#Reliance Health Insurance

[3rdbogwitch2theleft]

Shoutout to all my fellow possessors of limited medical history. Adoptees, children of single parents, adult children of parents who passed away young, people who come from families that don’t talk about illness. 

Every time we visit the doctor we prepare for a barrage of unanswerable questions armed only with our considerable sense of humor and a lifetime of guesswork. 

“And was that on the paternal or maternal side?”

“I have no paternal medical history. That’s actually one of the reasons I want to do this bloodwork.”  

3 minutes later

“And this cousin, is that the paternal or maternal side?” 

“You think in the space of the last three minutes I hired a PI and tracked down my birth father and got a full family history from him?” 

[cranquis]

Your recent reblog made me sad, but also makes a lot of sense. I've been following you since I was in medical school, and I'm now in my fifth year of specialty training (I am not American). I did occasionally wonder why I've been seeing less of the kind of content you used to put out.

All I can say is - thank you for the work you do. I've seen enough online to get an idea of what you must face on a daily basis. I think I'm lucky that somehow, the doctor-patient relationship overall hasn't deteriorated to such an extent where I live (yet at least), but I definitely understand the frustration and despair of trying to communicate with people who aren't coming into the conversation in good faith.

You've always been a kind of role model for me in terms of your passion for your work and your open sharing about your faith. I guess I just wanted to say that I hope you find hope and joy in your work, even if those you serve aren't wise enough to appreciate what you do for them.

Hi, my colleague! Hey first of all, thank you for your kind words of encouragement and affirmation. Negative med-related interactions (online or in person) anymore just roll off me, but the positive ones still give my heart a thrill! :) And congrats on your continued journey down the medical pathway.

Second, I'm glad your message gives me the chance to clarify for all my long-time Cranquis Pants* that I still do enjoy my work. I have been doing the exact same Urgent Care job in the exact same location (with quite a few staff turnovers) ever since I finished residency 17 years ago! I still enjoy the bulk of my patient interactions, I continue to hone my diagnostic skills, I feel very confident in my procedural skills, I have a reputation in our local medical community as a reliable and thorough physician, and I have a loyal group of patients who routinely nag me to "quit urgent care and become a regular doctor so we can be your primary care patients". My staff likes and respects me (despite my best efforts to ruin that on the daily, with my puns etc); I like my staff and appreciate the hard work they do in the face of the same administrative and societal opposition that I encounter; I am not distressed when little kids freak out during physical exams (and my success rate of turning those frowns upside down with playful interactions and silly sound effects is pretty darn good).

I am blessed with amazing work-life balance, more than the majority of Family Medicine-trained physicians I suspect. I carry no pager, I take no call, I leave my work at home when I go home. I know my schedule months in advance, I have a shift template that gives me plenty of week-long stretches off, and I have my Sabbaths 100% free to attend church and spend time with my family. My pay is decent and my benefits are solid, my debts get paid and I have a roof over my head. My kids and wife are happy to see me come home. Personally, I really have nothing to complain about.

But the bloom is off the rose for my profession as a whole. The politics and trends of the US health care system continues to disenfranchise physicians, devaluing the years and $$ invested in becoming physicians, over-valuing patient satisfaction scores and inexpensive labor and glitzy administrative initiatives and staff rumor mills more than evidence-based, experience-driven clinical medicine. The power structure is upside down, as if doctors ought to be automatically doubted and disdained by pharmacists, insurance companies, administrators, patients, and APCs because of their systematic educational journeys and reliance upon scientific evidence.

And one of the saddest results is watching medical professionals turn on each other. The fragmentation and super-specialization of every aspect of medical care creates artificial "us v. them" scenarios; specialists and primary-care battling over who does the paperwork for pre-op visits and FMLA, ER and Urgent Care arguing about how much workup should be undertaken by the UC when the patient is obviously going to need ER management, primary-care so overwhelmed with insurance-required goals that their patients can never get same-day/soon-day appointments, pharmacies so understaffed that it's easier for them to tell the patients that "the doctor never sent the prescription" when in reality ...

I could go on.

I miss the old days (said the geezer on the internet), when I could enthusiastically support a pre-med student's dreams of getting into medical school and "helping people as a doctor someday." Now I wince at the idealism in a high-schooler's eyes, and try to find a nice way to say "there's more options for helping people than just becoming a doctor... be sure you have your motivations straight, because medicine is not what it was even 10 years ago..."

So hope and joy in my career? Hope for the profession of physicians, I have little. But I make the joy in my practice when I can make it, and I only expect to find joy in my non-medical time with family and hobbies and travel and friends and the lifestyle which my medical career still does make more feasible than otherwise.

*Probably not the term historically assigned to "fans of this blog", back when I posted frequently -- it's been a minute -- but if not, SHOOT that was a missed opportunity.

[dailyanarchistposts]

J.5.15 What attitude do anarchists take to the welfare state?

The period of neo-liberalism since the 1980s has seen a rollback of the state within society by the right-wing in the name of “freedom,” “individual responsibility” and “efficiency.” The position of anarchists to this process is mixed. On the one hand, we are all in favour of reducing the size of the state and increasing individual responsibility and freedom but, on the other, we are well aware that this rollback is part of an attack on the working class and tends to increase the power of the capitalists over us as the state’s (direct) influence is reduced. Thus anarchists appear to be on the horns of a dilemma — or, at least, apparently.

So what attitude do anarchists take to the welfare state and attacks on it?

First we must note that this attack on “welfare” is somewhat selective. While using the rhetoric of “self-reliance” and “individualism,” the practitioners of these “tough love” programmes have made sure that the major corporations continue to get state hand-outs and aid while attacking social welfare. In other words, the current attack on the welfare state is an attempt to impose market discipline on the working class while increasing state protection for the ruling class. Therefore, most anarchists have no problem defending social welfare programmes as these can be considered as only fair considering the aid the capitalist class has always received from the state (both direct subsidies and protection and indirect support via laws that protect property and so on). And, for all their talk of increasing individual choice, the right-wing remain silent about the lack of choice and individual freedom during working hours within capitalism.

Secondly, most of the right-wing inspired attacks on the welfare state are inaccurate. For example, Noam Chomsky notes that the “correlation between welfare payments and family life is real, though it is the reverse of what is claimed [by the right]. As support for the poor has declined, unwed birth-rates, which had risen steadily from the 1940s through the mid-1970s, markedly increased. ‘Over the last three decades, the rate of poverty among children almost perfectly correlates with the birth-rates among teenage mothers a decade later,’ Mike Males points out: ‘That is, child poverty seems to lead to teenage childbearing, not the other way around.’” [“Rollback III”, Z Magazine, April, 1995] The same charge of inaccurate scare-mongering can be laid at the claims about the evil effects of welfare which the rich and large corporations wish to save others (but not themselves) from. Such altruism is truly heart warming. For those in the United States or familiar with it, the same can be said of the hysterical attacks on “socialised medicine” and health-care reform funded by insurance companies and parroted by right-wing ideologues and politicians.

