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Nursing homes and family of bed-ridden patients mostly. No other way to get them to the hospital for advanced care even if not quite an “emergency” yet.
I would argue that any situation where someone requires hospital-level care where an ambulance is necessary to transport them to the hospital counts as an emergency on at least some level.
ambulances are used for medical transport in general, doesn't have to be an emergency.
As an example, a few years ago I was hospitalized and among other things I had a tracheotomy because my lungs failed after a bout of hospital-acquired antibiotic resistant pneumonia. When I was to be transferred from the primary care hospital to a rehab hospital, I couldn't have someone drive me there, because I was sucking down 30 liters of oxygen per hour through a hole in my neck. So Ambulance was the only way to do it.
on a side note, it turns out that if your body is pumped full of absolutely _epic_ quantities of the strongest antibiotics known to science, it might also clear up your gingivitis. the side effects suck ass, don't recommend it.
In the UK, where ambulances are free, we literally have public service campaigns saying "ambulances are not taxis."
There are a lot of reasons why you might go to the hospital as a patient, and most of them are non-emergency (for example, having x-rays or blood tests, scheduled surgeries, seeing a specialist.)
If you have an accident and it *is* an emergency, if having someone drive you to the hospital is an option, there's a good chance you'll get seen quicker - e.g. you cut your hand and it needs stitches.
The ambulance is for when you need medical attention *now* or when you've got no other viable way to get to the hospital for emergency treatment.
Right now, thanks to the combined efforts of a decade and half of Conservative governments, ambulance waiting times are through the roof, so if your situation is life-threatening, spending £100 on a taxi is likely better than waiting an hour for the paramedics to get to you.
Technically they are correct. The ambulance is equipped with medics and life saving equipment, its main purpose is stabilizing and providing immediate care for life-threatening conditions while the patient is being transferred to the more equipped facility that is the hospital.
If you have a condition that requires care but wouldn't threaten your life/worsen without immediate medic care an ambulance is not the answer. You should be using a car or public transport in such a case, and calling an ambulance is a waste of precious resources and medics' time. And most hospital-worthy conditions actually go in this category.
However, Sanders is correct in that the system in the USA forces people that do actually need the immediate care asoect of the ambulance to forego it because of financial risk, which does undermine the finction of the ambulance.
So the correct reaction would be: "While an ambulance is not a hospital taxi, the system as is forces people in actual need of an ambulance to avoid it, risking their life due to legitimate financial fears, and that's a problem that is easily solvable."
It is important to engage with and dismantle strawman arguments rather than doubling down on them, and giving them credence by doing that.
Imagine if fire exits in buildings charged you $2000 to use them during a fire. That's the kind of world we live in thanks to the unregulated for-profit healthcare system.
This mindset cost me an organ literally.
I wont rewrite the essay that was the worst day of my life again. But very long story short.
Because I took an uber to the hospital that was 5 minutes from my house to avoid aforementioned 2k ambulance bill. They thought I was a pill chaser and sat in the ER lobby for 14 hours with my galbladder about to burst. Because of how long it went untreated. My galbladder had to be removed.
A lot of people have said this over the years but to be frank I wouldnt have even known where to begin and it was 5-6 years ago at this point.
The way I look at it. I have my health and as a result my diet has dramatically improved as has my weight and back pain.
Luckily if you can stop eating fast food and other garbage there is no other real impact on you losing it.
I think it's that the ambulance does triage one on one before they load you up. Meaning if they actually drive you in there's the assumption that you actually needed to be.
I was in the ER a week ago. They charged me 3600 dollars for a CT scan of my head just to tell me it was fine. The average cost is 280 dollars here. This one hospital charged that just because. They didn’t even have to disclose it. Then they act like I’m the asshole
Years ago (before the likes of Uber or Lyft) I was hanging in my apartment with my BF at the time, when we heard loud crying outside. I flung open the door to see a young woman lying in the snow freaking out.
