#getting fucked over by our healthcare

[cripple-wizard]

firstly, i HATE british people that see a giant issue in a country that damages real people, often to the point of trauma, and then uses it as a "GOTCHA! my country is superior hahah"

secondly, i can PROMISE this person is not disabled

being disabled in England is not "sipping tea and chilling"

it's being unable to get a doctors appointment no matter how early in the morning you call. its those appointments being 10 minutes long with an uninterested GP who doesn't even believe you. it's having to beg for even a blood test. it's being disabled for 7 years and giving up fighting for a diagnosis 5 years in. it's 6 hour wait times in A&E. it's disability benefits being hoops you have to jump through. if you're "lucky" enough to get the benefits, forget getting married, but also forget ever even LIVING with a partner, because your benefits will be reduced ridiculously. it's uneven pavements that are difficult to navigate even without any disabilities or aids, but good luck to you if you have any! its people that find it funny to film disabled people and send it to LADbible for a couple quid. it's your benefits barely covering rent and food, god forbid you need to heat your home in december; who cares if the cold makes your pain worse!

if this person thinks it's okay to mock disabled Americans cause it'd be "so much easier" if they were British, I would LOVE to hit them with a bus, and then send them to an NHS hospital. HAVE FUN BABES!

btw, the machine that dispenses tea is broken. hospital budget cuts won't allow them to fix it. sorry:)

If you’re british and this is your reaction to disabled Americans talking about their medical bills/medical debt we should be allowed to rip your limbs off and beat you with them

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

Your election post was the most holier-than-thou, performative, bullshit I’ve ever read. Get a grip and get some self awareness.

i will take "missed the entire point" for 500, alex

[chatnip]

You know, it really is troubling how all of these people in the American colonies have been rallying behind those criminals who threw all of that tea into the harbor. These taxes are important to ensure that we're able to defend our nation and are perfectly legal! The East India Company is simply doing what they need to in order to survive as a business.

The colonists may call these taxes "outrageous", but they simply don't realize how good they have it compared to other places. Removing them would simply hurt the economy too much. Surely it would be best if they wised up and paid the tax like they're supposed to. The American colonies have always relied on the British companies and economy, so changing that would surely never work, right?

[sawkinator]

y'know having some of my fellow Americans say it's bad to celebrate a CEO's murder is obnoxious but kind of expected in today's political climate

hearing a European express such a sentiment is lowkey enraging though

[stillwaterinc]

trans infighting on twitter why do i bother with anything other than my mutuals again?

[emeraldcreeper]

Nothing like working out the general frustration with the fact that no one in your extended family has to think about politics outside “well he’s getting rid of ‘the illegals’ and id so pick crops in the insane heat of summer and shit its FINE!” When they’ll lose their benefits so fucking hardcore her kid had two babies and is probably on Medicaid

[gncrevan]

since we're talking about universal healthcare again, and i see germany coming up quite a bit, i wanna say yes obviously it's better than what the US has going on, but i really need people, fellow germans in particular, to stop romanticizing our system, which is universal in name only. because if you've never struggled you may not know this, but your insurance will absolutely deny everything that it legally can. which means anything that requires evaluation, maybe because it's off-label or it's a specific type of healthcare (like hilfsmittel) or it's rare or it goes beyond the minimum required by law. so as a result, i got my social therapy (soziotherapie) denied nine times because the evaluating body (mdk) didn't even read my file. i got the one drug that could maybe give me a somewhat normal life denied because there aren't any large sample studies (it's a rare disorder, there won't ever be large sample studies) and it's off-label and expensive. my brother fought over five years for his medical marijuana, the only pain treatment that works for him, and all that time he was so sick as a result that he couldn't have a job and had to live with my mom. speaking of my mom, they literally denied her transportation to her cancer treatment at first and forced her to go through objection proceedings while undergoing chemotherapy. it took several attempts to get my grandmothers their respective levels of care, as well as disability aids (wheelchair, hospital bed; the co-pay is still high for these). i have an acquaintance who has been denied a wheelchair as well as surgery because he's on the street and doesn't have the means or literacy to go through the required proceedings. because if you do ever want a shot at individualized care while struggling with chronic/severe illness, you better get ready for a grueling process of paperwork you struggle to understand, appointments with medical consultants that do not care how you get there, the disappointment and frustration and depression of constant rejection, mind-numbing calls with your insurance provider, and (if you're unlucky but not willing to give up) court proceedings you likely can't afford. the truth of the matter is our healthcare system has been altered repeatedly to allow for more and more privatization, more and more profit incentive, and thus, more and more patient neglect. as of right now, this doesn't tend to affect the average "healthy" patient, but it's only a matter of time before they, too, become disabled and sick and old, and it's only a matter of time before our system is hollowed out to the point of affecting everyone.

