#insurance is a scam and healthcare in the us is a fucking lie

[mommalosthermind]

screaming into the void about insurance because Adulthood Is Evil and Capitalism is Fucking Violence and also so I don’t go set something on fire

Orthodontist: your middle kid needs braces, like. A lot. They’ve got a fuckton of spacing, the front teeth protrude, here’s a bunch of specific terms and shit meaning not getting braces is Probably A Bad Idea, the spacing between his teeth should guarantee him braces don’t worry about it

Welfare insurance: lol no he don’t. We’ve decided that he’s a 16 out of the 22 points you need to get braces. Sucks to be you.

Orthodontist: ….literally lie to them, tell them he’s being bullied, anything, this kid needs braces. Also hey if they tell you no we’ll take a whole thousand off the nearly ten grand we quoted that you have to pay in two years. Yeah, that’s gonna be like 4-500/month. For two years. Cant be helped. Oooh you have a third kid who probably also will need braces? You can’t afford this? Dunno what to tell you. Hope his teeth don’t twist and fall out.

Welfare insurance appeal exam: done by a man so old he looks like he’s already dead. Hands shake so bad he can’t open the package for the tongue depressor thing. Can’t fucking see despite glasses the thickness of a tree trunk. Is literally squinting. Claims that the kid’s spacing is an entire three! Millimeters! Smaller than the orthodontic office found! HAD TO ASK WHAT 8+7 WOULD ADD UP TO for the bullshit point system so I DEFINITELY fucking trust what he’s doing holy FUCK

Welfare insurance corpse: yeah no the kids definitely 100% needs braces, he absolutely requires braces, but just because he needs them doesn’t mean we’re gonna pay for them. We only do that if its so bad it count as a PHYSICAL DISABILITY because you are possibly MALNOURISHED due to how bad your teeth are. But like. He does totally need them.

Welfare insurance rep: so our guy says no. Your argument is?

Me: I dunno that fact that if I could afford this shit out of pocket I wouldn’t qualify for poor bitch insurance? The fact you literally just agreed that he needs them pretty badly? wtf am I supposed to do with this? Both specialists say he needs them??

Welfare corpse-puppet: try begging the church you belong to (??????what the fuck?????) for help. Otherwise, try again when his mouth is worse. Have a nice day.

Anyway I’m gonna dismantle this entire country with my bare fucking hands

[sosayset]

Oh, as a Yank*, I cannot tell you how spot on this is.  Don’t even take it for the life-saving example the author give either.  Every single positive you will be told about the US health care system (aside from the actual people working as doctors and nurses who are amazing people who are dedicated to helping improve and save lives) is a lie.  It’s a goddamned lie, and if it isn’t a lie, the benefit is so outweighed by the price, it’s obscene.  I will fucking lead political campaigns and demonstrations to keep it out of your country, OUT OF YOUR COUNTRY, it’s that bad. 

I can throw out examples from my own life and experiences in addition to the “it will save your life” stories, too.  My Dad was taking out the garbage when I was age 5-8, and a broken piece of glass cut his leg as he lifted it.  He looked down and said, “that’s not bad, but it will need stitches,” and he headed off to the ER.  Once there, when it was his turn, the doctor came in, looked at his leg and said, “well that’s not too bad, but we will need some stitches.”  And he left.  When we got the bill, there was a charge of $250 (mid 80s) for a “consultation” with the doctor.  5 minutes exam, repeated what my Dad already knew, and was charged for it.  Insurance back then was different so it was taken care of in full but...

...when my optometrist referred my to an ocular specialist for what was diagnosed originally as a blocked tear duct gland because it wasn’t draining, the found a tumor...on the lacrimal gland in my left eye (fancy word for part of a tear duct)...that was the size of a peanut M&M.  My specialist, someone I couldn’t just make an appointment with on my own and go to without a referral, had to take pictures to submit to the insurance company to prove it was real, performed the surgery, had it removed, and let me know my tumor was benign (I had a 50/50 chance according to google).  When I went to get this news, and pay the balance I owed, I was told that insurance took care of everything not covered by my annual deductible, and that I owed the remainder.  This was in July of that year.  My doctor, my specialist surgeon, looked at me and said, “if you need anything major done, anything, do it this year.  If it’s next year, it’s going to cost you $5000 more.”  Yeah, this surgery burned through $5000 of my own money, insurance paid about $1500 and I spent that year, not needing to do anything major except...