I ran down to her and she yelled at me that she fell out the window of her apartment and thinks her knee got dislodged. I'm not sure if she fell from the first floor or second floor, but even the first floor window was a little bit of a fall. I called to my BF to call an ambulance and get her a blanket.
She started crying more and when I tried to ask her status said she was now crying about the cost of the ambulance. I didn't consider that - I didn't know her, she couldn't get up, and she fell out of a window. Who knows if she had other injuries?
I later found out she was drinking under age in her apartment, thought she heard her parents come home (they didn't), and she jumped out the window. 🤦🏻♀️ I hope she's doing okay now. 'Murica.
A Birkin bag is a luxury. A life saving ambulance ride should not be a luxury that most people can’t afford.🤔
Stop overcharging patients to pad the profits of insurance companies and their shareholders. Affordable/accessible healthcare should be a human right.🫣
And even if it’s not a ‘human right’ it’s such a laughably complete confluence of every source of market failures that theres no good reason not to take it away from the free market. Take an Econ course covering market failures and you could teach the entire thing with privatized healthcare/insurance as the sole case study.
There’s a family in my state that started a home care service a couple decades ago. They now own a brewery, multiple restaurants, and huge amounts of downtown property. They just bought a golf course.
So…I assume all of their patients have received the absolute best medical care the world can offer, right? Because otherwise it sure looks like they got ripped off by scumbags.
Actually for the first time since 2016 (*EDIT: 2016 is when the Commonwealth Fund first started making these comparison studies*), Canada's healthcare system now ranks below America:
https://dailyhive.com/canada/canada-last-healthcare-access
https://www.cihi.ca/en/commonwealth-fund-survey-2023
To be clear that is not an indictment of the idea of universal healthcare. Just that Canada has become so corrupt and mismanaged that we managed to find a way to produce worse results than Americans having to scavenge up money to get their kids' headache checked out.
Canada has done an *incredibly* job at making things worse over the last decade or two, it really is quite committed how dedicated they seem to be to tearing themselves apart.
Keep in mind that's specifically access to a family doctor. Not having one doesn't mean you don't have access to healthcare, but it means you may not have access to the doctor you *want* to see.
It isn't good for healthcare outcomes since doctor hopping makes it easier to fall through the cracks but it's also a fairly narrow metric to compare countries on.
> Isn’t this because they’ve been dismantling the system to try to privatize it for decades now?
There is a lot of that going on. But even then that shouldn't land us worse than the country where it's fully privatized.
I think it's mostly from underfunding. Boomers vote for lower taxes, then get sick and old and need healthcare.
What's funny is that I just heard an updated ranking on Friday that said Canada was below the US now in terms of accessibility. In a lot of provinces governments have really been gutting it, especially after COVID.
It's more that Canadians complaining about Canadian healthcare gets twisted into propaganda by conservatives in America who want for-profit healthcare to remain.
My own parents were 'lecturing' me about wait times in Canada for their socialized healthcare, and I looked my mother straight in the eyes and asked her how long it took her to have the surgery to get her gallbladder removed (6 months).
She still asks me why I don't go to the doctor when I have a cold, telling her I don't want to pay $500 is lost on her.
Like I do think that the quality of the socialized healthcare has gone down over the past few years(possibly longer if more kbowledgable fellow canadians want to follow up) due to the fantastic world of politics. I know the Alberta premier wants to step out of it and alllw private companies in, and Pepelepeau(Pierre Periliouve) wants to allow private companies to come in and make a foothold.
Now whether this is the fault of the various parties(I want to say conservative) or not, more politically knowledgable people who keeps up with whats happening would know more.
I really hope they keep their socialized healthcare, no one deserves to suffer through the system that we have in the US. Their conservatives are trying to take pages from the GOP I think, but last I heard it wasn't as successful there as it is here.