Thirdly, anarchists are just as opposed to capitalism as they are the state. This means that privatising state functions is no more libertarian than nationalising them. In fact, less so as such a process reduces the limited public say state control implies in favour of more private tyranny and wage-labour. As such, attempts to erode the welfare state without other, pro-working class, social reforms violates the anti-capitalist part of anarchism. Similarly, the introduction of a state supported welfare system rather than a for-profit capitalist run system (as in America) would hardly be considered any more a violation of libertarian principles as the reverse happening. In terms of reducing human suffering, though, most anarchists would oppose the latter and be in favour of the former while aiming to create a third (self-managed) alternative.

Fourthly, we must note that while most anarchists are in favour of collective self-help and welfare, we are opposed to the state. Part of the alternatives anarchists try and create are self-managed and community welfare projects (see next section). Moreover, in the past, anarchists and syndicalists were at the forefront in opposing state welfare schemes. This was because they were introduced not by socialists but by liberals and other supporters of capitalism to undercut support for radical alternatives and to aid long term economic development by creating the educated and healthy population required to use advanced technology and fight wars. Thus we find that:

“Liberal social welfare legislation … were seen by many [British syndicalists] not as genuine welfare reforms, but as mechanisms of social control. Syndicalists took a leading part in resisting such legislation on the grounds that it would increase capitalist discipline over labour, thereby undermining working class independence and self-reliance.” [Bob Holton, British Syndicalism: 1900–1914, p. 137]

Anarchists view the welfare state much as some feminists do. While they note, to quote Carole Pateman, the “patriarchal structure of the welfare state” they are also aware that it has “also brought challenges to patriarchal power and helped provide a basis for women’s autonomous citizenship.” She goes on to note that “for women to look at the welfare state is merely to exchange dependence on individual men for dependence on the state. The power and capriciousness of husbands is replaced by the arbitrariness, bureaucracy and power of the state, the very state that has upheld patriarchal power.” This “will not in itself do anything to challenge patriarchal power relations.” [The Disorder of Women, p. 195 and p. 200]

Thus while the welfare state does give working people more options than having to take any job or put up with any conditions, this relative independence from the market and individual capitalists has came at the price of dependence on the state — the very institution that protects and supports capitalism in the first place. And has we have became painfully aware in recent years, it is the ruling class who has most influence in the state — and so, when it comes to deciding what state budgets to cut, social welfare ones are first in line. Given that such programmes are controlled by the state, not working class people, such an outcome is hardly surprising. Not only this, we also find that state control reproduces the same hierarchical structures that the capitalist firm creates.

Unsurprisingly, anarchists have no great love of such state welfare schemes and desire their replacement by self-managed alternatives. For example, taking municipal housing, Colin Ward writes:

“The municipal tenant is trapped in a syndrome of dependence and resentment, which is an accurate reflection of his housing situation. People care about what is theirs, what they can modify, alter, adapt to changing needs and improve themselves. They must have a direct responsibility for it … The tenant take-over of the municipal estate is one of those obviously sensible ideas which is dormant because our approach to municipal affairs is still stuck in the groves of nineteenth-century paternalism.” [Anarchy in Action, p. 73]

Looking at state supported education, Ward argues that the “universal education system turns out to be yet another way in which the poor subsidise the rich.” Which is the least of its problems, for “it is in the nature of public authorities to run coercive and hierarchical institutions whose ultimate function is to perpetuate social inequality and to brainwash the young into the acceptance of their particular slot in the organised system.” [Op. Cit., p. 83 and p. 81] The role of state education as a means of systematically indoctrinating the working class is reflected in William Lazonick words:

“The Education Act of 1870 … [gave the] state … the facilities … to make education compulsory for all children from the age of five to the age of ten. It had also erected a powerful system of ideological control over the next generation of workers … [It] was to function as a prime ideological mechanism in the attempt by the capitalist class through the medium of the state, to continually reproduce a labour force which would passively accept [the] subjection [of labour to the domination of capital]. At the same time it had set up a public institution which could potentially be used by the working class for just the contrary purpose.” [“The Subjection of Labour to Capital: The rise of the Capitalist System”, Radical Political Economy Vol. 2, p. 363]

Lazonick, as did Pateman, indicates the contradictory nature of welfare provisions within capitalism. On the one hand, they are introduced to help control the working class (and to improve long term economic development). On the other hand, these provisions can be used by working class people as weapons against capitalism and give themselves more options than “work or starve” (the fact that the attacks on welfare in the UK during the 1990s — called, ironically enough, welfare to work — involves losing benefits if you refuse a job is not a surprising development). Thus we find that welfare acts as a kind of floor under wages. In the US, the two have followed a common trajectory (rising together and falling together). And it is this, the potential benefits welfare can have for working people, that is the real cause for the current capitalist attacks upon it. As Noam Chomsky summarises:

“State authority is now under severe attack in the more democratic societies, but not because it conflicts with the libertarian vision. Rather the opposite: because it offers (weak) protection to some aspects of that vision. Governments have a fatal flaw: unlike the private tyrannies, the institutions of state power and authority offer to the public an opportunity to play some role, however limited, in managing their own affairs.” [Chomsky on Anarchism, p. 193]

Because of this contradictory nature of welfare, we find anarchists like Noam Chomsky arguing that (using an expression popularised by South American rural workers unions) “we should ‘expand the floor of the cage.’ We know we’re in a cage. We know we’re trapped. We’re going to expand the floor, meaning we will extend to the limits what the cage will allow. And we intend to destroy the cage. But not by attacking the cage when we’re vulnerable, so they’ll murder us … You have to protect the cage when it’s under attack from even worse predators from outside, like private power. And you have to expand the floor of the cage, recognising that it’s a cage. These are all preliminaries to dismantling it. Unless people are willing to tolerate that level of complexity, they’re going to be of no use to people who are suffering and who need help, or, for that matter, to themselves.” [Expanding the Floor of the Cage]

Thus, even though we know the welfare state is a cage and part of an instrument of class power, we have to defend it from a worse possibility — namely, the state as “pure” defender of capitalism with working people with few or no rights. At least the welfare state does have a contradictory nature, the tensions of which can be used to increase our options. And one of these options is its abolition from below!