...oh yeah, I was also diagnosed with glaucoma.  You see, I wanted new contacts, my Mom was worried about that lump under my eyelid (I couldn’t see it because when my eyelids were open in the mirror, it was not visible), and so I went in to the optometrist.  And I was diagnosed.  And the treatment is...a lifetime of daily prescription eye drops.  And the cost of these eye drops is $900 for a three month supply...which can only be purchased in single month increments because there is potential for a black market sale of those extra months (a single month lasts about 6 weeks, just FYI).  With insurance, this $10 a day price tag drops to $50 a month.  Recall that I just had a savings of 10 years worth of this prescription taken to pay for a surgery, too.  Oh, and then a pandemic hits and...hey, now prescriptions aren’t covered as much as they were.  And now, the employer based health care is gone, too.  Uh oh...do I pay $4000 a year for the drug that keeps me from slowly going blind on top of the $2000 total for quarterly checkups to make sure it’s working or, you know, eat? 

Never, ever, embrace ANYTHING about the US healthcare system as it is now, as anything but a scam.  There is no benefit, no upside, nothing to be gained, NOTHING to be had. 

[bloodbankzz]

i just dropped the invisible kingdom: reimagining chronic illness at 83% read because i am fucking furious with it. within the first few chapters i immediately had a bad feeling about her penchant for pseudoscience and i shouldve trusted my fucking intuition. instead i foolishly thought she would tie it all into how desperate populations can fall into the hands of grifters under the uncaring gaze of a "healthcare" system under capitalism and in the usa especially by the end, and FOOLISHLY, FOOLISHLY, FOOLISHLY recommended it TO AN ABLED PERSON to help understand the mental toll it all took even in the most ideal of circumstances. just to fucking watch this woman pile on dubious science after dubious science while she jet sets AROUND THE FUCKING WORLD spending what would easily be hundreds of thousands of fucking dollars AND NEVER EVEN BEING FIRED FROM HER JOB DUE TO DISABILITY? she just keeps her fucking dream princeton fuckin writer job the whole time. interviewing quacks because she was scammed, and she was scammed a lot. and im sorry to her for that. but not really because fucking ozone blood whatever and flying to england for fecal transplant and supplements and supplements and supplements and obvious orthorexia were clearly very within her budget. can you imagine a world where you rack up thousands and thousands and thousands in credit card debt and it just ends up not fucking mattering? oh my god i could be mad for so long at how much this rich woman got to see top doctors (without insurance!) and experiemental procedures and this and that and that and that with EXTREMELY sketchy conclusions because ~ shes a poet at heart ~ (?????????) AND THEN PUBLISH IT LIKE SHE SPEAKS FOR ANY OF US? reimagining chronic illness?????? for who????? no i can QUITE easily imagine that rich people do indeed have the ability to buy their way into health no matter what stupid path that leads them through. that happens all the time! remember the son blood infusion guy? god. im so fucking angry and its all of this but i really was gonna fucking put up with it and just add caveats but do you know what she fucking does?

after months of antibiotics, her lyme disease is seemingly cured. great for her. she reflects on how freaking awesome it is to have a body that works again! my body was broken and now its fixed and i can have a baby. im human again.

now this whole time, as someone who has been sick my whole life and will never have the money or life she has, i had been listening, and feeling seen by her emotional plight (if extremely skeptical of her... favored... choices?) but the whole time i will not lie to you i was simmering with this now exploding anger due to a deep envy. i am envious of a lot of people though, specifically because of my disabilities. so i was swallowing it. she got to make it to adulthood before she was dying. she got to establish and keep her career of choice. she could see any practioners she wished. i was so painfully jealous, but again, i was still recommending it on the basis of "this is how bad it is for the luckiest one of us." the betrayal i felt, when this book that kept SAYING it was about finding the ability to live in uncertainty brought on by mysterious illnesses, which i put up with through so many fucking red flags, ended with her literally fucking fine? pretty much fucking cured of the big thing causing her problems? AND IT TURNED OUT? THIS WHOLE THING? WAS ABOUT HOW MUCH IT SUCKS TO EXPERIENCE CHRONIC DISEASE FOR SOME YEARS AND HOW GREAT IT IS WHEN YOU DONT ANYMORE AND YOU GET EVERYTHING YOU WANT?