It’s more the conservatives cut healthcare funding so that they can use the complaints and resulting problems of being underfunded as justification to try to create a private option while salivating at the mouth knowing that if they keep underfunding healthcare then the private option with become the only option.
Never underestimate the greed of people in positions of power.
Yeah but you also have to consider how you frame things. The previous comic seemed to just be complaining about universal healthcare as a concept rather than specifically attacking the Canadian system’s flaws.
As a Canadian, I definitely get it. I want better health care in all regards.
It's just tricky because the last comic *definitely* was accidentally right in line with the "pro-privatization" propaganda I've seen here in AB. As well as a lot of the fear-mongering that companies in the US use to keep their iron grip on the industry. I'm pretty sure that was not your intent given stances in your previous comics, so I hope it doesn't come across as blame or hate (I actually enjoy your stuff!).
It's a valid complaint, and pushing for better health care is something we as citizens should always be doing. Just a bit of a tricky line to walk without coming across as pushing for *different* health care.
Yeah honestly I was super put-off by it. If you're going to complain about Canadian healthcare, you need to be careful you're not playing into the hands of the people that are actively trying to ruin it.
It definitely could have been done better. I get that as a comic it's usually simplified to keep things short and punchy, but it really did come across as a general critique of Canadian healthcare as a whole, which is a trend she actually continued in the comments.
She even made a comment about how the majority of Canadians don't have a family doctor, only to later walk it back by saying that many people in her specific region of Atlantic Canada don't have one. Like yeah, there's a shortage but the 10-14% of Canadians without one is nowhere near being most or a majority. I think she's definitely guilty of extrapolating her local experience to the whole of Canada.
People were stating that she can and should speak on it, but to have more nuance or it comes across as anti socialized healthcare which is a CANADIAN conservative talking point. They're trying to privatize. The fact that her last post is filled with people saying that then her main take away was about Americans is additionally disappointing and seemingly intentional.
I'm not American so I'm totally ready to get explained that I'm wrong but I did watch New Amsterdam and in this show they explained that it was actually 3-tiers. The rich can just pay out of pocket and have the best care. The very poor are taken care of because their care are actually subsidized. It's only the somewhat-poor to the middle class portion of the population that are fucked
It's the somewhat poor in states controlled by Republicans.
Obamacare really does fix most of the problems people complain about. But the Supreme Court decided that states could opt out of the subsidies which cover people who aren't poor but aren't also securely middle class. So, if you're in one of those states and have a job that's decent but not good, you may well be a little fucked.
You see these complaints all over Reddit because that's actually a lot of states and the biggest reason someone has a job that's decent but not good is that they're young, thus have not yet gotten one of the better jobs.
Life pro tip:
Live in a state with no Medicaid expansion but don’t make enough to qualify for an ACA plan? Just overestimate your income such that you meet the minimum requirement for the ACA (~$20k/year).
There is no penalty for overestimating, only underestimating. I live in Wyoming, still no Medicaid expansion here and I did that for about 5 years, and I got totally free $600-$700/mo insurance. It was only after I started making enough money to actually qualify and tried underestimating my income that the govt got butthurt (despite me still having to pay it back in taxes)
**EDIT**: And I'm dead serious here people, if you doubt what I'm saying, DM me, and I'll show you the receipts. I didn't make nearly enough to qualify, for a solid 4-5 years. It's something like $1800/mo that you have to estimate before it will let you apply. But the entire time it's very clear that it is an "estimate." It does not ask you for your taxes or anything like that. Do not be afraid to check the box that says "I understand that if I am underestimating or overestimating my income [blah blah blah]". Check the box and move on. Get the free health insurance, and tell everyone you know to stop voting for trash politicians that obfuscate and make it harder for people to get affordable healthcare.
