Jump to content
IGNORED

being poor in america


delet...

Recommended Posts

 

i thought that was p funny cus i can just walk into the walk in center about 5 mins away from where i live and get a doctors appointment extremely easily.

doctors don't work for free. someone would be paying for your doctors appointment. if you had less of other peoples' stuff that you were charged with paying for, you could have kept that money and paid for your own appointment, or got your own insurance policy. but now there is a whole bureaucracy that has to be made just to take your tax money, and redistribute it to where it goes. this is a middle-man, but it's a middle-bureaucracy which is worse. the actual act of collecting your tax dollars, and distributing it to the programs it needs to go to, that takes money, so that bureaucracy is now a thing that needs to be paid for with some of that tax money. so now some of the money that the people could have spent on their own healthcare, is going to a bureaucracy. this is basic, and it happens whether you understand it or not. government workers don't work for free.
you can say 'yeah but some people couldn't have afforded to get health insurance even without the government taking some of their money to support more and more massive bureaucracies (who now get to have control over your life by deciding what's covered and what quality of care you get, and eventually how you should be allowed to live), and other people's health care. they would have been without the care they need'. maybe so and that would be a fair thing to debate. but don't act like it's just a simple matter of 'free health care'. it's not free. that's a huge, massive oversimplification, to the extent of being dishonest.
that's beside the fact that when the government gets involved and says 'this is how it must be, you must provide health care, and you must provide insurace' then it removes a person's ability to shop around for different providers of different quality. it removes the market from the picture largely, because now the only people involved in the negotiation are doctors, insurance providers, and the government. i think it totally makes sense how much liberals love to give more and more power over their lives to the government, i mean, i'm sure that can't turn out bad...
RIGHT?
all we have to do is look at congress and see how honest those guys are. no chance they'd get involved in some shifty deal with the insurance providers/hospitals to fuck the people over, who have effectively been completely removed from having any say in any of this. oh but i'm sure the government will do right by us. they have proven that they can manage things so well lately.

 

healthcarecostslong.jpg?uuid=-806JHqFEeC

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 222
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Nice links/fact-smack down compson, and i will take this opportunity to say that attempts at generic talking point parroting conservatism is always detectable even with the greatest attempts at being stealth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I broke my collar bone in half a few years ago and didn't have health insurance. Luckily, my father is a doctor, and had one of his colleagues do the surgery for free. We only had to pay the anesthesiologist. Which was a couple thousand dollars...

 

While I was recovering from the surgery, I had to stay hooked up to this cooling machine thing that they made me bring home. I was planted in front of the tv for a few days, and one of the movies I happened to catch was Michael Moore's 'Sicko.' How apt a film to watch in my condition. Ugh.

 

edit: My surgery would have cost over $19,000.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would have responded to mistere's post if i'd know where to start. Double u t f...

 

Hey mistere, do you think there were some aspects that are actually good about obamacare?

 

In general, it appears to be criminally misunderstood.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Err some of those 'myths' are actual problems. If nobody smoked or drank and everyone had healthy diets then we'd be left with genetic contributors, which only account for a portion of disease. For instance, did you know that only around 3% of cancer is genetic? The rest comes from our GMO-tainted food and our fluoride-tainted water and our milk and 25-grams-of-sugar beverages and alcohol and cigarettes etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Err some of those 'myths' are actual problems. If nobody smoked or drank and everyone had healthy diets then we'd be left with genetic contributors, which only account for a portion of disease. For instance, did you know that only around 3% of cancer is genetic? The rest comes from our GMO-tainted food and our fluoride-tainted water and our milk and 25-grams-of-sugar beverages and alcohol and cigarettes etc.

 

No one is saying the myths aren't problems, but that they aren't the reason for stark healthcare cost differences in the US vs. other comparable countries.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The one good thing about my relocation is that the most affordable health insurance (with dental) I can get in LA is $160 a month.