she gets to feel human again. thats so fantastic for you. do you know what that makes me?

this would not be a big deal in a memoir about one womans decade(?i think) long struggle to get better and happy ending. neither would the glaring lack of real social justice & meaningful critique of a system aside from how it sucks for her specifically with a tiny bit of lip service for the rest of us with MASSIVE, GLARING BLINDSPOT OF PRIVILEGE unescapable in everything she fucking says and does. however. i would not have read that book. i picked up a book called Reimagining Chronic Illness. and i expected it to be about reimagining chronic illness. perhaps, starting from an empathetic touchstone of personal struggle.

0/5 all i wish is that i had trusted my fucking gut or that this book wouldve had the decency to show me what it was SEVEN FUCKING HOURS AGO. i can tell why an ableist society showered it with praise.

[liza-lilly]

Why is food expensive? Like seriously? As if bills and rent aren't draining enough on top of shitty US healthcare that can drain you of your money quicker than you can blink.

I'm just fucking lucky foster care gave me medicaid until I'm 26. What happens after that???

Even still I avoid the doctor like the plague for fear of my insurance deciding they don't want to pay for something.

What's more fucked up is this idea they want us to have kids as if we can afford it? We can't even afford ourselves! How do they think we'll afford kids? I can barely afford my FISH and I love my baby to death, only the best for my spoiled girl.

Why does water cost money? Like to drink. I GUESS I can see why running water costs money but the fact that you're not allowed to collect rainwater is fucking ridiculous.

I'd say food is the hardest though. And you know college is a lie, most people who go don't even get a career in what they studied for because college is really just a scam to get your money. You go into debt and then have to build credit. I'm SO CLOSE to learning to survive in the woods and go feral. I'd ask who wants to join but guess what?

Land costs money too. Sheesh, nothing is free, we're all suffering and I blame society standards and the government. Doesn't matter, no matter how much I complain about it it won't change anything.

And if we fight back they'll call martial law. Which will only opress us further. Wow, okay, that's all I've got for now. Nothing new, obviously, we all know it. We've all heard it. Doesn't mean I'm not still hangry. At least make food cheaper?

[golbatgender]

You have to emotionally combat bigotry. All the reason in the world isn't going to calm or convince someone who's Angry and Scared and has a Target to be angry and scared about. Best case, if you try pure reason, they won't listen. Worst case, you sound cold and dismissive about their feelings (yes, fuck their feelings, but that's not the point), and they'll feel like they have even more reason to disagree with you, and might even spread this perception and their bigot-funk to bystanders. You have to argue on an emotional as well as a factual level to get anything done.

There are several strategies to do this—simply getting angry in return and directly attacking never works!

Redirect emotions with a combination of loaded words and real facts. Someone thinks immigrants are taking jobs? Direct that hatred towards big businesses and CEOs that try to buy and corrupt government (though, with that particular example, you have to be very careful not to reinforce antisemitic tropes—for example, avoid mentioning bankers or any names that sound Jewish as the corrupt, resource-hogging enemy). To do this successfully, you have to know what words have what emotional freight to your target—that means getting a basic familiarity with opposition rhetoric, and remaining aware that it is trying to manipulate you the exact same way, only generally without the benefit of any basis in fact. This is the only strategy that seeks to change the mind of the actual bigot as well as any bystanders. If you manage to calm them down or redirect their hurt in a more favorable direction, they will be much more receptive to ordinary reasoning and may eventually develop a true framework of reasoning and not need to be emotionally manipulated to get them to do or think beneficial things.

Aim to convince bystanders on the subject of the original topic, using the same combination of facts and loaded words to give emotional weight to the truth. Here, you do not need to redirect much of anything; you need to give the immediate subject and your position a particular emotional connotation.

Attempt to convince the bystanders (and any fringe/lightly invested members of the group) that the group itself to which your opponent belongs is so awful that no one should want to be associated with them, again using the same combination of loaded words and facts. This approach can veer into ad hominem, but in many cases group affiliation can be relevant—for example, if someone is a member of a hate group, trashing the hate group's rep is a good thing on its own, and membership in the group is also a good reason to doubt a person's political beliefs. (It would be just plain old ad hominem if, for example, one brings up that one's opponent is a furry. Also really sex negative and likely homophobic, which is bad.) Again, this is to convince bystanders that they do not want to be associated with your opponent, and to convince fringe members of your opponent's group that the group isn't cool. This is not about convincing your opponent, unless they are also a fringe member. And whatever you say about the group MUST be true to the very best of your knowledge, or you are, in fact, yourself turning into a bigot.

