Microblog Memes

What would happen if everyone cancelled their health insurance and stopped paying outrageous surprise medical bills?

Because doing the "right" thing and hoping it will get better someday isn't working very well.

I left the hospital with a drain in me.

Had to follow up to get it taken out - they only did drain removals one afternoon of the week. Something that took me thirty seconds to do when I got fed up and did it myself.

For the non-Americans out there:

This isn't even an exaggeration. This was literally my exact experience going to the ER after I got fired.

12 hours and $35k? Stop your bullshit. I've dealt extensively with healthcare in the US. It's more like 10 months and $110k.

My partner is literally waiting 10 months to see a rheumatologist for debilitating joint pain. A virtual visit, no less.

I had a 14ga puncture wound last year in Canada, about 1" from my femoral artery. Rapidly flowing blood, tourniquet applied on-scene just below the groin.

Ambulance was on scene quickly, I was immediately put into the trauma center in the ER, stapled, full body CT with contrast, tetanus booster and some more stuff I don't remember. Time in ER waiting room: zero. Time in hospital: ~1.5 hr total, mostly spent waiting for a follow up outside the ER.

I paid $250 for the ambulance and nothing else. Canada's healthcare system is GREAT at keeping you alive (if you're not indigenous, which is a true national shame).

Canada's healthcare system is not amazing at keeping you healthy. Something minor and chronic? Get fucked, it's a 2 year wait for a specialist referral. Minorly hurt but not at risk of death? Yeah enjoy the 4-10 hour wait in the ER room. When will you be seen? Idk when we can get to it. Want to see a doctor? Walkin will see you for free in about 45 minutes. Want to see your doctor? Yea they're out this month working at the hospital, how's 3 months from now?

All of this is vastly better than my time growing up in the US where the hospital missed diagnosing me with pneumonia and gave me permanent lung scarring. Or missed my fractured ankle on the xray and said I was fine. And then billed my parents 10's of thousands of dollars.

American here. Reluctantly went to the ER because I had been vomiting for a couple of days. Turned out that my gallbladder just stopped working. Was immediately placed into a room, given IV antibiotics, and had surgery the next morning.

Had to stay for 4 days to make sure I was in good shape. The surgery wasn’t super expensive, but the room itself cost me way too much.

Total cost was just over $24k. No insurance (contractor). Even on payments, it’s insane.

My plan is to just never get sick for the rest of my life so I don’t go into another debt hole.

When I went to Econ class, the professor explained that we call it "Free Market Economics" because of four freedoms:

1. Freedom of entry and exit - participants (buyers, sellers, and prospective such) can enter or exit the market at their leisure, and the market will not change
2. Freedom of participation - every participant is in the market of their free will and can leave the market without repercussion
3. Freedom of substitution - every product on a particular market is essentially the same
4. Freedom of information - every participant has the same information about availability and prices at the same time

The reward is that free markets are efficient: they lead to the lowest prices and greatest exchange of goods. That is the reason we have them.

When the four freedoms are not mandated, the market fails in different ways, and that's absolutely expected. When information is available to some before it is to others, we get price distortions - that's where insider trading laws come from.

Health care, the prof explained, suffers from the fact there is no freedom of participation. You either buy care or you suffer the potentially deadly consequences. That's why free markets and health care are fundamentally incompatible: they are expected to be.

Cut my finger off twice, almost lost my foot to sepsis whilst camping, and was witness/transport for 2 different heart attacks.

Longest I've waited for serious treatment is about 5 minutes, most expensive was a 50$ parking ticket.

You're being fleeced like fools

In America they shut down hospitals because the publicly traded corporation which bought the hospital realized it was more profitable to run 1 hospital per 5 counties.

An ex had bad abdominal pain one night.

Trip to ER deemed emergency: free.
Night doctor determined likely gall stone, kept overnight in ER to be confirmed by morning ER doc: free. Morning doctor determined non-critical issue, added to wait list and scheduled checkin with specialist in 2 months All free.

