#but canadian healthcare fucking sucks

[laurelwinchester]

at this point my doctor’s ‘’chill’’ demeanor is becoming a fucking problem

[rnoonpie]

Average Australian when they hear me speak and are trying to suss out whether I'm American or Canadian

[kn11ves]

"europe is so much better than america becaus of Universal Healthcare" its avtually hilarious how you think it actually works

[limewatt]

jesus fucking christ learning anything about american healthcare makes me so sad and angry. what a fundamental failure to provide a vital service to a populace.

[radioactivedotcom]

i get what you mean but some of us actual enjoy the game and genuinely don't have the same issues as you with bugs. Yeah there are issues. But it's still a fun game. Pissing on the people who enjoy it and are happy to pay for it isn't going to make the game better. Especially since the last few packs have been really good? Like...

EA has never cared about customer enjoyment. If the majority of people pirate the game, they aren't going to change anything about it, they'll just shelve it.

I don't wanna start a whole debate on this, so I'll answer this one ask and that's it.

First, yes, I fully understand that there are a ton of people who very much enjoy playing the game. But I want you to consider this... If someone has bought all the expansions, all the packs, all the kits... they've spent over 1 200,00$.... The sims is a great game, but it is not a game worth that much money. Or at the very least... it shouldn't be. This should be an unacceptable price tag. If the basegame came out with all the available content that exists for the sims 4, but at that price... who the fuck would buy that.

Being scared that the game will be shelved, that they won't ever make another game ever again... You're just saying, eh, this kinda sucks but I'm absolutely powerless to do anything about this, so I don't care, I'll keep participating in this vicious cycle.

It's not true though. You aren't powerless. Because EA knows they can make money out of the sims franchise for a loooong time still. And they've invested a shit ton into it. They won't give up on it that easily. If people stop buying while saying: I'm not buying because you're charging too much. Or, I'm not buying because this content isn't polished enough, or whatever else people have as valid complaints... Then yes, if enough people did that, I believe it would change EA's business strategy. They would try to make a thing so good people can't resist buying it, instead of just making trailers that seem great, but with a product that ends up not nearly as polished and well-thought-out as advertised. I don't know if you've watched people reviewing the latest expansions, but even on a technical level, no one's been impressed. Yet people still buy, so of course EA won't change their strategy.

Big companies like EA want to make you believe that there's nothing you can do even though YOU'RE THE CUSTOMER, it's YOUR money, and you DESERVE a product worth that hard-earned money. Same way companies never want their employees to unionize, and the government wants you to think it's normal not to have free healthcare. (though i'm canadian so it's, you know, a different problem here concerning healthcare)

Anyway, I'm rambling and my socialism is showing lmao. But tbh, this is a very moot point, because me making this post is never ever in a million years gonna make a DENT in EA's pocket. You are majorly overestimating my influence.

If you wanna keep giving your money to EA, just do it man. I certainly can't stop you.

[tea-and-secrets]

Being disabled in Canada is so awful. I know it’s shit all around the world, and Canada is not unique in that. But god. So many people make jokes that Canada is better than America, that we have “universal healthcare”. Nobody understands that the universal healthcare is the least effort and cheapest thing possible. That the Canadian government is actively and violently hostile towards disabled people. That Canada isn’t “more progressive” than the states. That anti-indigenous racism here is soul crushing, evil, and incredibly common. I’ve had a doctor suggest MAID to me when I was telling her about my chronic pains. Canada fucking sucks.

<3

[characterworkshoppe]

So...remember when I said I want to do something cringey?

Basically...I was looking after a friend's younger sibling for a while...and everyone got halloween squishmallows...and they wanted me to have one...and I got a lil' werewolf named Wade...that's where the initial interest happened...anyways...

So I came home thinking "Fuck....now I wanna make a whole fucking wolf pack..."

So uh...shield your eyes if werewolves aren't your thing I guess?

You're in for a lot of cringe...I'd say sorry...but I'm not...just stating facts :p

Anyways....I'll introduce the pack under the cut

So! This is Whitetrack Heights, it was named that because these wolves live in the snowy mountains and it kinda just felt comfortable naming it that :p

(Obligatory picrew links ...guy one- https://picrew.me/ja/image_maker/695783....girl one-https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/1272810)

The Alpha (yes cringey word I know...leader... :p) of the pack is named Zeév

The Luna (other leader, is fem but doesn't have to be in my AU) is named Noelle

The Beta (basically like right hand/deputy guy to Alpha) is Cole

The Gamma (right hand of the Luna) is Thane

The Epsilon (guy in charge of soldiers...like a commodore I guess) Is Owen

And I'll include other ranks later maybe :p

Gonna add another fem character at some point...for the rank of Omega...which is basically uhhhhh head maid I guess which is appointed by the Luna...I'm thinking of making her a werecat that the pack took in...