[umbralwaves]

I am leaving asap for my own sanity, but the tag is #personal for anyone who wants to filter it.

[ramenheim]

The actively callous way the MB healthcare systems treats indigenous patients can not be illustrated more clearly than this:

[jellogram]

Respect to anyone who has made psychiatry work for them, or whose conditions are such that they have to go through it anyway, but you could not pay me to deal with those motherfuckers again. I can't believe I ceded control of my fucking brain chemistry to a person who talked to me for 15 minutes every three months and refused to listen when I objected to the (incorrect) conclusions she immediately made about me. I'm not doing that again.

[eyrieofsynapses]

y'know, I'm chill with other people smoking/vaping/etc. it's absolutely not good for you, but bodily autonomy is a thing for a reason, we all only live once, some people find that it helps with other issues etc. etc. it's like doing just about anything that's bad for you, which is, you know, a lot of things. not getting enough sleep is bad. eating too much processed food is bad. hell, just sitting on our phones all the time is awful for us.

what absolutely pisses me off--what makes me want to shake people by the shoulders--is everyone who does it in an indoor space where others live without asking if it's okay. because here's the thing: when you smoke by yourself, you consent to all the stuff it'll do to you.

but. everyone else? did not consent to the culprit fucking up their body. it's the equivalent of punching them repeatedly in the jaw. except that is, at least, blatant, immediate pain. secondhand/thirdhand smoke and vape? that is fucking insidious. that's carcinogens, and chemicals that sit and build up inside your body, slowly but surely screwing you over. it may be decades until the consequences unfold. or it might only be a few months, if you're sensitive to it. might make everyone in the house feel sick within a day or two, if they're sensitive at all. and, of course, there's everyone with asthma and other chronic conditions for whom this becomes even worse, for whom it does not merely irritate but suffocates.

back when we didn't know how bad cigarettes could fuck us up--back then, there was an excuse. but now? now everyone knows what this shit does. hell, plenty of us have family members who died of lung cancer. so there is no excuse, now. now, you know you're hurting people when you do it, that every poisonous puff is worming its way oh so slowly into everyone else's cells, bodies, lungs, blood.

some people struggle with addiction. I'm not targeting that. sometimes you know how bad a thing is, and you do everything you can to stop, and you just can't. (doesn't make you less culpable--but it isn't all carelessness, at that point.) I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about all the damn generation Z people (my peers) I run into lately who display a ridiculous lack of caring for others' health. and you know, I'm just... impressed, really. at how anyone can justify that to themself. at how you could possibly call yourself a good person and still do that.

our generation grew up with endless, endless messages explaining exactly what cigarettes do to us, exactly why we needed to avoid secondhand smoke like the plague it is. I know kids of smokers who deal with the ramifications of it even now. how the hell, how the living bloody hell, could you possibly learn all of that, know people who went through that, and still justify exposing other people without a care in the damn world?

[ms-demeanor]

Trump 2016 was nothing compared to what's coming and you know it.

No I don't, and you don't either.

One of the problems that I have with electoralism is that every election is the most important election of our lives. Every election is the last one to save democracy. Every election is the only way that we can protect the marginalized otherwise so you have to vote blue no matter who or you're going to be killed in the streets by the red team.

This is propaganda to get people to vote, but what it also does is reinforce the idea that the only people who can save you are the ones on the ballot.

There are people all over the world living under fascist regimes, living in war zones, living in dictatorships, who are supporting one another. There are trans communities under Modi and queers in Russia and people who provide underground reproductive healthcare in Iran and people who provide medical care to their neighbors in tents in Gaza.