In NYC, the shittiest, cheapest healthcare I could get (without dental and discounted through the freelancers union) was $350 a month.

Y'all that get insurance through your employers better not take that shit for granted.

 

:cerious:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest aeser

We haven't gone out to eat in about 9 months, my phone is payed for by my work so i pay for my wife's phone, internet access which i need for my job, car payment (on a honda civic) and insurance and rent and prescriptions and still we have $400 a month to buy groceries and gas and anything else life throws at us.

 

it is not that we are living so opulently, it is that the cost of living is crushing us, as it is to many others in this area I know. have a look at what rents are like around here: http://boston.craigslist.org/search/aap/gbs?zoomToPosting=&query=cambridgeport&srchType=A&minAsk=&maxAsk=&bedrooms=2&hasPic=1

 

i know people want to think anyone that is in a financial tight spot is just stupid or lazy or made bad choices but the reality is capitalism is a blood sucking parasite and wages are not increasing anywhere near the rate that cost of living is. as an example what i was paying for basic cable and internet service 10-12 years ago was about $60 a month, now they want $144 a month for the same thing, and even dropping TV, just internet service is running me about $80 a month, and this is a pretty across the board thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you tried RCN? When I lived in Boston, I switched to RCN instead of Comcast, and it was like $40 a month for just internet. I know you can't get it everywhere, though.

 

And that was like 5 years ago...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Err some of those 'myths' are actual problems. If nobody smoked or drank and everyone had healthy diets then we'd be left with genetic contributors, which only account for a portion of disease. For instance, did you know that only around 3% of cancer is genetic? The rest comes from our GMO-tainted food and our fluoride-tainted water and our milk and 25-grams-of-sugar beverages and alcohol and cigarettes etc.

 

source? never heard this and am intrigued

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

If only medical debt was that easy. If I go get my heart checked - which I need to do, btw, but cannot afford to - it would cost me at least $5,000-10,000. Why? I don't fucking know. Because I don't have insurance. Yeah, I could pay measly amounts every month for years, but why? It doesn't make sense to get preventive care when it costs that much, so, guess what? I only get care when I'm already hurt. Terrible system. Last time I broke a bone it cost me $1100 just to have a doctor confirm that it was broken and to get a plastic boot to put my foot in. This was after seeing another doctor who charged me for three x-rays and a visit ($260) and then told me my leg wasn't broken (which caused me to try walking on it for a week, fracturing it even worse), and followed his diagnosis with "Ice is nice, liquor is quicker -- have a nice hop home." Then he gave me six vicodin, and when I asked for more a few days later, he accused me of running him for pills. I still refuse to pay that $260 bill, and they still call me about it roughly once a year. I threaten them with legal action every time, and they hang up. Point being, not having insurance is lame and I shouldn't have to fight just to avoid getting scammed by the system.

 

I'm poor in America, and yeah... punk ethos. I've always been poor, and don't really intend to ever be rich, but basically I'm just frugal, don't go out, and when I do see my friends, we do free things like jam or get drunk on long walks.

You might want to look into community clinics - typically the healthcare there is much more reasonable price-wise, and would save money on situations like the above - obviously they won't help where serious medical attention is required, but then they can refer you to a specialist if it's something beyond the facilities' capabilities.

 

I have a real problem with health care costs, especially when me and my family have been healthy and almost never need to go to the doctor, etc. - why pay outrageous sums each month (around 450 USD in my case), and then, just to use the damn insurance, have to pay either a co-pay or a deductible that is typically 500-2000 USD on top of the monthly costs, and then, the final kick in the samosas is they only pay a percentage 65-80% of the total costs, so you're still left with more to pay out of pocket. Even options like major medical insurance (low monthly, very high deductible) is still far too expensive.

 

And don't even get me started on the pharmaceutical companies and modern medicine...