Anyways....

I guess some questions and introductions are next? So....

Do these guys exist in the same universe as my dragons? (ABSOLUTELY)

(...They do) (I often exchange letters with Thane)

Just kinda far away I guess...but they visit each other sometimes

How do they speak (i'm sweating nervously trying to answer that)...during rp

Zeév : I'll talk like this

Noelle : Um...like this

Cole : This

Thane : I'll speak like this

Owen : I'll speak as such

I'll also try to write about them in like written stories I guess...maybe...if my brain allows me...that goes for the dragons too...won't use their unique speech stuff though...it would just be a story...

Anyways very very basic introductions :p

Zeév ;

Only recently became Alpha...doesn't talk much with human-kind...is basically clueless about human culture but is weirdly fascinated to hear about it...

he recently found his mate, Noelle, (yes mate, another cringey word) and has some longstanding and strong alliances with other wolf packs (called Cressent Lake and Moon Valley) and with other supernatural beings (dragon fam and more)

...he's skilled in basically everything you'd maybe need as Alpha...supernatural politics, healthcare and medicine, pedagogy and child care, how to govern a pack, combat and weaponry, cooking, cleaning, so he's basically everything you'd need...he wanted to cover as many bases as possible being Alpha....(his parents are alive-former Alpha and luna-idk if I'll make them actual characters)...

Smart but clueless if that makes sense...very smart with wolf culture...dumb-dumb about any other...

And in wolf form he's a white fur wolf

Noelle ;

So she died as a human in a fire, and the wolven moon goddess saw this when visiting humanity's pantheon of gods and protected her soul and reincarnated/isekai'd her into the supernatural world...gave her an inner wolf and a stronger body...now she can shift like any other wolf...but doesn't know shit about anything in this world and always asks Zeév, her mate, to explain stuff...

She likes gothic style clothes...kinda pale...super awkward...would like friends but sucks at making them...she's French-Canadian (wanted to make an oc from Canada for once :p)

Doesn't have many skills or anything she deems herself good at, however she's good at a few things...and is picking up pack essential skills easily...

She's Luna of the pack...as a wolf has black fur (idk if I'll make the goddess a character)

Cole ;

Beta of the pack, basically helps Zeév with whatever he needs, is good at organizational skills, pack government and supernatural politics, time management always early, and well personality wise...he's a loveable asshole I guess...

He's a childhood friend of Zeév, Owen, and Thane.

As a wolf he's red and obnoxious and he doesn't have a mate.

Thane ;

Gamma of the pack, helps the Luna with stuff, also works as the pack doctor. He's two years older then Zeév.

He's got a calm and friendly disposition...basically his personality is like...orange peko tea with milk and sugar...

His skills are what you'd expect healthcare and medicine, pedagogy and childcare, basic self-defense, cooking.

Childhood friends with the guys mentioned before.

Is good friends with Dr Viceth the dragon...and slightly crushing on him...for a few years...and pines for him a lot

Black fur as a wolf

Owen ;

Epsilon of the pack, basically combat and fighting and weapons and shit, deals with pack defense and security...

Elegant and also has asshole tendencies and tends to butt heads a lot with Cole but hey they're always still friends.

Childhood friends with the guys mentioned before.

...

So...just saying...basing this off the multitude of other werewolf shit that exists out there in the world like on like kikistory or AlphaNovel...warning if anyone wants to read stuff on thoes apps...tons of those stories are on the nsfw side of things....not like every chapter but still...just a warning about those...I'll try and keep mine more or less friendly and suggestive as most...

...

Anyways I might add more...because I need more Gorls...so potential werecat...

Anyways guess that's it...

Yeah...welcome to the cringy stuff

[nick-close]

Do you think Dndads would have been noticeably different if the dads were Canadian as opposed to Americans from LA? Involving themes and points of tension in the plot, I mean.

I've thought about how preforming masculinity would have taken up a lot more narrative space if the dads were in the Southern US, and it dawned on me that I could ask if you may have noticed differences if the location was different as well, like how Frank might not have returned to work if universal healthcare was available.