Same pain next night. Same song and dance, ambulance, same ER night doctor, this time he stays overtime to ensure that it gets an ultrasound booked. Ultrasound later that morning determines it needs to come out. Admitted same day for surgery. Bumped two days because literal life and death surgeries(c-sections and a motorcycle v car accident victim) and some time to let the surgeon have some sleep. He shows up and gets it done first thing.

Two weeks later, end up getting minor surgery for drain removal because her parent's cat purred on her nonstop and overhealed the drain scar.

All free.

Tldr: the Canadian system works on priority and is hobbled by conservatives.

People who think America has better healthcare are either wealthy, or don't have any health issues they deal with regularly.

Accurate. I had an afib issue recently, went to the hospital at 9pm and sat there in the emergency room bed all night because they told me the cardiologist needed to see me before they could treat me. The cardiologist got in at 9am, and I continued to wait until 12:30pm without seeing them. It finally went back to normal rhythm at that point and I was discharged a few hours later. Luckily I have health insurance, so I didn’t have to pay much, but I don’t live in bumblefuck; I live in a pretty populated area of New York and was sitting there waiting for treatment for over 15 hours. It’s a dumb argument that we don’t have to wait for treatment as long as countries with socialized healthcare.

Today i crushed my finger in a metal door and it started bleeding a LOT because the metal cut my skin.

In the beginning i did not want to go to the ER, but then my SO persuaded me "what if you get sepsis and it needs to be amputated???"

I went there and i waited 1 hour only for triage (i can understand it, everyone was dying on a hospital bed while i had this little cut on the finger)

after triage the doctor says we need to xray. Xray?? Don't need it's just a cut, not broken, i don't feel painful. She persuades me to wait another hour for the xray and i am a bit pissed because now i have to waste time for xraying a finger that's definitely not broken, just cut and bleeding.

Result: i broke my index finger. WHAT?? I did not expect this conclusion.

Total paid €0, total time 3 hours

Some fellow Canadians bash our system but usually its those that don't get what triage is.

Like my wife felt Ill we went to emerge, maybe waited 4-6 hours. Low blood sugar doctor recommended eating higher protein snacks in between meals.

But when they figured out I had cancer it was fast track for everything.

Americans would KILL for a 12-hour wait.

Americans literally live their lives without hope of going to the doctor.

Not frustration at it taking so long.

Literal despair that they will never get to go to the doctor, paired with fear that if they do, they will have to pay literally tens of thousands.

It's like if there's a homeless person, and you tell them "I could bring you some food in 12 hours, or I could just never bring it to you. Which do you prefer?" And the Republicans will straight-up claim the homeless person would choose to never get the food because 12 hours is too long to wait.

how do people not understand triage? The longer you wait, the less of an emergency it is.

If your experience with ER is waiting for longer than an hour, then you went to the Emergency Room without an Emergency.

If your leg is hanging off you don't have to wait 12 hours. Idiot don't know about triage

Triage.... I've spent a few hours in the ED waiting room for basic stuff. I've walked right through with serious stuff.

The thing about Canadian care is that it usually works well for urgent and life saving care. If you don't like the wait for non urgent items, you have to option to pay - you just need to travel somewhere to get it done. The media likes to go on about the cases when people die while waiting but some of them were so sick they weren't going to make it anyway. Having quick access to ER isn't a guarantee that you will survive the heart attack symptoms you've been ignoring for the last month.

Me explaining to US friends that I'm upset that after leaving the hospital after surgery they had me buy my own antibiotics

When I was a kid, in America, I got a huge gash in my head that required stitches. It took them so long to see me in the waiting room they had to reopen the wound to stitch it shut.

Lol if you got a real problem in Canada, you're in and out. No fucking around. Trauma, injury, blood everywhere, yah you get stabilized and attention right away. Hell, I've gotten into a car accident. Bad one, no injuries though, got home started to feel rough after the adrenalin kicked out went to hospital said what's up, in 40 min I had xray, CT scan, and an all clear, see ya.

You come with a flu? Go sit your ass down maybe they will see you tommorow.

In america you die

Just out of curiosity, what are American wait times like for the uninsured? Infinite?