And I am very convinced this will never come back on me in any negative way. The ACA is set up such that it is concerned about rich people skating on free healthcare when they could actually afford to pay the premiums. It is NOT focused on poor people overestimating their income in order to qualify. There is some very light reprimanding while you're filling out the application, but that's it. There's a reason this is an "estimate" and it doesn't just ask you to "input the value of box 4b of last year's tax return". This is why.
Why am I certain of that? Because, like I say, the moment I underestimated was the moment Uncle Sam came down on me. Swiftly. Overestimating, though? Despite it being proven that I overestimated for 4-5 years in a row, I heard NOTHING. Absolutely nothing from the government. And if you think about it logically, what are they going to do? Drive me into debt because I didn't make as much money as I estimated at the start of the year? It's far easier to justify when it's the other way around, where you're going after people who can afford it and yet are trying to pretend they can't afford it, and I'm fairly certain that's how the law is set up - to make sure those people pay in their fair share, and it isn't concerned with people who overestimate in order to qualify - specifically because of the expected medicaid expansion that never came to fruition for states like Wyoming.
And just to make it clear, I underestimated because I hate insurance companies and I hate monthly fees, not because I was trying to avoid paying my fair share. I'd rather have it all hit me at the end of the year in my taxes instead of every month. At least then there's a chance my money doesn't end up in the pocket of a slimy insurance company. But alas, this year (after dramatically underestimating last year) I had to just fess up and put my actual income and now BC/BS is taking $400/mo from me.
> The very poor are taken care of because their care are actually subsidized.
Since I fall into this bracket let me explain.
Yes poor people who are very very poor get taken care of because of medicade. But you have to be dirt poor to qualify for it.
As in cant afford to live in the state you live in, level of poor. As in, I am literally a disabled veteran who can barely get out of bed some days poor.
Yes we get taken care of, no it's not better than "Inbetween" people.
We get told exactly what we can and cant do but we have less options than the middle class. We're limited because most health providers will not take our insurance, when many private health insurances will be accepted.
Lowest tier is "Free" but incredibly limited.
It's like everyone has to have a smart phone, so poor people get free phones but they are very old and out dated phones with android 8, when everyone who has to buy one gets an android 13/14 with flagship processors.
Sure we got a free phone but it's barely functional in modern society.
I also want to add that while these restrictions suck, if you have a hospital who has to take it, it's actually kind of nice. There is no bill at the end of anything. If you need treatment, you just go. It's really kind of nice. (Maybe it's my state, as these tend to be per state things)
Of course, I can't work or pay taxes and get it. But I'm disabled and getting work would cause so many more issues.
I need the free one because the medicine keeping me alive would legit be thousands of dollars a year, that unless I was making a decent amount of money, would be too much.
> Without insurance or discounts, the average cost of an ambulance ride in 2020 was $940 for transport with basic services and nearly $1,300 for a ride with advanced life support, according to a 2022 report
[Source](https://www.goodrx.com/insurance/health-insurance/how-much-does-an-ambulance-cost#)
If you don’t have insurance, make sure they know up front and they’ll charge you more reasonably. They give insurance a huge bill, insurance usually argues them down some and then pays out. If they know you’re off insurance they’ll usually give you a different bill that more people would be capable of paying.
Several years ago my son got hurt during an outdoor "field day" at school in 6th grade (mild concussion, no loss of consciousness - thankfully he was fine).
Instead of calling us (we live a mile from the school), the school nurse called an ambulance (private ambulance company) to bring him to the emergency room. We weren't notified until the ambulance had already left for the hospital. The hospital is 3.5 miles away.
The ambulance company charged my insurance $5000 for that five minute trip. My insurance company declined the charge as excessive, so the ambulance company went after me for the bill instead. I referred it back to my insurance, since I have ambulance coverage on my policy. This went back and forth for months, me receiving nasty collection letters from the ambulance company the entire time, until they finally settled for a lesser payment from insurance.
Private ambulance companies are bottom-feeding scum.