 

The three community clinics (two of which were certainly not in my own "community"!) I've petitioned for an appointment are no longer accepting new patients (too swamped already, they've told me). I've been trying to get my teeth worked on (I need replacement composite resin caps, mine are beginning to fail and it's fairly alarming) and no clinic will take me. A regular dentist's fees for what I need costs anywhere from $700-1400 per tooth (two teeth for me), so I've held off. Thanks for the advice though, and to the people with similar stories & healthcare woes - sorry to hear it's happened to you too! Still not sure how our new national healthcare plan is going to work out in practice, but we'll see...

 

As for dental work (Mrs. Joyrex used to work for a dentist), you could try and see if there are local Dental colleges in your area - they will do heavily discounted (and in some cases free) dental work to allow their students to get the practical experience needed before they graduate, or for an instructor to demonstrate proper dental procedures and techniques.

 

 

We haven't gone out to eat in about 9 months, my phone is payed for by my work so i pay for my wife's phone, internet access which i need for my job, car payment (on a honda civic) and insurance and rent and prescriptions and still we have $400 a month to buy groceries and gas and anything else life throws at us.

 

it is not that we are living so opulently, it is that the cost of living is crushing us, as it is to many others in this area I know. have a look at what rents are like around here: http://boston.craigslist.org/search/aap/gbs?zoomToPosting=&query=cambridgeport&srchType=A&minAsk=&maxAsk=&bedrooms=2&hasPic=1

 

i know people want to think anyone that is in a financial tight spot is just stupid or lazy or made bad choices but the reality is capitalism is a blood sucking parasite and wages are not increasing anywhere near the rate that cost of living is. as an example what i was paying for basic cable and internet service 10-12 years ago was about $60 a month, now they want $144 a month for the same thing, and even dropping TV, just internet service is running me about $80 a month, and this is a pretty across the board thing.

 

I know I'm starting to sound like some cost-saving resource in this thread, but those who can't afford (or don't want to pay the obnoxious rates) for cable/satellite can get their local channels, in HD, for free simply by getting a HDTV antenna, for low as 10 bucks (obviously better, powered antennas work better, and external antennas work the best). Head on over to antennaweb.org and see what broadcast channels in your area there are, where they come from (so you know where you need to position your antenna), and free yourselves from pay TV providers - now, if there are premium channels you watch, there are always online services like Netflix, Amazon Prime (I'm a big user of Prime - 79.00/year gets you free 2-day shipping on all Prime-qualifying orders, and you get access to thousands of free shows and movies via their app, which is built into most DVD and TVs these days, or available through a set-top box like a Boxee or Roku), or Hulu Plus. My father, for instance, was paying 30 bucks a month to Charter cable just to watch over the air stations, and not even in HD! We got him an external powered HDTV antenna, and he's much happier with the picture quality, etc. and the additional channels he never knew existed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

The three community clinics (two of which were certainly not in my own "community"!) I've petitioned for an appointment are no longer accepting new patients (too swamped already, they've told me). I've been trying to get my teeth worked on (I need replacement composite resin caps, mine are beginning to fail and it's fairly alarming) and no clinic will take me. A regular dentist's fees for what I need costs anywhere from $700-1400 per tooth (two teeth for me), so I've held off. Thanks for the advice though, and to the people with similar stories & healthcare woes - sorry to hear it's happened to you too! Still not sure how our new national healthcare plan is going to work out in practice, but we'll see...

 

As for dental work (Mrs. Joyrex used to work for a dentist), you could try and see if there are local Dental colleges in your area - they will do heavily discounted (and in some cases free) dental work to allow their students to get the practical experience needed before they graduate, or for an instructor to demonstrate proper dental procedures and techniques.