For example, with regards to municipal housing, anarchists will be the first to agree that it is paternalistic, bureaucratic and hardly a wonderful living experience. However, in stark contrast with the right who desire to privatise such estates, anarchists think that “tenants control” is the best solution as it gives us the benefits of individual ownership along with community (and so without the negative points of property, such as social atomisation). The demand for “tenant control” must come from below, by the “collective resistance” of the tenants themselves, perhaps as a result of struggles against “continuous rent increases” leading to “the demand … for a change in the status of the tenant.” Such a “tenant take-over of the municipal estate is one of those sensible ideas which is dormant because our approach to municipal affairs is still stuck in the grooves of nineteenth century paternalism.” [Ward, Op. Cit., p. 73]

And it is here that we find the ultimate irony of the right-wing, “free market” attempts to abolish the welfare state — neo-liberalism wants to end welfare from above, by means of the state (which is the instigator of this individualistic “reform”). It does not seek the end of dependency by self-liberation, but the shifting of dependency from state to charity and the market. In contrast, anarchists desire to abolish welfare from below. This the libertarian attitude to those government policies which actually do help people. While anarchists would “hesitate to condemn those measures taken by governments which obviously benefited the people, unless we saw the immediate possibility of people carrying them out for themselves. This would not inhibit us from declaring at the same time that what initiatives governments take would be more successfully taken by the people themselves if they put their minds to the same problems … to build up a hospital service or a transport system, for instance, from local needs into a national organisation, by agreement and consent at all levels is surely more economical as well as efficient than one which is conceived at top level [by the state] … where Treasury, political and other pressures, not necessarily connected with what we would describe as needs, influence the shaping of policies.” So “as long as we have capitalism and government the job of anarchists is to fight both, and at the same time encourage people to take what steps they can to run their own lives.” [“Anarchists and Voting”, pp. 176–87, The Raven, No. 14, p. 179]

Ultimately, unlike the state socialist/liberal left, anarchists reject the idea that the cause of socialism, of a free society, can be helped by using the state. Like the right, the left see political action in terms of the state. All its favourite policies have been statist — state intervention in the economy, nationalisation, state welfare, state education and so on. Whatever the problem, the left see the solution as lying in the extension of the power of the state. They continually push people in relying on others to solve their problems for them. Moreover, such state-based “aid” does not get to the core of the problem. All it does is fight the symptoms of capitalism and statism without attacking their root causes — the system itself.

Invariably, this support for the state is a move away from working class people, from trusting and empowering them to sort out their own problems. Indeed, the left seem to forget that the state exists to defend the collective interests of the ruling class and so could hardly be considered a neutral body. And, worst of all, they have presented the right with the opportunity of stating that freedom from the state means the same thing as the freedom of the market (so ignoring the awkward fact that capitalism is based upon domination — wage labour — and needs many repressive measures in order to exist and survive). Anarchists are of the opinion that changing the boss for the state (or vice versa) is only a step sideways, not forward! After all, it is not working people who control how the welfare state is run, it is politicians, “experts”, bureaucrats and managers who do so (“Welfare is administered by a top-heavy governmental machine which ensures that when economies in public expenditure are imposed by its political masters, they are made in reducing the service to the public, not by reducing the cost of administration.” [Ward, Op. Cit. p. 10]). Little wonder we have seen elements of the welfare state used as a weapon in the class war against those in struggle (for example, in Britain during the miners strike in 1980s the Conservative Government made it illegal to claim benefits while on strike, so reducing the funds available to workers in struggle and helping bosses force strikers back to work faster).

Anarchists consider it far better to encourage those who suffer injustice to organise themselves and in that way they can change what they think is actually wrong, as opposed to what politicians and “experts” claim is wrong. If sometimes part of this struggle involves protecting aspects of the welfare state (“expanding the floor of the cage”) so be it — but we will never stop there and will use such struggles as a stepping stone in abolishing the welfare state from below by creating self-managed, working class, alternatives. As part of this process anarchists also seek to transform those aspects of the welfare state they may be trying to “protect”. They do not defend an institution which is paternalistic, bureaucratic and unresponsive. For example, if we are involved in trying to stop a local state-run hospital or school from closing, anarchists would try to raise the issue of self-management and local community control into the struggle in the hope of going beyond the status quo.

In this, we follow the suggestion made by Proudhon that rather than “fatten certain contractors,” libertarians should be aiming to create “a new kind of property” by “granting the privilege of running” public utilities, industries and services, “under fixed conditions, to responsible companies, not of capitalists, but of workmen.” Municipalities would take the initiative in setting up public works but actual control would rest with workers’ co-operatives for “it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism.” [General Idea of the Revolution, p. 151 and p. 276–7] Thus, for example, rather than nationalise or privatise railways, they should be handed over workers’ co-operatives to run. The same with welfare services and such like: “the abolition of the State is the last term of a series, which consists of an incessant diminution, by political and administrative simplification the number of public functionaries and to put into the care of responsible workers societies the works and services confided to the state.” [Proudhon, Carnets, vol. 3, p. 293]

Not only does this mean that we can get accustomed to managing our own affairs collectively, it also means that we can ensure that whatever “safety-nets” we have do what we want and not what capital wants. In the end, what we create and run by ourselves will be more responsive to our needs, and the needs of the class struggle, than reformist aspects of the capitalist state. This much, we think, is obvious. And it is ironic to see elements of the “radical” and “revolutionary” left argue against this working class self-help (and so ignore the long tradition of such activity in working class movements) and instead select for the agent of their protection a state run by and for capitalists!

There are two traditions of welfare within society, one of “fraternal and autonomous associations springing from below, the other that of authoritarian institutions directed from above.” [Ward, Op. Cit., p. 123] While sometimes anarchists are forced to defend the latter against the greater evil of “free market” capitalism, we never forget the importance of creating and strengthening the former. As Chomsky suggests, libertarians have to “defend some state institutions from the attack against them [by private power], while trying at the same time to pry them open to meaningful public participation — and ultimately, to dismantle them in a much more free society, if the appropriate circumstances can be achieved.” [Chomsky on Anarchism, p. 194] A point we will discuss more in the next section when we highlight the historical examples of self-managed communal welfare and self-help organisations.

[acovey77]

Blog Post #3

Blog Post Week 3

Should there be greater measures in place to prevent false identifications by surveillance? 

While government and corporate surveillance efforts may be used to track individuals or simply advertise more effectively, identification software used such as facial recognition software or preliminary software used to detect possible threats such as health care fraud like the one mentioned in Eubanks’ Automating Inequality article can cause unwarranted stress. These measures can create false identifications of threats resulting in time and money spent by the victim to fight these results, but also possible blacklists that could ruin their lives. These possibilities make it more than necessary for the implementation of greater measures to prevent false identifications.

Could the Constitution be used to fight government and corporation observation?

The 4th Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures in order to protect one’s security and the security of their property. Government and corporate observation allows for tracking a user’s activity on the internet, akin to just watching someone move around and not searching their possessions. However, if the government or a company is to search through downloaded files or record specific downloaded activity, that could be considered as a person’s property. It could be stated that they are unreasonably carrying out a search of someone’s property. If this logic were to stand in court, it appears that certain government and corporate surveillance could be deemed unconstitutional.