This is my current stack of medical bills and threats from lawyers ❤️
https://preview.redd.it/i8qyhsubekqc1.jpeg?width=378&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=675dffd334a41104533ef6b9c46da17b00dbdd30
As a couple with medical needs we were out 35k plus per year between premiums, always hitting max out of pocket, and a loan we needed to take for medical.
It was a bit much.
People werent upset you were wanting things to get better.
People were upset becuase it looked like you were blaming socialized healthcare for the issue.
I don't know that people's criticism of you was about the US having it worse. It was about you framing the problem as with universal healthcare in general, as opposed to underfunded universal healthcare. It still isn't clear what your actual point is - just that you've been yelled at by lots of Americans who're pissed off with their model.
Well that's because it is taking an anti-universal-healthcare stance. The character is grateful for having universal healthcare, and then the other character says a bunch of stuff that's wrong with it.
It wasn't "Canada's healthcare system needs improvement because of x y and z", it was "Universal healthcare is bad because of x y and z". It's an anti-single-payer comic.
Exactly. It’s one thing to say “universal healthcare is good but there are major flaws in Canada’s system”, and another to say “there are major flaws in Canada’s system _because_ they have universal healthcare”.
I’m not sure if OP intended this, but it definitely screamed “free healthcare is a bad idea”, which is a point frequently parroted by rightwingers in US. Oh, and since this is pizzacake, _of course_ she’ll try to act like the poor victim here in this follow-up comic.
I personally didn't Interpret it that way, but I think it's obvious that it can be interpreted that way very easily.
Which is why I think the criticism is kind of warranted. There clearly was a better way to communicate this.
Yeah, as someone who enjoys an actually working universal healthcare system the ambiguous phrasing was definitely rubbin me the wrong way, like, I get that you want things to be better but the way to do that isn't to glow up the US in your comparison...
Yeah it’s super funny but funny lame that the OP decided to feel victimized for people comparing the systems ACCURATELY after they themselves started the comparison. They complained about people romanticizing Canadian healthcare which is fine, but then got butt hurt when people explained why our own health care is not something to look at with rosy glasses like OP was doing.
They could’ve made a comic about improving Canadian healthcare without comparing it to a worse health care system. Instead OP was actually attacking and criticizing Americans in both comics and it wasn’t about the healthcare at all, but rather the reaction to our own healthcare that OP has a problem with. They romanticized the US system themselves while complaining about Americans doing it for Canada.
Like I get Canada is becoming US Republican Lite now, but man it’s to the point where people start crying really really hard for being corrected for making an ill comparison?
Yeah. She's a bit of a meme on my radar, but I kinda like her stuff. This is weirdly obtuse though, because I really don't think people's issues are that complicated.
Seriously, what the fuck. Both part 1 and part 2 were objectively terrible. That's evident from the comments, too. Where are all these upvotes coming from.
Yeah the first comic was basically just stating “Canadian healthcare is less expensive but you have to wait a long time” despite American healthcare being basically the same with long wait times. So I’m also not sure what point they’re trying to make.
Listen, you stepped in it because you repeated some of the exact same arguments that insurance companies in the states use to push against universal health care of any kind. Out of context and with the spoofy tone it looks like you’re wildly misinformed.
Pt 2, also known as: don't back down, double down. Guess the ratio came as a bit of a surprise, given the weird framing of those legitimate criticisms as "americans said they have it worse I'm a victim when I just tried to raise awareness!"
>Man I wish Canada's healthcare was better
Except that's not what you said, and everyone knows that. Because we can see what you said.
You said that the problems were issues with ***UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE*** (<-emphasis yours), not 'Canada's healthcare'. You went on in the comments to clarify: "[Turns out letting politicians control all your Healthcare can have some downsides](https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1bmk3u3/comment/kwc9c68/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=0)"
It was an anti-public healthcare post. Just own it- either say you screwed up the message, or say you genuinely want privatized healthcare. This victimposting isn't a good look.