LOL i know some women that do that with hair, if they cant afford a mega cut they can get a cheaper one if the students do it tho im not sure if id let some kid practice denistry on me but then again im not poor hahahahahahaa (beggers cant be choosers) LOL

/kicks peasant in the face from horseback

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the advice JR. Like Richie said in so many poorly spelled words, I'm just not sure if I want a student to "practice" on my two front teeth. I'd really like to be able to get a skilled worker to do it at a reasonable cost, but I do realize that's not a very likely scenario. This is a medical appointment I've been trying to make for almost two years. =P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

The three community clinics (two of which were certainly not in my own "community"!) I've petitioned for an appointment are no longer accepting new patients (too swamped already, they've told me). I've been trying to get my teeth worked on (I need replacement composite resin caps, mine are beginning to fail and it's fairly alarming) and no clinic will take me. A regular dentist's fees for what I need costs anywhere from $700-1400 per tooth (two teeth for me), so I've held off. Thanks for the advice though, and to the people with similar stories & healthcare woes - sorry to hear it's happened to you too! Still not sure how our new national healthcare plan is going to work out in practice, but we'll see...

 

As for dental work (Mrs. Joyrex used to work for a dentist), you could try and see if there are local Dental colleges in your area - they will do heavily discounted (and in some cases free) dental work to allow their students to get the practical experience needed before they graduate, or for an instructor to demonstrate proper dental procedures and techniques.

LOL i know some women that do that with hair, if they cant afford a mega cut they can get a cheaper one if the students do it tho im not sure if id let some kid practice denistry on me but then again im not poor hahahahahahaa (beggers cant be choosers) LOL

/kicks peasant in the face from horseback

There's a big fucking difference between a dental student and somebody at a beauty school... so you wouldn't trust a dentist fresh out of school to work on your teeth? Do you even get a choice with NHS?

 

Also, BIG FUCKING LOL at a Brit talking about dental care - yeah, I went there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Iain C

 

 

 

The three community clinics (two of which were certainly not in my own "community"!) I've petitioned for an appointment are no longer accepting new patients (too swamped already, they've told me). I've been trying to get my teeth worked on (I need replacement composite resin caps, mine are beginning to fail and it's fairly alarming) and no clinic will take me. A regular dentist's fees for what I need costs anywhere from $700-1400 per tooth (two teeth for me), so I've held off. Thanks for the advice though, and to the people with similar stories & healthcare woes - sorry to hear it's happened to you too! Still not sure how our new national healthcare plan is going to work out in practice, but we'll see...

 

As for dental work (Mrs. Joyrex used to work for a dentist), you could try and see if there are local Dental colleges in your area - they will do heavily discounted (and in some cases free) dental work to allow their students to get the practical experience needed before they graduate, or for an instructor to demonstrate proper dental procedures and techniques.

LOL i know some women that do that with hair, if they cant afford a mega cut they can get a cheaper one if the students do it tho im not sure if id let some kid practice denistry on me but then again im not poor hahahahahahaa (beggers cant be choosers) LOL

/kicks peasant in the face from horseback

There's a big fucking difference between a dental student and somebody at a beauty school... so you wouldn't trust a dentist fresh out of school to work on your teeth? Do you even get a choice with NHS?

 

Also, BIG FUCKING LOL at a Brit talking about dental care - yeah, I went there.

 

Lol, touchy.

 

As it happens we do get a choice on the NHS. You can register with any NHS dentist you like as long as you live within their catchment area, and in a city there'll always be a few to choose from. Most dentists offer both private and NHS services. It's not like the "best" denists go private and the NHS workers are second-rate. Same goes for GPs. Shop around until you find one you like, and you can always change with no cost or penalty. I say "shop" but of course it's heavily subsidised (for dentistry) or free (for other medical services excluding prescriptions, which are subsidised and capped). All NHS dentistry charges are capped at one of three levels:

 

 

 

There are three standard charges for all NHS dental treatments:

  • Band 1 course of treatment – £17.50

    This covers an examination, diagnosis (including X-rays), advice on how to prevent future problems, a scale and polish if needed, and application of fluoride varnish or fissure sealant.

  • Band 2 course of treatment – £48.00

    This covers everything listed in Band 1 above, plus any further treatment such as fillings, root canal work or removal of teeth.