What you are doing is American exceptionalism in a liberal hat. This is NOT the end of the fucking world. This is NOT the worst disaster you will ever face. This is NOT a reason to give up or to stop caring or to stop working or to lay down and die.

Is this a good thing that has happened? No. But bad things happen all the time and we keep going.

If you must wallow, then wallow, but I've got shit to do just like I did last week.

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

Would ya look at that, my post on Luigi Mangione is doing numbers. I'm glad to see so many people agree with me! Honestly, it does me good to see such an outpouring of public wrath against the parasitic health insurance industry over the last week. But you know what would do me even better?

Civic action.

If all we do is sit around and post memes, jack fucking shit will happen. A single assassination is scary for a moment, but if nothing happens afterwards, then it means nothing.

Y'know what's really scary? Thousands and thousands of people yelling DEFEND DENY DEPOSE on the National Mall. Vigils held in front of health insurance companies where attendees recite their stories of preventable death and bankruptcy. Every Congressperson getting their lines and mail flooded with anger all at once.

I don't know why none of the healthcare advocacy groups are leaping on this; I assume no one wants to be associated with an assassin. Personally, I think the opposite. I think we need to remind the top .001% that the alternative to peaceful reform is violence. And if existing structures won't support us in these efforts, then we need to make our own.

I'll be frank, I have no experience in organizing these kinds of protests. I've done quite a few marches in my time, knocked on doors, made phone calls, the works, but I've never been in charge. I have ADHD, for chrissakes, organization is not my strong suit. Still, someone needs to start this conversation.

So what are our next steps? Who here is willing to march? Who has experience planning protests? What do we need to do to make these things happen? What organizations will support our efforts? What kind of demands should we make?

[wilwheaton]

The GOP wonders why young people (and others) don't want to vote for them. Some wise scribe assembled this list.

1.) Your Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.

2.) You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You’re forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.

3.) You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.

4.) You have abused your disproportionate senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and idealogues, including SCOTUS—which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.

5.) You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.

6.) You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it’s as if you’ve made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generations.

7.) You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day

8.) You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.

9.) You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.

10.) You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.

11.) You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation’s youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to “protect the children” while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.

12.) You pretend to be offended by “anti-semitism” while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate “cancel culture” despite the fact that you invented it and it’s basically all you do.

13.) Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.

14.) You’re so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.

15.) You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors.

16.) You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age.

17.) You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire “administration” was an international crime syndicate being run out of the WH who incited an insurrection to have you killed.

18.) You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we’ve ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans; and even your “legitimate” appointments consist of people like THIS (sub-thread refuting CJ Roberts criticisms of people attacking SCOTUS' legitimacy).

19.) You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.

20.) You are the reason we can’t pass:—Universal background checks—An assault weapons ban—The ‘For the People/Freedom to vote’ Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act—The ERA & Equality Act—The Climate Action Now Act—The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act—SCOTUS expansion.

21.) You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy.

22.) Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate social security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning.

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/e8DBZLH

[fellthemarvelous]

Deny. Defend. Depose.

It is clear to those of us that live in America, the only people we truly have on our side are ourselves. The ruling class has made it clear we don't matter to them.

Luigi Mangione was arrested and happened to have every single piece of evidence on him that law enforcement was looking for, including the parts for the ghost gun, inside his backpack (that he also got rid of in Central Park containing the Monopoly money???). Either he was trying to get caught or that evidence was planted. And when he was being forcefully pushed into the jail, he hollered back to the press about "injustice" and "being an insult to the intelligence of American citizens and our lived experiences."

The people have now turned against corporate America and the CEOs and billionaires are fucking terrified. Nothing the news stations are saying to us are changing our minds. The American people have finally united over this issue and there is no going back for us. Whoever did kill Brian Thompson (and theories abound on the game The Adjuster is playing because no one plays Monopoly alone) exposed the very real divide that exists between every day citizens and the extremely wealthy. Things were easier for them to control when they were able to divide us, but now that we are aware of how uncertain our future is in America and seeing just how little we matter to the people who take our money, we have realized that we have more in common with each other than the people who control every aspect of our lives. We are waking up.

There isn't one person in this country who hasn't been a victim to the predatory scam that is private health insurance. Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in America, and many of us are one ambulance ride or hospital stay away from homelessness. We all know people who have died because the insurance company denied them the treatment they needed or waited until it was too late for an approval of a medical claim to matter anymore.

