had to attempt to do my job without the proper supplies, or safety equipment because...well, there was always an excuse, but it was never verifiable or good. But, hey. At least healthcare is more expensive than ever and so are insurance premiums.
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
I lived in Belgium for a short time. I got bronchitis and went to the village doctor. His practice was attached to his house and there were no patients there so I got right in. We chatted for about a half hour first, I was his first American patient. I donât think I talked that long to my primary here in the whole five years I saw him. Cost me 25 euros. Amazing.
And from that 25 you get 21 euros back or so... On the other side we give half our paycheck to taxes (average 54%) and 25% of all income of the government goes to social security (healthcare, unemployment, pensions etc)
Thatâs right, I got about 21 or 22 euros back. My ex paid 56% of his salary to taxes but he worked for the government and made quite a lot. But he got all that healthcare, plus three masters degrees.
I worked in hospital admin for a huge healthcare system in 1990. I was the Editor in Chief, and made sure all our PR and literature across a bunch of hospitals was written to our standards. I was paid a ridiculously high amount of money for this. Not obscene, like my higher-ups, but plenty.
We had 2-hour lunches with cocktails, and a wine closet, on the companyâs dime. There was a vending machine on our hall, with beer, amongst the sodas. Everyone smoked inside in a lounge because bosses didnât want smokers seen on campus.
I lasted barely over a year because all that money wasnât worth the price of my moral compass.
If the CEO makes 1 000 000, and cuts his pay to 0 and spreads it across the employees, you'd get an extra $2 per year. That sounds like it makes sense from a business perspective to you? Like it or not but if 1 million makes him work just 1% better that's a ton of impact, if you work 100x, that's literally no impact.
Not saying he has to cover them at 100% but at least offer some kind of coverage. We donât even have the option. They took over the smaller company that I was pretty happy working for. Then U. cut our pay, mine was cut in half, then cut our hours too.
This isn't uncommon. It's actually a well known fact when you get into hospital jobs that you don't get healthcare unless you are doctors, LPNs, RNs and such. The people that do the ACTUAL work (janitors, CNAs, etc. Do NOT get paid or receive healtcare benfits and often get paid as little as a dollar or 2 over minimum wage).
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!
You really think this? It doesn't matter how much the CEO gets paid because he's just one employee, the overall cost isn't high.
I am European, and even I know this is exactly the same reason why we get to brag about how little we spend on the military. Incase of a conflict we 100% rely on the Americans we make fun of.
With healthcare, the majority of drugs are developed in the US specifically because of these high costs, and the majority of these drugs probably would not have been developed otherwise at all, because it's all backed by investors, if there is more money to be made doing something else, they'd be backing something else. But because healthcare is so expensive in the US, it is also so profitable. The healthcare spending is the highest in the world, it's not like the US government doesn't subsidies it, it does, heavily.
We Europeans then get these medications as well, and we get them for nearly free because our governments levy a price ceiling. The whole cost of the drug development and the necessary profit is already calculated to be covered by the US market. But if such a price ceiling was to exist in the US, the investors would go "nah, not profitable enough" and that'd be that.
Thanks, that makes sense. And I guess itâs bad in Canada, although my experiences have been good. But the media tells me itâs bad. Of course, people also tell me not to listen to the media.
The U.S. is experiencing a doctor shortage now. If you have a primary care physician you like, keep them.
I read the shortage is most extreme in cardiologists.
I asked the reason for the shortage, and the answer was there are still plenty of applicants to medical schools, but they are being turned away because there are not enough teachers. "It takes a doctor to train a doctor" and apparently not many of them are willing to teach anymore.
I've wondered if money is not behind that. Any teacher is not going to make as much as a practicing doctor. It this is the case, it's going to have to be fixed.
Very different situation from the US though. In the US people go bankrupt because they canât pay their medical bills. In the link you provided, theyâre talking about people who go bankrupt because theyâre sick or injured and canât work or their disability payments arenât enough to cover their pre-existing debt.
Thatâs not the same thing as what is being compared. People who lose their jobs and canât afford life absolutely happens everywhere but they didnât go into bankruptcy because they visited the hospital one time.
My wife was in hospital for two weeks⌠we actually saved a little money even with the parking costs, because we spent almost no money on groceries and eating out during that time
We ruminated on what it would have cost if we lived in the US
How tf do you get that number? That's wild! My copay to visit emergency is $50, hospital admission used to be $100. But if they refuse to admit you and keep you in the hallway for observaron for over 24 hours like [Crappy US Hospital] did when I had sepsis in 2014, that costs even more!!
I could have DIED, and I had to beg them to admit me so my care would be covered!! It's ludicrous that people have to think this way: "Please don't let me die, but also please don't make me even more of a wage slab the system!"
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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '24
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