What are loaded words? Loaded words are words that have strong associations with most people. Words can be loaded as positive or negative, but also with secondary, less immediately obvious concepts such as class, education level, and religious or political affiliation. In general, shorter words are more emotionally loaded.

"Late-capitalist trends in per capita purchasing power allocation are increasing the net gap between socio-economic strata."

This is a sentence that has little primary loading and a moderate amount of secondary loading. Few if any of the words in this sentence have emotional weight. As a whole, the sentence seems cool, emotionally detached, and intellectual. Most bigots are anti-intellectual. (The few that aren't are usually "new atheists" and/or "scientific" eugenicists, or some varieties of anti-Israel antisemites. Many of these talk about facts and logic, but they actually just like the emotional idea of facts and logic and use psychological tactics just like all the rest.) While this sentence might be very useful to economic experts and its specificity can serve a specific purpose, it is not going to convince a layman or senator (same thing, for most purposes), as effectively as:

"Dirty CEOs are strangling the economy and stealing wages from hard-working taxpayers!"

"Six rich bastards have more money than half of all Americans!"

"The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This can't go on."

"Your boss does almost no work and gets paid twice as much as you. His boss does half as much as your boss and gets paid four times as much. How's that fair?"

"Trickle-down economics is a scam!"

"So-and-so died because he couldn't afford insulin. Greedy pharma and insurance companies just want to make money off sick people and leave them to die if they're too poor to be useful. Fucking boardrooms are literal death panels—'kill these people so we can charge more for the same thing.' They'd still be alive and right here now if we had healthcare like [other country]!"

"[Other company] is Union and they get paid more and don't got to go as fast. I hear they get rubber mats to stand on too."

Notice how all those sentences made you feel a lot more emotion? That's what I'm talking about. Notice how the one about insurance and pharma companies appropriates a right-wing buzzword and changes its referent. Notice how the last example sentence uses both positive emotions and envy (and working class dialect) to make the case that unions are a good thing. Notice also how all these things are in fact true.

Some words will have different loading to different audiences. For example, "capitalism" will be negative to some left-wing people and neutral-to-positive with most other Americans. "The 1%" will signal "ally" to leftists and "mortal enemy" to a (right-)libertarian or Republican, in reference to the speaker, and the 1% itself when so named will be negative to the former and average out to neutral with the latter.

Bigots work by using emotion with just enough factoids to seem plausible. If we use the same level of emotion with real facts, we can win against them—but we have to be willing to do it. Remember, never lie, but influence emotional perception of your argument. Flip the script.

[deadboxprime]

Our Degenerate Society 5

Our Degenerate Society, Part 5: Home Ownership

(This is a re-post from 2011. 2017 edit at end)

In previous posts in this series, I've talked about the class hierarchy in the US, perhaps the world. ( I have to wonder sometimes, if the revolts in the Middle East are against class and economic hegemony and not about politics...let's save that for another day).

All of our 'institutions' are scams and shams, designed to reinforce the status quo. Marriage, education, the dream of 'upward mobility,' all of these things support an invisible power structure. Indeed, we are all very much living in a Matrix-like socio-economic structure, where the common folk unwittingly support the transcendent rich while chasing the pipe dream that they too might someday ascend into the ranks of the rich and powerful.

Sounds like a conspiracy theory, doesn't it?

Do you own your own home? Think carefully. If you're paying a mortgage, you don't own it, the bank does. This is a crucial distinction that is often hidden to most people. In the film Father's Little Dividend, the sequel to the original Father of the Bride, the parents are shocked that their children have signed a mortgage in order to buy their house. The wealthy in-laws poo-poo this idea, saying that mortgages aren't really bad, we had one when we were young, and so on. Funny, that older generations feared mortgages.  Of course, considering that the word means 'death-note,' perhaps it's not that surprising.