  • Band 3 course of treatment – £209.00

    This covers everything listed in Bands 1 and 2 above, plus crowns, dentures and bridges.

Not a perfect system - but better than yours.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

 

 

The three community clinics (two of which were certainly not in my own "community"!) I've petitioned for an appointment are no longer accepting new patients (too swamped already, they've told me). I've been trying to get my teeth worked on (I need replacement composite resin caps, mine are beginning to fail and it's fairly alarming) and no clinic will take me. A regular dentist's fees for what I need costs anywhere from $700-1400 per tooth (two teeth for me), so I've held off. Thanks for the advice though, and to the people with similar stories & healthcare woes - sorry to hear it's happened to you too! Still not sure how our new national healthcare plan is going to work out in practice, but we'll see...

 

As for dental work (Mrs. Joyrex used to work for a dentist), you could try and see if there are local Dental colleges in your area - they will do heavily discounted (and in some cases free) dental work to allow their students to get the practical experience needed before they graduate, or for an instructor to demonstrate proper dental procedures and techniques.

LOL i know some women that do that with hair, if they cant afford a mega cut they can get a cheaper one if the students do it tho im not sure if id let some kid practice denistry on me but then again im not poor hahahahahahaa (beggers cant be choosers) LOL

/kicks peasant in the face from horseback

There's a big fucking difference between a dental student and somebody at a beauty school... so you wouldn't trust a dentist fresh out of school to work on your teeth? Do you even get a choice with NHS?

 

Also, BIG FUCKING LOL at a Brit talking about dental care - yeah, I went there.

 

Lol, touchy.

 

As it happens we do get a choice on the NHS. You can register with any NHS dentist you like as long as you live within their catchment area, and in a city there'll always be a few to choose from. Most dentists offer both private and NHS services. Same goes for GPs. Shop around until you find one you like, and you can always change with no cost or penalty. I say "shop" but of course it's heavily subsidised (for dentistry) or free (for other medical services excluding prescriptions, which are subsidised and capped). All NHS dentistry charges are capped at one of three levels:

 

 

>

There are three standard charges for all NHS dental treatments:

  • Band 1 course of treatment – £17.50

    This covers an examination, diagnosis (including X-rays), advice on how to prevent future problems, a scale and polish if needed, and application of fluoride varnish or fissure sealant.

  • Band 2 course of treatment – £48.00

    This covers everything listed in Band 1 above, plus any further treatment such as fillings, root canal work or removal of teeth.

  • Band 3 course of treatment – £209.00

    This covers everything listed in Bands 1 and 2 above, plus crowns, dentures and bridges.

Not a perfect system - but better than yours.

 

It was a legitimate question, not a slight - trust me, I know the NHS is way better (hell, Cuba's health care is better than the US) than anything we have here, and it is a crime what dentists charge here.

 

Case in point: If I pay cash to my dentist, a cleaning is around 50-60USD (still quite high), but if I pay with insurance, the dentist charges the insurance 150-200USD for the same cleaning. That tells you right there our system is fucked up.

 

Note: I know the English having bad teeth is a myth, I just wanted to take a stab at Richie Bees and his increasingly Sup-like behavior, which, to borrow an English expression, gets on my tits.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest aeser

"those who can't afford (or don't want to pay the obnoxious rates) for cable/satellite can get their local channels, in HD, for free simply by getting a HDTV antenna,"

 

lol we actually did that. dropped TV service then last weekend went out and got an HD antenna, it's awesome, i get like 40 something channels free. the reception is awesome.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest aeser

Have you tried RCN? When I lived in Boston, I switched to RCN instead of Comcast, and it was like $40 a month for just internet. I know you can't get it everywhere, though.

 

And that was like 5 years ago...

