Is this that socialist health care system Americans are supposed to want to pay $4 trillion per year for?
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If it had been a Paki teenager with a stab wound, they would have shown right up.
or if he'd been slightly rude.
If I'm ever left waiting for an ambulance for hours on end, I'm calling calling the local police station and saying 'nigger'.
What happens when "health care" is free?
Unlimited demand.
What happens with unlimited demand?
Rationing.
Anybody that ever saw the military healthcare system knows what's up with that. You go to the ER because you ruptured your meniscus and you're sitting there surrounded by 5 dependas with their shitty fat kids because "he coughed once 5 hours ago" because they're too fucking cheap and entitled to go buy Nyquil themselves and want to scam free meds.
These hypochondriac sponges are/were also responsible for the over-prescription of antibiotics, back when doctors would grant requests for them for damn near anything, bacterial infection or not.
I always wondered why MDs would do this. Just to shut patients up? Was there some sort of profit motive?
Definitely multifactorial.
Other considerations are liability and doubt.
Also faster processing times and better patient satisfaction scores (which can influence pay in the US).
Essentially overtreatment never gets sued while undertreatment always gets doubted when a 1 in 1000 outcome happens.
It also takes a lot longer to do a comprehensive assessment and chart documentation to back up your decision to forego treatment then it is to simply skip to the end and hand out boilerplate prescriptions to everyone.
There's also the fact that most routine symptoms that patients present with the most have no useful alternative to offer other than reassurance and time (pink eye, coughs, runny noses, ear aches, rashes, sore throats, nausea/vomiting/diarrhea, abdominal pain, etc).
This reminds me of an anecdote from Louis-Ferdinand Celine, who was an MD.
He was on board a passenger ship when a bunch of people got sick with food poisoning, so he lined them all up and shot a 1/4 grain of morphine into them, reasoning "no matter what's wrong with them, they'll feel better immediately." They all puked their guts out on deck.
Thanks for the very informative reply.
Especially with unlimited immigration from people who never paid into the system and never will, but are more than happy to take advantage of it.
And which group of all has the single biggest demand? Fat people - unironically. We need a "fat markup" for fatties in our public healthcare system.
If you want to tax the fat for their self-inflicted diseases burdening the system, you'd need to include all so-called "lifestyle diseases" in this category--smokers who get cancer or emphysema, users of street drugs who develop lesions and blood borne diseases, chronic alcoholics whose organs fail, malnourished vegans and macrobiotic dieters, people who get the clap or AIDS or monkeypox, type-2 diabetics, etc.
For that time, only the biggest and broadest group (fatties). In many parts of the world obesity is the most common pre-condition when it comes to hospital admissions for entire ranges of diseases and health problems. Force these people into healthier lifestyles and the entire public health system could provide less waiting time, including for more critical treatment. For more specific stuff like smokers there are already massive taxes for cigarettes in many countries (for example almost 70% tobacco tax in germany) - but that money does not flow into the public health system.
"only attack the things I don't participate in"
Man not to be a fatty defender, but somehow I knew you were going to be this type of little bitch.
Little cunts like you that do just as much destructive shit always want to make excuses for why it's different when YOU do it.
You sound like a fucking female.
How? By charging them more for doctoring? That seems like it would be fair.
They are already doing that with the lifestyles with smokers drinkers, so why not fatties? With them for example, an increase in monthly public health insurance payments would be a good start. An increase in food prices would be problematic, since theoretically you also could get fat just by eating too many apples for example.
Are they? Good. Why not, indeed.
Yes, indirectly, via massive taxes for tobacco for example. And at the end of the day the pay the same at the hospital like everyone else. Problem is, these massive tobacco taxes for example do not flow into the healthcare system, not even partly. But thats a whole other problem that needs to be addressed.
Notice it's never goddamn pakis fucking waiting.
There was nothign wrong with our health-care systems, until the nigger-worshippers came up with Mass Immigration tactics (especially, in Canada, family class. And anchor babies. Anchors away, throw 'em in the sea.)
We need to get rid of dual citizenship, and get rid of mass immigration, and the whole idea of an anchor baby (if the parents aren't from the country, they all go back home.)
I've posted on this matter before, but it's important so I'll repeat it;
I've lived in the US and the UK, and I've witnessed or in some cases experienced first hand both the best and worst of both systems.
In the UK, every time I have seen an ambulance called, they have been on the scene in 5 minutes. ...But I have also waited 6 months for a 5 minute ultrasound. ...But I have also been admitted into hospital in 20 minutes and treated there for a week at zero cost.