Should companies be held liable for technological mishaps that result in problems for users such as Insurance being incorrectly canceled?

Technological problems that cause unwarranted stress on the consumer such as that which was described in Eubanks’ Automating Inequality create burdens that harm consumers. The issue of solving these errors should not be left on the shoulders of those who are hapless victims and should instead be placed on the shoulders of the company who had these errors happen either intentionally or unintentionally. It is necessary for companies to gain greater insight into algorithmical glitches in their software and have better, quicker backups made to fix unintended problems as problems with Insurance companies can quickly ruin the lives of someone simply because a company did not see themselves at fault despite causing the problem.

How should the right to privacy be protected?

The right to privacy should be protected through greater limitations on the observations of the public. Since observation of the public allows for greater safety across the nation and lessens the likelihood of terrorist attacks through data collection designed to determine if someone is likely to harm others, it is necessary to keep limited public observation in the modern age to combat the newer threats that plague society. However, corporations collect data in a way that creates a “tension between the political economy required to mass produce the infrastructure of the Internet and its reliance on the exploited labor” as companies steal data from users in order to make a greater profit (Daniels, 105). The threat of leaked data and the abusive relationship between corporations and the public without any upsides necessitates the creation of laws designed to punish corporations for doing this.

References

Daniels, J. (2009). Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment. The Feminist Press

Eubanks, Automating Inequality.pdf

Savey, E. (2020, November 8). List of the 27 Amendments. Constitution of the United States. https://constitutionus.com/constitution/amendments/constitutional-amendments/

[jeffhirsch]

Making Money w/ Charles Payne - Fox Business February 27, 2024

Charles and Jeff discuss Fed rate cuts, March and election year seasonality, and four stocks on Jeff's radar.

Path To Fed’s 2% Target Is Quite Optimistic

The path to the Fed’s stated 2% target is a quite optimistic 0.1% or less monthly change. If that ends up being Thursday’s PCE reading, the 12-month rate will be 2.1%. Any monthly change greater will likely only further delay the Fed. Unless January’s PCE is surprisingly lower, I still do not expect the Fed to begin cutting rates until at least around mid-year and likely later.

Beware Ides of March

Stock prices have had a propensity to decline, sometimes rather precipitously, during the latter days of the month. Late March gains in 2009 and 2020 improved 2nd half March performance. March Triple-Witching Weeks have been quite bullish in recent years. But the week after is the exact opposite, DJIA down 22 of the last 36 years—and often down sharply. “Beware the Ides of March” this year also coincides with the seasonal decline during presidential election years where the sitting president is running.

Support Levels to Watch

S&P 500: 4800 old ATH and 4600 near summer 2023 highs.

Stocks I like here on a dip:

Reliance ($RS): Making steel and metal for all the industrial, tech and infrastructure growth.

United Health ($UNH): Everyone is going to still need lots of healthcare.

Assurant ($AIZ): Insurance juggernaut in mobile device, electronics, and appliances as well as homeowner, property, fire, hazard, liability, etc

EMCOR ($EME): Construction behemoth building out the data centers, semiconductor fabricators and biotech facilities.

[transmutationisms]

forgive me if this is a bit of a silly question, but would i be correct in the assumption that the insurance complex exists, in some ways, to further the family's control? like, let's say someone is disabled and/or has a chronic illness that developed whilst they were an adolescent under their parents' insurance. we all know insurance (and medical aid) is notoriously expensive, and a young person branching out outside of their family in their 20s wouldn't necessarily be able to support themselves whilst paying medical aid + insurance, therefore strengthening said person's reliance on their parents, which leads to the "if i leave them, i'll die" line of thinking.

sewww insurance definitely has the effect of strengthening family control over children, but i don't think i could back up the assertion that this is the reason it exists or how it came into being. i think that's a much more mundane story of basic profit-seeking: insurance companies are essentially middlemen collecting another layer of profit on health care when people pay in, as well as denying its provision where possible. insurance-like financial structures existed in ancient greece and babylonia (for travelling ships) and i believe life insurance first appears in the 16th century and then becomes more sophisticated in the 18th and 19th. so there's certainly a story here of how that morphs into the idea of health insurance, and in certain ways the industrialisation of this period did also strengthen the bourgeois family model. but i think the link here runs from an economic structure -> both health insurance and bolstering of the family form, with these two effects then in turn exerting pressures on one another. idt this is a case where like, economic actors were consciously thinking of the family as something they could reify or strengthen through a financial tool, even tho again i'd agree health insurance as it currently exists does frequently have that effect.

[xoxovalerie-c]

Blog Post Week 3: Due 9/12

How does the government strategically utilize media to shape public opinion and influence decision-making processes?

Virginia Eubanks highlighted how marginalized groups, people of color, and those with lower socioeconomic class, are being impacted by automated systems that are government-funded. These groups are often easier targets because they lack the resources needed to navigate through challenges through these systems. Many public services today rely on these systems such as health insurance. When these automated programs flag individuals, marginalized individuals are less equipped to handle this problem. Eubanks discusses how programs like EBT were manipulated to reinforce negative stereotypes. For example, republican governor Paul Lepage used data from EBT transactions to claim that people in marginalized groups were misusing government aid on items like alcohol, cigars, lottery tickets, etc. Lawmakers and the professional middle-class public eagerly embraced the misleading tale he spun from a tenuous thread of data (Eubanks, 2019). This shows how government intervention could occur with automated programs causing harm to this community. 

How has the increasing use of facial recognition technology in law enforcement contributed to wrongful arrests?

The increasing use of facial recognition technology in law enforcement has contributed to wrongful arrests, as demonstrated by the case of Nijeer Parks. Parks was wrongfully arrested, and despite his awareness of the error, he hesitated to voice his concerns due to his prior legal history (Hill, 2020). Law enforcement officers often rely on computer systems to search for warrants when pulling someone over, which heavily impacts marginalized communities. Facial recognition algorithms have a documented history of flagging individuals from these groups. For example, a case discussed by Nicole Brown highlighted how officers exploited the technology by warning individuals of surveillance while using it to their advantage. Despite its increasing integration into law enforcement practices, facial recognition technology has a significant error rate, with a reported error rate of approximately 35% (Brown, 2020).

In what ways do healthcare algorithms perpetuate disparities by prioritizing white patients?

In healthcare settings, the increasing reliance on algorithms has introduced significant inequality by prioritizing white patients. Algorithms, which are designed to predict healthcare needs and outcomes, can perpetuate racial disparities even without using race (Brown, 2020). Brown discusses how these algorithms tend to identify white patients as more likely to experience severe health issues. This occurs because the algorithms are often trained on data that reflects existing healthcare utilization patterns, where white individuals are more frequently represented due to higher rates of health insurance coverage. As a result, the algorithms prioritize these patients, leading to a misallocation of resources and failing to adequately address the needs of underrepresented and marginalized groups who may have less access to healthcare services. This systemic issue impedes efforts to provide equitable care and address the needs of all patients effectively.