 

i live in beverly now, can't afford to live in the city anymore, and they don't have RCN here, it's comcast or direct tv with crazy satellite latency internet

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well, richiebees is definitely a fud, thats for sure

 

 

 

 

 

my dentist is 26(and hot) straight out of uni, everything has been fine. i feel like if you've only just left uni then everything you need to know is fresh in your mind.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest fiznuthian

Err some of those 'myths' are actual problems. If nobody smoked or drank and everyone had healthy diets then we'd be left with genetic contributors, which only account for a portion of disease. For instance, did you know that only around 3% of cancer is genetic? The rest comes from our GMO-tainted food and our fluoride-tainted water and our milk and 25-grams-of-sugar beverages and alcohol and cigarettes etc.

 

I completely agree, though I disagree that flouride, gmo food, milk, and sugar are necessarily the underlying cause. I feel that poor diet in general is a huge causative factor, but even that is not very well understood. What's healthy is still quite controversial, but there is strong research out there on metabolism, gut health, and their implications. I do know this:

 

1) Rarely do I meet people in real life who eat anything other than what's most convenient

2) Most of the convenient food they eat consistently is not real food. It's sweetened and fattened acellular junk almost severely lacking in nutrient.

 

It doesn't take long searching on Pubmed or Google Scholar to see why our modern food environment is potentially silently harming a majority of people country wide. I think, more so than any other country, Americans have somehow accepted many degenerative disease as commonplace. They almost expect it to happen but don't understand why food may be contributing to their decline and suffering.

 

Obviously there are other environmental factors and genetic factors, and they play a role too, but are often exaggerated I think.

There's one thing about all of this that bothers me the most, and that's how we as a nation changed our eating habits to begin with. Poor quality food is just about everywhere, and how it's been engineered affects our behavior profoundly.

 

The proof is already there though.. why would someone choose pizza instead of some eggs or fruit? Why french fries instead of a baked potato? It tastes better obviously, and for 90% of the processed shit in the store, a considerable amount of work was put into perfecting insatiable flavors. In scientific literature there is a theory of food reward and motivation, primarily involving food's relationship with the limbic system. What researchers have been confirming for a long time now is that food as we consume it today is affecting neural systems just like any other addictive drug. Anyone who has tried to cut out processed food entirely out of their diet and struggled repeatedly will know this fact first hand.

 

I guess what i'm suggesting is that poor quality food, being so widespread, is probably contributing to the burden on our health care system to keep us alive and well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The biggest problem is that we're evolutionarily wired to enjoy all this junk food. Back before the agricultural revolution when food was scarce and you didn't know when your next meal was coming from, it made perfect sense to load up on carbs, salt, fat, etc while you could. But now it's backfiring and taking decades off our expected lifespan.

 

 

And I'm curious what environmental factors would you suggest are responsible for disease?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest fiznuthian

The biggest problem is that we're evolutionarily wired to enjoy all this junk food. Back before the agricultural revolution when food was scarce and you didn't know when your next meal was coming from, it made perfect sense to load up on carbs, salt, fat, etc while you could. But now it's backfiring and taking decades off our expected lifespan.

 

 

And I'm curious what environmental factors would you suggest are responsible for disease?

 

Just the obvious, but general idea that we are exposed to toxins. It's pretty obvious but what's difficult to determine is what's really hurting us and what isn't. Just like pesticides, in theory some should be fairly awful, but how do we really know? We're playing guinea pig.. Is car exhaust hurting us? How about household cleaners? Hairspray? Preservatives?

 

Are we somehow to immune to all of these things? I don't think it's likely.

Just like your excellent point, which I was trying to avoid saying really (it's not a popular idea still), our ancestral environment even at the turn of the last century was so much different than the way we live now.

 

There's a lot of talk in this thread about how our current way of living is wasteful, not sustainable, not equal, etc.. All of these things are true. I've been extremely conscious of all of this lately.. it really makes me want to move into the woods and grow food and medicine. I'll still be close by but i'd like to remain as healthy as possible and not depend on the healthcare system so much until I die.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.