In the US I have watched other have misdiagnoses, I have also watched others, and in retrospect, realized that I too have been hoodwinked into paying for unnecessary treatment by doctors looking to make money and happy to poison me to do it.
I have also avoided hospital care in circumstances where I would have immediately sought it from the NHS - showing up to the ER with breathing difficulties and being told a ballpark figure for my admission was $13,000 - most of my life's savings at that point in time - prompted me to gamble my life and wait to see just how how difficult my breathing got.
I've watched Americans sell family homes because of medical bills - something virtually unthinkable in Britain.
Having seen all this, I now conclude there are times when I'd choose the NHS, and times when I'd choose private medical.
Neither system is universally better than the other.
If you're in the US and you balk at free healthcare and cry 'SOCIALISM!', you're a fucking idiot.
If you're in Europe and you balk at private healthcare and cry 'INEQUALITY!', you're a fucking idiot.
If you're lucky, both systems are open to you.
No you haven't. You're just ass pulling shit based on what you've seen in the lib media. That does not happen. At all.
The dirty secret of the runaway prices in medical is that they are built entirely on bullying and extortion of anyone without council (insurance or other advocate). That seems wild until the second reason is known: emergency care cannot be refused to the indigent. This second point is actually the entire reason for everything. It has created a class of person, who abuses emergency service for general care.
Medical pricing, then, is a constant haggle and negotiation where most Americans aren't aware of it happening and don't participate in it. The hospital quotes you high-unto-unreasonable, and you look at that price and assume it's just the price, and then wonder why insurance payers don't go out of business. They don't because they ignore the bill and send them the only money they're going to get, and the hospital takes it quietly. That is not "price-fixing" in the monopoly sense, that is price dictation in the haggling sense.
My own experience in this was a surgery for my son. I examined every bill and watched the negotiation in real-time between my insurance and the hospital's many, many entities. Finally, when all was settled, there were some outstanding items that the insurance didn't participate in by their own election (not their purview because my coverage didn't include it). The hospital turned their Eye of Sauron on me and wanted immediate full gratification on the remaining items.
I had a phone conversation where I dictated my own terms to them, basically insisting on a pay schedule for the outstanding amount. They were unhappy and pushed back, and I said, "It's what's happening. The first check will arrive next month for this amount." Finally, after conferring out of my hearing they came back to the line with, "ok," and immediately hung up. I sent my checks as I'd promised, and they never contacted me again.
The extortion system can be fixed. Trump's attempt to mandate that hospitals post prices was a great first step in that, because it forces public competition and eliminates the haggling requirement of pricing being an individual affair. The reason the extortion system exists, can also be fixed, but that is a harder ask because we have 40 years of ER rooms receiving people with non-emergency problems who are up-front about the fact that they will not pay, and no ability to stop it. The hospitals have to squeeze money from payers to cover non-payers they can't refuse. Until that is addressed, this will continue to spiral.
Thanks, Reagan.
I'm pulling nothing out of my ass. I'm not saying they ended up homeless. I'm saying they downsized to a lesser home.
You're right. I imagine some honest people (or suckers depending on your outlook) actually try in earnest to pay their hospital debts. Most people just deal with collections.
As a former poor person with no insurance, I can tell you that actually going to an ER is usually the last resort. The working poor who fall into the gray area between the dirt poor and the insured classes don't qualify for Medicaid and can't afford the premiums for any sort of insurance (Obamacare was/is a total joke).
Many so-called "blue collar" jobs either offer no insurance or bottom-tier insurance with huge deductibles.
Yeah. Worth noting that where the UK system really shines in comparison to the US is basically for people too poor to afford health insurance. As I understand it, if you're in that kind of situation in the US things can be very bleak. Something like that is far less likely in the UK, which of course makes it's own tradeoffs, quite a few of which I don't particularly agree with.
A depressing, hair-raising hour sitting or two sitting in a hallway and trying to determine whether I'm getting better or worse as time went by.
It doesn't sound like much but the thing is that the difference between 'trouble breathing' and 'unconscious and asphyxiating' is about 5 minutes, and the difference between 'unconscious and asphyxiating' and 'brain damage' is about 5 more.
I had just travelled was really not used to the combination of 20 below zero with dry air, and my asthma, which hadn't bothered me in over a decade, was having none of it.
Eventually I decided I wasn't getting worse, and chose to take the risk of heading back home, blasting the car heater and buying coffee purely to inhale the steam. I went to sleep boiling a kettle in my bedroom. Yes, I bought one of those, too.