Why do people continue to embrace and rely on these applications despite growing concerns on privacy, data misuse, and more? 

People continue to embrace and rely on applications like for instance the Ring app which is very popular. This application allows their users with the ability to monitor their home in real-time through their phones, enhancing security and peace of mind. It contributes to also neighborhood watching. Additionally, the benefits of these applications outweigh the potential risks as users prioritize immediate convenience and functionality over long-term privacy concerns. 

Hill, K. 2020. Another arrest, and jail time, due to a bad facial recognition match. The New York Times

Eubanks, V. (2019). In automating inequality: how high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor.

Brown, N. (2020). Race and technology. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8uiAjigKy8

[youremyheaven]

Sun man dropping in for response #3

Q: "Hey Sun man, mind if I ask a question also? Are you single by any chance~ 👀? Jk jk that's not my actual question but hehe would love to know tho. Anyways my real question is this; Do you devote yourself to fulfilling a personal belief or ideal of yourself? For me as a sun dom woman, I feel like I'm pre-occupied with devoting myself to a belief and it doesn't leave much room for love. The ideal that I constantly strive for, is to be someone other people trust and can rely on. I always wanted to be a better person for myself and others. I think I would like to be a cherished person in my community, someone who brings value to others. Claire mentioned that sun dom women adhere to these moral guidelines, and fixate towards independence and self reliance. I am curious if sun dom men also share similar values and beliefs, or if it's just me."

A: Oh I definitely relate to what you’re describing. Sometimes it feels like, what ever happened to “be the change you want to see in the world”? Like is nobody living by that expression? But of course that expression is flawed when you take it too far and get a stick up your ass, even if what you're living up to is virtuous on the face of it. I have a big thing, not so much about being trustworthy in particular, but about sustainability and the idea that the things that define my life should be easily achievable by other people? Like I feel guilty if I succeed in spite of other people? If I’m being brutally honest it’s one of my worst flaws and has absolutely made it hard to, as you say, leave room for love. Because behavior like that is not conducive to like, forming camaraderie. And it's been easier to just be self-reliant than confront the blockage. Tbh I'm just waiting to get my health insurance approved so I can go to therapy and work on it lmao so I don't have any words of wisdom but I'm definitely in the same boat. It can be tough for the sun naks.

Yeah I’m single, I could start dating again I guess but I legit can’t even take a girl on a decent date right now without going broke 💀 so I should probably work on the financial situation first.

that's so interesting wow

I feel like many Jupiter people are the opposite. For them its about doing the impossible because they believe they have qualities it takes to succeed in ways others cant. I think Martians also have a similar drive and ambition. I think for Saturnians its about working your way to the top (I'm mentioning all the Yang planets basically). I'm intrigued about Sun dominance all the more now 🤔

[mariacallous]

Talk about the promise and the peril of artificial intelligence is everywhere these days. But for many low-income families, communities of color, military veterans, people with disabilities, and immigrant communities, AI is a back-burner issue. Their day-to-day worries revolve around taking care of their health, navigating the economy, seeking educational opportunities, and upholding democracy. But their worries are also being amplified through advanced, persistent, and targeted cyberattacks.

Cyber operations are relentless, growing in scale, and exacerbate existing inequalities in health care, economic opportunities, education access, and democratic participation. And when these pillars of society become unstable, the consequences ripple through national and global communities. Collectively, cyberattacks have severe and long-term impacts on communities already on the margins of society. These attacks are not just a technological concern—they represent a growing civil rights crisis, disproportionately dismantling the safety and security for vulnerable groups and reinforcing systemic barriers of racism and classism. The United States currently lacks an assertive response to deter the continued weaponization of cyber operations and to secure digital access, equity, participation, and safety for marginalized communities.

Health Care

Cyberattacks on hospitals and health care organizations more than doubled in 2023, impacting over 39 million people in the first half of 2023. A late-November cyberattack at the Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, led to a system-wide shutdown, causing ambulances to reroute and life-saving surgeries to be canceled. These attacks impact patients' reliance and trust in health care systems, which may make them more hesitant to seek care, further endangering the health and safety of already vulnerable populations.

The scale and prevalence of these attacks weaken public trust—especially among communities of color who already have deep-rooted fears about our health care systems. The now-condemned Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, where researchers denied treatment to Black men without their knowledge or consent in order to observe the disease’s long-term effects, only ended 52 years ago. However, the study created a legacy of suspicion and mistrust of the medical community that continues today, leading to a decrease in the life expectancy of Black men and lower participation in medical research among Black Americans. The compounding fact that Black women are three to four times more likely, and American Indian and Alaska Native women are two times more likely, to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women only adds to mistrust.

Erosion of trust also extends to low-income people. Over a million young patients at Lurie Children's Surgical Foundation in Chicago had their names, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth exposed in an August 2023 breach. The hospital treats more children insured by Medicaid—an economic hardship indicator—than any other hospital in Illinois. Once breached, a child’s personal data could be used to commit identity fraud, which severely damages credit, jeopardizes education financial aid, and denies employment opportunities. While difficult for anyone, children from financially insecure households are least equipped to absorb or overcome these economic setbacks.

Economic Opportunity

Identity theft is not the only way cyberattacks exploit hard times. Cyberattacks also go after financially vulnerable individuals—and they are getting more sophisticated. In Maryland, hackers targeted Electronic Benefits Transfer cards—used to provide public assistance funds for food—to steal more than $2 million in 2022 and the first months of 2023. That’s an increase of more than 2,100 percent compared to the $90,000 of EBT funds stolen in 2021. Maryland’s income limit to qualify for the government’s food assistance program is $39,000 for a family of four in 2024, and only if they have less than $2,001 in their bank account. Unlike a credit card, which legally protects against fraudulent charges, EBT cards don’t have fraud protections. Efforts to help the victims are riddled with red tape: reimbursements are capped at two months of stolen benefits, and only within a specific time period.

Cybercriminals also target vulnerable populations, especially within older age groups. Since the last reporting in 2019, 40 percent of Asian Pacific Islander Desi Americans (APIDAs) aged 50 and older have reported experiencing financial fraud, with one-third of those victims losing an average of $15,000. From 2018 through 2023, Chinese Embassy Scam robocalls delivered automated messages and combined caller ID spoofing, a method where scammers disguise their phone display information, targeting Chinese immigrant communities. This resulted in more than 350 victims across 27 US states and financial losses averaging $164,000 per victim for a total of $40 million. And for five years, this scam just kept going. As these scams evolve, groups now face increasingly sophisticated AI-assisted calls, where scammers use technology to convincingly mimic loved ones' voices, further exploiting vulnerabilities, particularly among older adults—many of whom live on fixed incomes or live with economic insecurity.