Regardless, hope you're well

Damn, interesting question all around!! As a Canadian I’ll use my thinker here. It absolutely depends on the province they’re from (like if these fuckers were from Quebec???? Yikes lmao) but honestly as someone from small town BC, I’d say the main differences are just weather and sports. LA is pretty well known to be progressive and things right?

Pretty much everybody here is into hiking, skiing, biking, and the environment. (my town literally banned plastic bags.) and Darryl would probably be a hockey guy rather than a football guy. (Which, side note, there’s an entire genre of guy we call ‘hockey boys’- which is specifically for shitty teen boys into hockey. I pray the teens wouldn’t be that.) they’d probably have to go somewhere icy for the anchor arc, but hockey is very violent so grants stuff would be the same. Hockey is also kind of gay but that’s irrelevant.

Again, as a BC person- Glenn and Henry would probably be super similar. This is the stoner hippie area of Canada. But again, I think there’s just an added layer of politeness when approaching scenarios. And a lot more apologizing. I know it’s a stereotype but like, it’s true- we fucking hate stepping on each others toes. Ofc some Canadians suck but whatevs. I think Ron would be less assured in his attempts to be big and masculine- but overall pretty similar. Darryl the same- I just think he’d start more things off with ‘sorry to bother you but-‘

I also think it’s possible Ron’s mom could’ve gotten better medical attention with available healthcare- though I don’t know how that would’ve ended up for Ron. And to be real? I forgot Frank’s entire deal, so whatever you said is probably right. I live right by the border so really Canada and the US isn’t that different tho.

I think also they would know who bonhomme is and that would be cool. They could have an entire festival ep that would feel incredibly out of place, while they eat maple syrup on a stick they made in the snow. That would be awesome.

[letshavechildren]

been tagged by @clowreedsforfilth to answer this cute lil questionnaire

1. Last song i listened to: If I’m Honest by Trousdale, my #2 song of the year

2. Favorite color: ummmm very into pink…and lime green…I always think of this particular item from party city when I am asked

3. Last tv show I watched: Canadas Drag Race! I’m team Aurora or team Denim probably. Everyone is so talented tho and I don’t know anything about the politics or background of Canadian drag so it’s a little more enjoyable

4. Currently watching: a friend just got me into Survivor which is wild like never thought I’d be into that since it started airing, but they definitely sucked me into it and we text about it weekly

5. Sweet, savory, or spicy: I’m a sweets bitch it is my weakness

6. Relationship status: I’m single and digging it for the most part, kinda learning how being single is after being in a 5+ yr relationship kinda got me fucked up in a way, like how do I meet people

7. Current obsession: oh that’s a good question I don’t obsess on much…maybe like…being mad about healthcare

8. Last thing I googled: fun facts about the Chicago flag because I read one recently I thought was neat, and I post a fun fact every day at my work so I google them to write on our white board…so essentially i am the backbone of my business

Will tag @manymoansago @alexinbox @solidgrape @softpastelqueer @kaleidoscope-cosmic-power @underneath-i-am-godly and @rantsofalib to do their own, if they’re down to clown

But don’t feel obligated!

[wordsofapanda]

Totally spiraled with the job news. Updated my resume and sent that shit out to a couple of places. I’m still on the fence about what to do but I’m just incredibly sad. This news demotivates me from going above and beyond at work now. I don’t want to be “on call” and it doesn’t make me feel like part of the team. I vented to some people close to me and got advice. I’m hoping things on out for the best or I get a better job. It just really sucks because I’m in a situation now where I HAVE to pick between a job or health insurance. And that’s an incredibly fucked up choice I have to make. So close to going to Canada and marrying a Canadian friend for some dang healthcare.

[scarystinkyskeletons]

i think that i am finally completely losing hope in anything ever getting better.

idk how im supposed to feel safe anymore. who am i supposed to even fucking feel safe with? im tired of liberal men thinking theyre all "automatically safe" (theyre the most awful nefarious blood sucking vampires that exist, just my opinion) and men on the right are thirsting to live their fantasies of a society where violence + big gun = king (they want to play war at the cost of our entire society 🤪). the leftist men all have guns and only half of them have the emotional maturity and mental stability to have one (like for real a lot of you are just as bad as the right with how loony tunes your gun rhetoric and lack of basic safety is, some of you scare me just like the conservative gun nuts do, to be so fucking for real). to be fully dramatic - I am a woman without a country.

maybe ill move near the border and find a nice canadian man on the other side to save me from this shit hole hellscape. if i get lucky i can get some sweet, sweet dual citizenship.

i dont know how we decided to legalize killing women via medical neglect. idk how we came to the conclusion that saving babies means rapists have the right to force whoever they want to birth their children, even if its a child, even if its incest.

too many men have responded to me talking about this entire issue by insisting that im fine in (state of residence with abortion access).

i dont understand why we are suggesting that its acceptable for people to die of treatable stone age bullshit, or for children to be forced to give birth, as long as its in within the boundaries of texas.