I never did fully adjust to that climate, but it never fucked me up half as bad as it did the first year I was there.
If it had been the NHS, based on my prior experiences with their treatment of my asthma, they would have stuck an oxygen mask on me without question or fee.
Realistically, If I had chosen to be admitted, I would not have ended up actually paying $13,000 in the end, but that is not really what you're thinking when you're wondering if you're about to fucking suffocate.
And really, should I have to haggle with debt collectors over such an obviously bullshit price tag? I knew I didn't need $13,000 worth of treatment.
Yes, in this case, the ultimate issue is 'why can't I access an oxygen mask at something approaching market cost?'
In the US, that answer is 'because a legion of insurance middlemen want their cut for work they aren't even doing.'
Correct.
It's not the case in the UK that 'everything' is nationalized. We have private medical providers (some of which also provide services to the NHS) and for some things, I would recommend that over the NHS even for the poor - I am never waiting six months save to £350 on an ultrasound ever again.
My personal opinion is that there is not enough availability of private care in the UK (because it has to compete with most people defaulting the NHS), and not enough availability of public care in the US. The politicians of both countries seem to agree with me on that, as they've made attempts to push things toward that middle ground in the last decade.
If only he said he was offended by mainstream rap lyrics posted by a white girl, then a full complement of emergency services would have shown up immediately to help him.
Why was he waiting outside for an ambulance? If his family built a tent why didn’t they care for him or take him to the hospital?
The family was told not to move him from where he fell, presumably out of concern that he may have suffered a spinal injury. They did what they could for him while they waited for the ambulance, but he fractured his pelvis in two places and that's not the kind of thing that a layman can treat.
Pain had to be excutiating. If it had been anyone non white they'd have helped instantly else risk bad headlines. Granted, this is already a bad headline but no one will care since it's not one of the "victim people".
Maybe don't mindlessly follow instructions. IDK about you but I'm not leaving grandpa in the freezing cold just because some tard told me to.
It's a spinal injury. You really shouldn't move them if its a spinal injury because that could kill them or cause permanent disability beyond the original injury's damage
the emergency rooms in countries like this will always prioritize a shitskin with the sniffles over you, even though you pay taxes and he doesn't
I agree. There is a huge variety of insurance, from plans that cost little in premiums and pay out virtually nothing with doctor pools that include low-rent quacks (like CIGNA in FL), to plans that cost an arm and a leg but provide good doctors and excellent care (like Kaiser Permanente in CA).
Hospitals vary widely in competence, too. The Yale outfit looks good (university teaching hospital) but the size and layers of bureaucracy likely did in this unfortunate chap. He sat unattended for 5 hours and died of cardiac arrest probably totally unrelated to his fentanyl dose, which is unusual even for meat grinders like Grady in Atlanta or Cook County in Chicago.
NHS is a joke and the worst program in the continent.
Public health care is why i pay 45 euros for a tooth filling and you pay $2000.
No, it's what you're supposed to pay $12t a year for, stretch nuts.
What the actual fuck is wrong with his family? Britain deserves to be overrun at this point. We need a "no refugee" mandate in place to make sure they have to stay.
I can add on to this, as I used to work for a small player in the insurance game. The big players, your BCBS and your UHC and your Aetna -- they have price agreements with hospitals that are set in stone and you can't see them. Everyone else gets "the bullshit."
Examples of "the bullshit" - X-Rays for three or four thousand dollars (anything over a couple hundred should be a crime), Observation (literally sitting alone in a room) for $2,000 per hour, overnight hospital stays for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you're outside those networks (where they pay literally pennies on the dollar if not less) then the hospital will try to nail you to the wall. Franciscan hospitals out of Indianapolis are the WORST. It's a non-profit Catholic hospital that will demand full payment on admission if you're outside of their cartel.
I'm starting to wonder when clinics with open source tech are open. Almost everything can be run on a phone now, and most of it has an open source equivalent. Most techs go through a few months of training for a single thing. Having a full course study on everything and then opening up a clinic would destroy the fake industry very fast. All they have is officialdom, and that was destroyed by Covid.
I had to laugh at this expression.
What do they do with the millions they collect for services? Buy more art for the Vatican? Settle child-rape cases out of court? Pay for moving pedo priests around the country? Stockpile sacramental wine and wafers?
Sure--the rich always have the option to pay for good doctoring, no matter where.
Except Canada.
They just fly or drive to America though...
Trump admin signed a law about up front pricing
It’s coming