While social movements have fought to promote economic equity, cybercriminals undermine these efforts by exacerbating financial vulnerabilities. From the 1960s La Causa movement advocating for migrant worker rights to the Poor People’s Campaign mobilizing across racial lines, activists have worked to dismantle systemic barriers, end poverty, and push for fair wages. Current attacks on financial systems, however, often target the very groups these movements aim to empower—perpetuating the disparities that advocates have fought against. Digital scams and fraud incidents disproportionately impact those least equipped to recover—including natural disaster victims, people with disabilities, older adults, young adults, military veterans, immigrant communities, and lower-income families. By stealing essential resources, cybercriminals compound hardships for those already struggling to make ends meet or those experiencing some of the worst hardships of their lives—pushing groups deeper into the margins.

Education Access

Education is another area where cybercrime has soared. One of the worst hacks of 2023 exploited a flaw in a file transfer software called MOVEit that multiple government entities, nonprofits, and other organizations use to manage data across systems. This includes the National Student Clearinghouse, which serves 3,600 colleges, representing 97 percent of college students in the US, to provide verification information to academic institutions, student loan providers, and employers.

Attacks on educational systems are devastating at all levels. A top target for ransomware attacks last year was K-12 schools. While the complete data is not available yet, by August 2023 ransomware attacks (where hackers lock an organization’s data and demand payment for its release) hit at least 48 US school districts—three more than in all of 2022. Schools already have limited resources, and cybersecurity can be expensive, so many have few defenses against sophisticated cyberattacks.

The data compromised in attacks against educational institutions includes identifying information and deeply sensitive student records, such as incidents of sexual abuse, mental health records, and reports of abusive parents. This information can affect future opportunities, college admissions, employment, and the mental health of students. The impacts are especially magnified for students from marginalized backgrounds, who already face discrimination in academic and employment opportunities. In 1954, the US Supreme Court struck down segregated public schools as unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education to address disparities based on race, but today’s threats to equitable and accessible education are being jeopardized through digital attacks.

Democratic Participation

Another foundational pillar of our civil rights is also under attack: democracy itself. Since 2016, foreign state actors and state-linked criminals have increasingly used sophisticated cyber operations to suppress minority democratic participation worldwide. The early warnings for the 2024 global elections are clear: Influence and disinformation threats will likely escalate—now enabled by AI-powered cyber operations. Unlike humans, AI systems have few limitations—they can spread disinformation and divisive content to a vast, multilingual, global audience across countless mediums, simultaneously and without rest. Worse, they can do so in an individualized, highly targeted manner.

The undermining of democracy is also more insidious, less about pushing communities toward a specific candidate than sowing distrust in the system itself—which leads fewer people to vote and otherwise suppresses civic participation. The concentration of these attacks on racial and ethnic minority groups means communities of color, who historically have not been in positions of power, will remain marginalized and disenfranchised. Consider a 2022 cyberattack on Mississippi’s election information website on that year’s Election Day—a significant event in a state without modern early voting options. The 2022 elections included crucial midterm elections that decided congressional representation, and Mississippi has the second-highest Black population (39.2 percent) in the US, behind only the District of Columbia—a jurisdiction without voting rights in Congress. The disruption also extended to state judicial elections, where most judges are elected in a single day, due to a lack of judicial primaries. In Mississippi, 11 percent of adults and 16 percent of Black voters could not cast a ballot because of past felony convictions. With the compounded challenges in Mississippi—no early voting, no judicial primaries, and the high rate of disenfranchisement—coupled with the opportunity of a pivotal Black voting bloc, access to voting information is imperative for those who can vote.

Weaponizing cyber operations for any form of voter suppression leaves marginalized groups further aggrieved and isolated. Worse, it takes away our only ability to address systemic inequities in wealth, health, and education: democratic participation.

These compounding problems require a new perspective on cyberattacks that looks beyond lost dollars, breached files, or doomsday debates over generative AI tools like ChatGPT or artificial general intelligence. Marginalized communities are suffering now and civil rights advocates cannot take on these burdens alone. To quote civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, “The only thing we can do is work together.” Cybersecurity analysts, developers, journalists, researchers, and policymakers ​​must incorporate civil rights into our work by building inclusive defenses, understanding demographic trends in cyber attacks, deterring misuse of AI, and utilizing diverse teams.

Cyber operations are being used to attack the foundation of civil rights, democracy, and dignity around the world, and that is a problem that affects everyone.

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

Private health firms have donated more than £800,000 to the Conservative Party over the past ten years, openDemocracy can reveal.

This includes companies run by wealthy tycoons who have wined and dined former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Theresa May and other senior ministers.

The finding comes as the government hands out more NHS contracts to the private sector in a bid to tackle the backlog in the health service.

The British Medical Association has warned that relying on the private sector threatens the "sustainability of the NHS”, which has suffered from “a decade of underinvestment”.

Health profits

The Conservative Friends of the NHS is a group of Tory-voting doctors and health professionals who claim to support the NHS. The group’s president is health minister Maria Caufield and it has hosted stalls at the Conservative Party’s annual conference.

But the organisation’s chairman and founder, Dr Ashraf Chohan, has not worked for the NHS for 23 years, according to his LinkedIn profile, and himself has a private GP and private health insurance.

Chohan is a private health tycoon who set up a portfolio of medical and nursing businesses in London. One of his firms, West End Medical Practice Limited, has donated more than £198,000 to the Tories since 2019 – making it one of the sector’s biggest political donors.

As chair of the Conservative Friends of the NHS, Chohan has met with senior politicians, including Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Nadhim Zahawi. Before Christmas, in the midst of the ongoing NHS crisis, he also attended a “meaningful” meeting at Number 10.

Despite the group’s claim to support the NHS, it has repeatedly championed a two-tier health system on Twitter, saying the private sector “should be applauded for reducing demand for the NHS”. In other tweets it has advocated health insurance and argued that “all high taxpayers must have [private health] insurance by 2025”.

Experts say reliance on private health firms is creating a system in which poorer people who cannot afford to go private are “left to put up or shut up”.

NHS outsourcing to the private sector has also been linked to higher mortality rates. And hospitals that use private cleaning companies have been linked with higher rates of the MRSA superbug.

During the pandemic, Chohan – who previously donated to Labour before switching – came under scrutiny over two private firms he ran with his son that sold Covid tests. Reports said customers were charged between £80-£200 for the PCR tests, but many complained about lost samples and refused refunds.

Another Conservative Party donor is Genix Healthcare Ltd, which is part of a group of private dental clinics that makes the “majority” of its £6.6m income from NHS contracts.