I also dont get this suggestion that women and children should "just leave"? you cant just get up and leave the state when youre actively dying. you cant just get up and leave the state as a minor child. what the fuck is wrong with you people? it goes so far beyond abortion - we now know that there will be no improvement for the min wage, no paid maternity or parental leave, no improvements for healthcare access, potential restrictions on birth control, no help with housing, no help with the cost of living, no improvement of education or the cost of higher education, and potential loss of all our social safety nets. the government is trying to force people to reproduce while making the conditions for reproduction deadlier than ever.

the future is bleak.

i feel like ive spent my whole life trying to warn everyone of what is happening now. but the people who didnt listen then still do not care enough now to listen when it comes to the real life consequences of this pro-rape campaign that parades around as "pro life".

america let us know loud and clear: we dont care if you die, and no one is coming to help you.

PS fuck all of you white christian women who voted for this, i truly hate you bitches! I hope you get everything you voted for. to quote AZ, "I hate you fat lizzo! i fuckin hate you girl!"

[weirdstrangeandawful]

Americans, y'all good???! Canadian healthcare sucks and is expensive as fuck in many ways but at least I was able to pick up a month's worth of lithium out of province (so no insurance or government assistance) for CA$22.95 (~US$16.58).

Even when both my insurance and the government inexplicably decided that standard post-surgery meds prescribed by my surgeon after surgery were not medically necessary (?!) and I had to pay out of pocket, it was all under CA$150!

[aetheros]

UGH! I fucking HATE Reddit. I never post there bc people are always ignorant.

I asked a question on a medical subreddit today out of utter desperation, and not necessarily for medical advice but for some knowledge & personal experiences about a health prob they’d know more about until I can see my doc. First and only comment is someone yelling at me, telling me to go to the doctor (I literally said that I am in the first sentence of my post), nobody else can help me, “Why aren’t you doing this?! Why aren’t you doing that?!” And calling me delusional and mocking my anxiety bc I’m afraid about my health. God forbid somebody ask for help. And what’s worse is plenty of other people have asked similar questions to mine as recent as 80 days ago and got informative responses. But I get yelled at. 👍🏼

It’s not my fault Canadian healthcare sucks, and that my doctor never gets patients in for 6 weeks, and that specialist referrals take 1-2yrs.

[femingrab]

I sometimes wish I was European.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Biden admin orders an end to surprise billing

Of all the dysfunctions of the famously cursed US healthcare system, few are so obviously a total scam as “surprise billing.” Here’s how that works: you go to a hospital (often its ER) that is covered by your insurer, and then, despite this, you get a giant bill. Surprise!

How can a hospital covered by your insurer hit you — and not your insurer — with a bill? Simple. A private equity company has convinced each of the medical professionals you interact with to secede from the hospital’s payroll and form an LLC.

The hospital contracts with your anesthesiologist’s LLC, your trauma surgeon’s LLC, the radiologist’s LLC — sometimes the WHOLE ER is amputated from the hospital and then grafted back on in LLC form, under contract to the hospital as a standalone independent business.

Your insurer has a deal with the hospital, but all of these artificial persons that have been Frankensteined together by private equity have no deal with your insurer. What’s more, they can charge many multiples of the “negotiated rate” for your care and bill you for it.

So after the ambulance brings you, bleeding and unconscious to the hospital and you wake up and ascertain that they lucked into bringing you to an ER that has a deal with your insurer, you’re still in for a surprise. Surprise!

The surprise keeps on coming. First you get a bill from the ER itself as a “facilities fee,” like the cover charge at a bar, except it’s hundreds or thousands of dollars and it applies whether you got any care at all.

Then you get the radiologist’s bill, which might be $12 or $200, depending on some invisible, inscrutable negotiation between their LLC and your insurer. Then comes the aneasthesiologist. Then the orthopedist.

Despite outward appearances and the sign over the door, the hospital isn’t a unitary entity. It’s a colony organism, a kind of rich Galapagos of intertwined, symbiotic, standalone entities that somehow produce care as an emergent property.

It’s like a hollow, rotten log, teeming with independent, variegated lifeforms that trickle bills into your mailbox without end, for months after your trauma, adding up to hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

Even the $12 invoices take an hour to pay as you set up an account with the exotic payment processor that contracts with the chiropodist’s LLC, whose website and phone-tree were designed by a GPT-3 procedural dungeon generator.