And yet, this is the 'American Dream.' We're fooled into thinking that when we buy a house that we are Lord of the Manor, when in fact we don't even own the house. Unless you've paid off the house, you're just the maintenance worker. You're the guy who takes care of the place while the owner is away. You not only pay mortgage to the bank – who can take the property at pretty much any time – you  are also paying for the upkeep, buying a new furnace and air conditioner, putting on a new roof, mowing the lawn, whacking weeds and mending fences. You're not the Lord of the Manor, you're the servant. Homeownership is modern indenture.

Buying a home is a good investment? No, in fact, it is not. Not for you, anyway. It's great for your kids, when the place is finally paid off and they inherit the place. Otherwise, between taxes, upgrades, and maintenance, it's a moneypit. You're better off saving you're money, as the inflation of the past decade won't soon recur, and home values will not likely appreciate very quickly again.

Even when it's paid off, you are not 'Lord of the Manor.' You own the house and the topsoil. You do not own the airspace, or the mineral rights. You don't even own the utility connections. The government can exercise eminent domain at anytime so they can put up a New York Times building on the land and get paid off by the corporation.

Most of the time you're paying for the address, as the house itself located elsewhere is often less expensive.

All of this supports the status quo. You invest everything you have in the system, and we'll keep moving that brass ring so that it is just beyond your reach. You keep reaching, and keep pedaling, because it is your legs that power the merry-go-round and we're making money by charging you for the ride.

What a scam.

Even the process leading up to the whole thing is a lie. I'm talking about the credit process. Your credit history is just the language that banks use to talk shit about you. The people with the highest credit scores aren't the people with no debt. The high credit scores are the people who have multiple credit cards, a car loan and a mortgage, and pay everything early. People who spend more than they make. The trick is that there are numerous ways to trip you up.  Billing cycles versus pay cycles, calendar month versus 30 days, and more than I even know about. Pay cash, and tell them to STFU. By using credit, you are supporting the transcendent rich hierarchy.

'We've priced everything beyond your ability to pay so that we can engage you in paying eternally. But don't worry! We have a payment plan...and only 22.9% interest...'

More institutional scams: insurance, though there is little you can do about it. Check your plan to see if this is true for you. Individual plans cost, for example say $30. A two party plan costs more than three times as much and a 'family' plan costs more than five times as much as an individual plan. Sure, there's additional paperwork involved so there's more overhead, but that much more is excessive.

We can't blame the doctors, because they had to spend $200K ( 'Don't worry, we have a payment plan...') to become doctors in the first place, at the educational institutions which are charging more and more for the same product because of the availability of loans...

Dental insurance? Check yours. Mine is essentially a payment plan. I pay every pay period and then a co-pay when I see the dentist, and of course, some procedures are extra. Next open season, I'm canceling it. Instead, I will make the same payments to an interest bearing account and pay out of pocket. I suspect I'll actually make money.

The entire world in which we live in is designed to rip you off and keep you working, producing for the transcendent rich. And everyday we fall for it, even me. Everyday there are new scams and new ways to erode everything that we say we believe in. Why do we believe in those things, I wonder?

And I as I've said before no one even cares that I, like others before me, am exposing the corruption. They know you will have to keep working, and our addiction to electronic gadgets and social eminence will keep us buying – no, financing – a high def, big screen, foldable, uber-portable smart phone so we can tweet and watch Real Housewives (bullshit lady, your tits aren't even real and neither is your haircolor. Those women aren't housewives).

I'd start a movement, but no one listens to me. I'm 'crazy.' I'm a 'conspiracy theorist.' Nonetheless, I wonder what would happen if a large number of people paid off their credit cards and finance arrangements and started paying cash. What if we stopped worrying about our credit scores and told the banks to go pour themselves a frosty mug of Fuck You? What if nobody bought houses? What if we refused to be gouged by the already rich and insisted on change?

Yeah, what if. But in a moment, we both know that you're going to click on something more interesting and forget everything I just told you.

2017 Edit: Even though I “own” a home, I still think that homeownership is not what it is advertised to be – just like marriage. I do not and will not have a credit card. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to live without them. I still think “credit” is bullshit, even though I do try to not consciously fuck mine up, even if I’m not especially concerned about improving it.

Healthcare has gotten worse in the past 6 years, but you don’t need me to tell you that. Overall, this post stands up pretty well. Now, go ahead and click on something more interesting.

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