The company was set up in response to the “severe shortage of NHS dentists” and says it aims to become the “dental corporate of choice for the NHS”.

Genix Healthcare has bankrolled the Tories with donations worth more than £158,000 since 2015, including cash and sponsorships.

Its owner, Mustafa Mohammed, who has posed for photos with Johnson and May and boasted about owning a Rolls-Royce and a Mercedes S-Class, has also given almost £225,000 of his own money to the party.

This includes a £20,000 donation to Jeremy Hunt in 2019, the year after he resigned as health secretary.

As one of the party’s top donors, Mohammed has been part of an elite Tory dining club called the Leader’s Group, which enjoys regular access to the prime minister and senior government figures.

Care homes and GPs

The majority of Tory donations from the private health sector have come since the pandemic began in 2020.

One such donor, Doctor Care Anywhere Group PLC, has given the party more than £37,000 in the past two years – and reportedly spent £1,000 on a ticket for government minister Paul Scully to watch a cricket match at Lord’s.....

[pisoprano]

The old ‘Boom-dee-ya-da’ ad, but this time instead of all the things people love about the whole world, it’s me singing about all the things I hate, like the over-reliance on plastics, censorship, cryptocurrency, private equity, intolerable climate changes, instability, consumerism, mass death, fear-mongering, advertisements that try to hack my brain for profit, inaccessibility, worker exploitation, liars who have convinced people that they’re worth supporting regardless of how clearly they’ve demonstrated their untrustworthiness, neglecting infrastructure maintenance, health insurance caveats, lost information and media, the enforcement of one culture’s ideals on another’s, unethical and/or lazy research, judgment of other people’s bodies or personal choices, judgment of people not living up to expectations, invisible barriers that people assume don’t really exist, corporations using loopholes that hurt everyone below them in the interest of generating unsustainable record-setting profits, loss of history and culture and identity, the constant pressure to always strive for excellence and improvement and creating more value, that only yields burnout burnout burnout burnout burnout burnout burnout burnout burnout

[transcendentalmaggot]

Maybe one of these days once private health insurance is finally justly eliminated as a particularly cruel function of unfettered capitalism and the flourishing of unrepentant, parasitic businesses’ reliance that rely on you remaining ignorant of how health care actually works, keeping people sick, and denying necessary life-saving and quality of life care I might actually enjoy Christmas and New Year’s.

Since I was in middle school it’s mostly meant night terrors and panic attacks since my deductible (and now co-insurance and raised copays and OOPM) resets in the new year. Not to mention a full month of medical appointments to avoid the reset deductible. Or the many Christmas breaks spent in the hospital for the same reason.

Isn’t it funny how the only people who defend profiting off of the sick and the dying when they stick up for the health plan they’re shilling thousands of dollars on a year but have never had to use it for anything serious? Or that treat the sick as malingering subhumans, choosing a life of isolation; hospital stays, and an endless barrage of judgement. Hm, it’s almost as if people who don’t know what any of the terms listed above mean don’t know much about how our system actually works.

[samwiselastname]

So on the one hand, this spokesperson is technically correct. I think that betterhelp is a particular magnet for grifters, incompetent doctors, and burnt-the-hell-out braindead therapists. But the horror stories in here are "borderline sexual harassment," "congratulating a patient with an eating disorder for losing weight," and "getting defensive and lying because they forgot your appointment" Which. Lmao. Yeah that's just therapists, these are experiences you might have in any public hospital's psychiatry department, or any weird little private practice you were forced into for lack of insurance network.

It's not necessarily this step of "uberization" of mental health care that's pulling these practitioners into the eyes of the priveleged public. What's doing that is the increased reliance on remote therapy, and the overburdening of our frankly fucked system. There's a reason this phenomenon shows up so hard in virtual spaces. In-person patients can abandon your private practice, leave google reviews, or complain to your hospital. But are those hospitals honoring those kinds of complaints either? Are those spaces less stressful and less harmful to the practitioner's ability to provide individualized, respectful care?

I thank them for bringing up the labor conditions here, and undoubtedly, yes. You get worse care from underpaid practitioners. You get worse care from practitioners vetted less aggressively, too. But pinning these kinds of interactions, up to and including forced conversion attempts, on the app itself like those issues don't exist outside of it is myopic in a way that worries me. These are broader trends.

[accessories-not-included]

Not too long ago I posted a story about how my doctor was choosing to not refill my prescriptions. In effort to refresh your memory, this was because I don't have a dependable access to transportation to help me get to the doctor office. Since then my doctor has decided to dismiss me as a patient in total because of this. 

Thirty years ago, medical schools taught that it was "New Age Technology" to involve empathy as the "key" to healing a patient. 

According to the Hippocratic Oath: "I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug."

But does this also apply to healthcare outside of a mental health encounter? And if so, is it being taught? Is it being leveraged to improve the health of individuals and communities?

If empathy was truly a key to healing wouldn't the healthcare "system" clearly recognize that caring and accommodating patients outside of the office visit would be optimal for developing empathy? This would therefore develop a human connection and authentic relationship between patients and their doctors and thus would lead to optimal care. Shouldn't the "system" self-correct to honor the oath that physicians have sworn to?

When doctors dehumanize patients by actively remaining indifferent towards their patients and refusing to empathize and modify their treatments accordingly. Lacking empathy shifts physicians' focus from treating the whole person to merely treating a medical experiment. What's more, there's evidence to support that there are physiological benefits in empathetic relationships. This includes better immune systems shorter recovery stays, and faster healing responses. 

I blame the medical education system for not encouraging physicians to maximize the use of empathy in medical practices. Discouraging the use of empathy is due to the medical education system's emphasis on emotional detachment, neutrality, and reliance on technology instead of human interaction. 

The system continues to rely on short episodic office visits that are required for the most part to be in person. The funding model still rewards based on productivity. Meaning the system (insurance and the government) makes money based on how many patients doctors can see in a short amount of time. Then supply them with orders to purchase as much medicine as possible to supplement the economic funding from Big Pharma. This does not allow physicians to optimize or develop a relationship with their patients. In many cases, this even exacerbates the issue by trying to leverage rotating practitioners as a means to improve access to reimbursement and lower overhead. 

The medical education system is designed to train physicians to not honor the importance of empathy. Some people have thought that the reason for this was because the stakeholders in the healthcare system don't know any better. This is a false assumption. 

The importance of empathy, human connection, and authentic relationships between a doctor and their patients is known. It has been known since the days when Hippocrates drafted the oath, and is intentionally being ignored.

The system is flawed. The current medical system isn't designed to benefit the patient. It's designed to line the pockets of larger cooperation systems. 

So what do we do? Do we dismiss the importance of empathy, human connection, and patient/doctor relationships? Because by creating and enforcing this healing model that leverages these principles could cut revenue and lower profit margins. 