This is a system of absolute and manifest terribleness, and it’s also illegal. US medical practices are legally required to be run by licensed doctors, but the doctors who get sucked into these scams quickly discover that they’re only nominally running the business.

The PE “investor” actually calls the shots, and any doctor “owner” who bucks the system gets fired from their own medical practice.

This worked well for PE companies during the pandemic, as they raked in millions in federal PPP loans while slashing doctors’ pay and denying medical staff access to PPE.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/04/what-wall-street-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-hospital-emergency-rooms.html

All attempts to end surprise billing, were sabotaged by the PE giants who created it — Blackrock, KKR and co. They were long on surprise billing and spending millions to keep the racket intact was a rational investment.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/21/pluralist-a-daily-link-adose-21-feb-2020/#sickening

Surprise billing was a 2020 election issue. The same PE-backed LLCs (who’d cut doctors’ pay and demanded billions in bailouts) found vast sums to spend on astroturf campaigns where “patients” insisted surprise billing was great, actually.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

And they pumped huge amounts to support the campaigns of ghouls like Richie Neal, whose progressive primary challenger was sidelined via a homophobic smear campaign, and who rode to office on promises of maintaining surprise billing.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/13/youre-still-the-product/#richie-neal

For those of us who despaired of ever being shut of this predatory scam, the news that the Biden administration is issuing an interim order barring surprise billing could not be more welcome.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/07/biden-administration-issues-interim-rule-barring-surprise-billing.html

“[The rule] bars surprise billing for emergency services and high out-of-network cost-sharing for emergency and non-emergency services… out-of-network charges for ancillary services like those provided by anesthesiologists or assistant surgeons…”

https://www.modernhealthcare.com/finance/cms-bans-surprise-billing

But the rule still offers a chance to do some price gouging. It follows the contours of the No Surprises Act (which passed the House in Dec 2020), “with baseball-style arbitration to settle payment disputes between providers and insurers.”

We got hit by a wave of surprise bills last year after our daughter broke her wrist, with dozens of bills totalling thousands arriving in the mail for months after. The experience prompted us to switch from Cigna to Kaiser in January.

Kaiser is as close to the Canadian and British health care I used for most of my life, but every now and again you’ll get a reminder that the best for-profit health-care in America is much worse than the state-run care elsewhere.

Just yesterday I got a letter from a private insurance investigator deputized by Kaiser to investigate the circumstances of an “injury” I experienced to see if someone else could be sued or threatened to pay for the resulting care.

Not only is this seven kinds of fucked up, but I don’t have a knee injury. I woke up with a mysterious pain in my knee, and, after it persisted for a week, I had a telephone call with a Kaiser doc to determine whether I should be worried. He said it was fine.

The letter from Kaiser’s bounty-hunters was plastered in dire warnings to the effect that I’d lose my health care if I didn’t cooperate with them in their hunt for someone to terrorize into recouping the cost of this phone-call.

Ladies and gentlemen, the efficiencies of the free market.

An executive order is a nice start here, but we need actual legislative reform.

[liminalweirdo]

Maybe it's different in BC, but Americans could be looking at significant prices for abortions, potentially around $600 to $1200 ($768-$1,537 USD) in Ontario (source) and around $450 to $600 ($576-$768 USD) in BC (source). This website also indicates abortions in BC without a health card range from $500 to $650 ($640-$832 USD) (source).

Without coverage, the abortion pill in Canada is around $300-$450. ($384-$576 USD)

AFAIK most of Canada doesn't offer free healthcare to people who don't hold a Canadian health card. They sometimes don't even give Canadians healthcare if their card expires. Ontario makes Quebec residents pay for healthcare acquired in Ontario.

Canada has EXCEEDINGLY long wait times for most medical procedures, and this has been exacerbated by covid, especially in the public sector. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from accessing an abortion, but I would strongly advise people against misinformation, and thinking that getting an abortion in Canada will be affordable or simple unless Canada steps up their game to help.

American women will be able to obtain abortions in Canada if the United States Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade and returns abortion law to the state level, says Karina Gould, minister of families, children and social development.

In an interview with CBC News Network’s Power & Politics on Tuesday, Gould was asked if American women would be allowed to access the procedure in Canada.

“I don’t see why we would not,” she told host Vassy Kapelos. “If they, people, come here and need access, certainly, you know, that’s a service that would be provided.”

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada