22 Likes
By telling them: code to our official policy or we’ll fire you and replace you.
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When the insurance companies stop forcing the hospitals to do so.
Really the only reason the hospitals engage in this is because insurance companies demand it.
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Blows my mind employers think it’s still a good idea to pay people different for the same job.
19 Likes
Ayep… I asked my Kiwi partner, when his daughter had her kid, did she have any out-of-pocket expenses for the birth. He didn’t know what I was talking about.
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Single payer would address this particular case but the issue is far more general. Company tries to overbill, they owe you more than just fixing it unless you played a role in causing the overbill in the first place.
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In the UK, our biggest extra expense was when I got my wife a nice coffee and slice of cake from the cafe.
I hate the fact that our Conservative party is trying to make our healthcare more like the USA
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Caught this on the air this morning. They called it out clearly: This is Fraud. Report it when you see it.
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Unfortunately, you’re right.
The antivax weirdos are completely bonkers, but their weirdness didn’t just come out of nowhere. They distrust the medical establishment because of fuckery just like this, and they distrust the media for trying to gaslight us into thinking that all of this is normal.
And if you think there’s no way anyone can believe all this antivax bullshit, well, nobody in the civilized world can believe half of what goes on in the US Healthcare industry.
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It would address the whole lot of problems with our for profit health care system. Cut for profit companies out of the loop entirely. Why is ANYONE making a profit off of deciding whether someone should live or die.
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“Death panels” have, of course, existed for decades. It’s just that they exist in the Insurance companies, and they usually consist of that one person who has to chose between keeping their job or making a bonus for saving the company money on a person who they’ll never see and probably wouldn’t have lived anyway (they keep telling themselves).
See also: Their accusations are confessions.
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“But…but…however will we pay for a system that will be lower in cost for everyone at every stage?” /s
Seriously, though, I get so ticked off every time the media asks how we’re going to pay for this, and the Democrats start talking about taxing the rich. How are we going to pay for it? Why would we need to pay for a system that costs less than what we’re currently doing?
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“How are we going to pay for it?” can very simply be re-stated as “I don’t want to pay for your healthcare”
Which is doubly stupid because you already pay for lots of people’s healthcare because that’s what insurance is.
When I explain that to people, it usually either shuts them up, or they admit they just don’t think the unemployed, homeless, or disabled should be allowed to survive.
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30-something years ago I drove from New York to LA in an old car with a bunch of friends, and we could not get over how poor Americans were.
Obviously there are areas of incredible wealth, but we thought the richest country in the world would have fewer desperate people living in plywood boxes.
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It is because we are the wealthiest country in the world that we have so many desperate people.
Capitalism works like thermodynamics. The larger the energy gradient, the greater the potential for work in a system. The larger the inequality of wealth in the system, the greater the potential for capital extraction.
Trickle-down economics.
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You don’t have to try and trick people into saying the quiet bit out loud. All you have to do is ask them. The trick is stopping them from telling you once they start.
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Sometimes tricking them into saying it out loud startles them into realizing what they’re saying.
Nobody’s voice is louder than your own.
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Yeah a former coworker once told me that her insurance premiums shouldn’t pay for anything related to my genetic bone disorder because it wasn’t her fault I had it. Some of these people don’t understand the most basic idea behind insurance.
19 Likes
What a nice lady. I hope she had a lot of children. /s
I also hope you are well and happy.
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I’m doing well, thanks. I got the privilege to attend law school on scholarship, which gave me access to pretty good student insurance. It’s not cheap, but it’s not horribly expensive, and the coverage is actually really good, which is about the best you can hope for in our current very broken system. I had a mild heart attack a year ago, and I didn’t even have to declare bankruptcy, so I call that a win.
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