Recently, I decided to be tested for autism and ADHD. Not life-threatening or anything, but my life is still in shambles and I want to know if I'm going untreated for something else. Before being tested though, I was informed that the insurance company (Aetna) has said that they were going to cover the full cost of the testing I was having (which was six hours of testing by the way). She even made sure several times that they were, in fact, going to cover it in full and they said yes.

The same day that Brian Thompson, CEO of another horrible healthcare company, was murdered in broad daylight, I received a call from that doctor's office with the woman telling me that Aetna was now telling her they never agreed to cover my testing and that they are going to bill me for $1600 (where the hell am I supposed to get that?) and she is fighting them, but considering our lives don't matter to the people who tell us what healthcare we are and are not allowed to receive, I don't think they will feel compelled to change their minds because they are bloodsucking parasites who only care about lining their pockets while I don't even have $6 lying around, let alone $1600!!

Corporate America leeches off our taxes. They take and take and take and we see nothing in return. They raise prices on insurance coverage and then deny us the very coverage that we pay for. They poison our food, price gouge our poisoned food, and then force us to pay for the treatment we get when the food makes us sick. Corporate America profits off of our hard work, our taxes, our health, our lives, our deaths.

I don't know if this will reach a larger audience or not, but I wanted to talk about it on Tumblr because this platform seems to be a crossroads for every type of creative soul. I initially brought up this idea on TikTok earlier, but I want to see if it can get traction in other places as well since I have fewer than 3,000 followers on TikTok (and I have seen a small few express interest in my idea in the hours since I posted the video.)

We're busy being lectured by politicians and the news media because while they are clutching their pearls at what happened to Brian Thompson, the rest of us do not give one single flying fuck about what happened to him. As CEO of a for-profit health insurance company, he signed off on denied claims and death for those of us who struggle to make it from one day to the next. The sicker you are, the poorer you are, the more they force you to struggle and pay. The love to deny coverage because regardless of whether we live or die, they already have the money we are forced to pay them.

I don't condone murder at all, but I also don't care that he was murdered because he was guilty of murdering so many more people in this country through legal means because it's profitable. The CEOs are scared and there are wanted posters with their names and faces popping up in places. Every CEO of every healthcare company is guilty of murdering Americans and they continue to go unpunished for it because "it's just business".

So (if you've read this far) all of this previous rambling is to say that I keep thinking about how I want to make an impression. I want to continue upsetting the billionaires and the CEOs because corporate America is full of murderers who are legally allowed to decide whether we live or die based on which outcome will give them more money.

I have thought about the idea of creating a wall/constructing a wall somewhere as an art piece or something (making a statement) that will somehow honor the memory of people who died because insurance denied them care.

I know I definitely want it to say something along the lines of "In memory of those murdered by for-profit healthcare systems in corporate America". Something blatant. Loud. Something they are forced to look at every single day. Somehow. The wall could have images of those who are gone, or names of the person who died with the name of the insurance company responsible for their death underneath. Just something to make it clear that we see them for what they are. Something to avenge those who were sacrificed so billionaires and CEOS and shareholders could brag about record profits. Something that shows the whole world that American citizens are waking up to who the real monsters are.

The Adjuster (whoever he is or is not) has fanned the flames of revolution in America. He managed to unite us in a way I can't even recall before. It's not over. We know what happened to Brian Thompson was just the beginning, and corporate America only just now realized how much we actually hate them. A single shooter has sparked an awakening in America that is starting to snowball into something much bigger.

So if there is anyone out there who might be interested in collaborating on something like this, please let me know. I know we are all tired and demoralized and we have no money. I want to make a statement though, and I love doing that through art or writing. Collaborating with other people who have been through this same shit will also probably help us unite even more.

This is a watershed moment in American history.

In the words of Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight,

"There is a future for us. One where we're all free. But it's up to us to make it happen."

[dearminty]

doctor straight up laughed when i asked if there were any bulk billing psychiatrists I could get referred to then said 'they all charge around $500'. fucking hate mental healthcare in this country its so goddamn expensive to be mentally unwell, guess im not getting back on my adhd meds anytime soon