Do we instead avoid empathy and medical relationships in general because relationships are difficult and requires time, resources, and could be too time consuming? 

A "yes" to any of the above items is distressing and as a patient within the healthcare system, I urge that the medical system must reevaluate its motives and stop being afraid to embrace humanity through empathy. Patients and doctors are a part of our communities. We need each other to be well in this world work together and build a worthwhile future. If it means changing the medical system to be less lucrative... so be it.

[hoothootmotherf-ckers]

gonna be some pretty intense disability ranting under the cut so either buckle up or scroll past, I had a bad fucking day and need to get some shit out

I hate that pain is subjective. I hate that I developed this shit during academic hell and therefore have completely skewed standards on what’s normal to push through. I fucking hate my first ever boss who reinforced that. I hate that I know for a fact that I have to push through a certain number of migraines anyway because I just do not have enough sick leave. 

I hate that there’s absolutely no external proof of what I’m going through. I hate that everyone just has to trust me about what I’m feeling and what I’m capable of, and that they don’t. I hate that I’m not even a reliable source of what I’m feeling because my pain scale is fucking broken. 

Objectively I know that any amount of pain isn’t normal, but I do not have the fucking luxury of taking a break every time I hurt. I’ve had four days of migraines in the last two weeks alone, and that’s an improvement. That’s my brain on a LOT of drugs. 

I hate that society has such a broken perspective on disabilities, specifically invisible illnesses and chronic pain. I hate that a lot of my life revolves around hiding that I’m in pain. I hate how much it relies on me being able to push through pain, and I hate that I’ve had to do that so much that I will keep going until I physically collapse or feel guilty about flaking. I hate how even collapsing in pain feels like a personal failing. 

I hate that the two options when I tell people are either complete lack of understanding or full blown pity. I hate that since I’ve started my accommodations process at work people keep asking me how I’m feeling. I want people to accept my disability as a fact, trust me to know my limits, and move the fuck on. I’m the same person I’ve always been. 

I hate that it feels like cheating to call myself disabled. I hate that it feels like gaming the system to get any level of the accommodations I need. I hate everything ableist I’ve internalized over the years. 

I hate that this year is a countdown to me losing health insurance, because I turn 26 and lose my mom’s insurance. Without health insurance... my current drugs are over $700 a month. If it came to it, my parents would pay for my drugs. I hate that though, I hate that level of reliance and dependence. I hate that so many people don’t have that option. And I hate that my career since the age of seventeen has been a fight between what I want to do and my need for insurance by the end of this year.

I hate that I’m twenty-five years old and I’ve been disabled since I was seventeen. I hate that society does not understand disabled teens and young adults, that they cannot comprehend that young people aren’t always perfectly healthy just because they’re young. I hate that this month is the anniversary of my entire life going to fucking shit. 

I hate that this takes up so much of my life. I hate that I spend my weekends recovering instead of getting to do anything fun. I hate that I can’t socialize the same way as everyone else and I have to bail on things with no notice.

I hate how this makes me an inconvenience to other people. I hate that my parents have to spend so much time taking care of me even though I’m 25 and in a different state. I hate every time a schedule has to be rearranged because I call out sick. 

I hate that I feel so bad about this when so many people have it worse. Oh boo hoo, my parents have to take care of me and buy me meds. I’m never going to have to worry about the same dangers other people in my situation will face, do face. It’s not fucking fair. And I know this isn’t the oppression olympics but at the same time my brain won’t accept that. 

I just want to be normal. I just want to not be in pain. I just want people to understand. I just want to be independent. I just want to not be pitied. I just want to do something. 

[semaglutidejourney]

The potential cost savings of going on a semaglutide diet can vary based on several factors, including the price of the medication, the type of treatment program, and your personal health situation. Here are a few aspects where cost savings could occur:

1. Reduced Healthcare Costs

Lower risk of obesity-related conditions: Semaglutide (marketed as Ozempic or Wegovy) has been shown to aid in weight loss, which can reduce the risk of associated conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea. By improving or preventing these conditions, you could potentially avoid long-term medical costs related to managing these chronic diseases.

Less frequent doctor visits and medications: If you lose weight and improve overall health, you may require fewer visits to the doctor or reduced use of medications for conditions like diabetes or hypertension. This could lead to savings on prescriptions and healthcare services.

2. Weight Loss and Lifestyle Improvements

Dietary adjustments: Semaglutide works by reducing appetite and promoting satiety, which could result in a reduced calorie intake. By eating less, you might spend less on food overall. Additionally, healthier eating habits promoted by weight loss (like a higher focus on vegetables, lean proteins, etc.) could lead to savings in grocery costs over time.

Fitness and gym costs: If you experience significant weight loss, you might find it easier to engage in physical activities, reducing reliance on expensive fitness programs or therapies related to obesity-related limitations (e.g., joint pain or mobility issues).

3. Reduction in Obesity-Related Medications

Diabetes management: If semaglutide helps improve blood sugar levels and assists in weight loss, you might reduce the need for diabetes medications such as insulin or other glucose-lowering drugs. Insulin can be quite expensive, especially if you need it long-term, so managing blood sugar through semaglutide could lead to substantial savings on medications.

Blood pressure and cholesterol medications: If you experience improvements in weight and overall health, you may also see reductions in medications for high blood pressure or cholesterol, leading to further cost savings.

4. Indirect Cost Savings

Improved productivity: If losing weight improves your energy levels, reduces fatigue, and boosts your overall well-being, you might be able to be more productive at work or in daily life. This could translate into less sick time taken and potentially higher income over time.

Reduced need for specialized treatments: Obesity can require specialized care for joint problems, sleep disorders, and other comorbidities. By losing weight with semaglutide, you might avoid the need for these extra services, saving on physical therapy, sleep studies, or orthopedic treatments.

5. Long-Term Savings

Prevention of future medical costs: By achieving a healthy weight, you could reduce your lifetime healthcare expenses associated with obesity. A healthier body could delay the onset of conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain types of cancer, all of which are costly to treat and manage.

Direct Costs of Semaglutide

It's important to note that semaglutide itself is costly. Without insurance, the medication can range from $800 to $1,500 per month, depending on the dosage and location. However, some insurance plans cover semaglutide for weight loss (under Wegovy) or diabetes (under Ozempic), which can make it more affordable. Some programs also offer discounts or financial assistance, especially if you meet certain criteria.

Summary

While semaglutide itself can be expensive, the long-term cost savings can be significant, especially if it leads to weight loss, improved health outcomes, and a reduction in the need for chronic disease management. The potential savings from reduced healthcare costs, fewer medications, and healthier lifestyle changes can often offset the upfront expense, but it's important to carefully evaluate the full financial picture based on your personal situation.