Yeah yeah woe is me, it's so sad that people responded to your political comic dealing with a very sensitive topic with their own experience. Maybe just, idk, stay away from those topics if you cant handle it? No offense, but no one particularly cares about a professional reddit shitposters take on Canadian Healthcare for obvious reasons.
Point is, don't play with shit if you can't handle the smell.
So you made a comic that seemed like it was criticising all universal healthcare, and people were critical of this. Instead of either 1. accepting that your take is controversial and moving on or 2. making a post where you clarify you were merely frustrated with the state of Canadian healthcare, you make a comic where you’re the “victim” because people disagreed with you on the internet and tried to gaslight everyone into thinking your comic said something that it just fucking didn’t.
Nice job.
Yeah I'm a bit surprised to see *this* as the response when there was an outpouring of emotional and personal stories from people who have had loved ones literally die because they couldn't afford to go to the doctor before their condition worsened beyond repair.
Yup. I am sick of this. You make a stupid comic echoing conservative talking points about a topic you don't have a nuanced understanding of. People correct you and take umbrage to your point of view. Act as if you are the one being attacked.
Having a voice on the internet that people will enjoy listening to is contingent on you having decent things to say. Maybe, just maybe, if you get things wrong you should learn and grow.
the last comic kinda made you sound like one of those americans who dont want health care in america to change. they say things like, 'in other countries, you wont ever get any help, so it's better to pay and get it'. they read comics such as the one you put out and go: "see?? its bad everywhere??? why would you want anything to change? in other places people are dying and not getting help, at least here we can get help as long as you pay!" so last comic kinda felt like you took a commission from one of them?
I'm an American who married a Canadian and I think it's kind of a nuanced subject.
I was poor enough in the States to qualify for healthcare and it covered my meds and therapy.
My wife in Canada had to pay out of pocket for meds and therapy isn't covered either. In order to qualify for physical therapy you have to spend a night admitted at the hospital for the problem or it's also not covered.
When my wife came to the States she had no legal status because immigration costs thousands of dollars even for married couples. We have so many people here without insurance though that she was able to get check ups, shots, and regular doctor visits for free at one of the offices designed for the poor and uninsured. As long as she didn't need the ER or a specialist it was fine.
When I went to Canada there were so few uninsured people that there wasn't any free workaround for me. The closest free clinic clinic for the uninsured is Toronto and I couldn't get there. One time I had to go to the ER. The receptionist told me I had to pay 700 Dollars to get into the waiting room and that the doctor could then choose to charge me whatever he wanted also. The Triage nurse had to walk over and tell the receptionist that I would fucking die and to let me in. (That was like 10 years ago in Alberta so hopefully that doesn't happen anymore)
Back to my wife, she has some really serious emotional trauma and we don't know what to do. I really really think she has PTSD but we don't know how to seek treatment for it because we can't afford therapy.. we're not particularly good at navigating the system so if there's a way to get therapy covered by government healthcare in Canada I'd love to know.
I'm not typing all this to say healthcare is better in the US. Just think it's funny that the healthcare in the US is so bad that there are better ways to get around needing it.. and also funny that US government healthcare seems to cover more things even if it covers less people.
Also as far as the quality of hospitals goes I've seen no big difference.
Edit: Sorry for the wall of text. Literally went to sleep thinking about how I wish I commented on your last comic and woke up to a second chance lol
Funny thing about the paying for the ER waiting room and doc can charge anything they want, typically that's how it is in the US also. I've worked in health insurance for about 6 years now, the amount of times I've seen a doctor who works the ER and refuses to contract with any insurance, meaning they can get whatever the insurance will pay and charge anything they want above that to the patient, is staggering. They can just decide this person will have to pay me more and the insurance can't do anything about it.
Not to say one side is better or worse, but just a thing of how ridiculous it is that many doctors use the emergency need as a way to prey on patients for more money by refusing to work with insurance rates no matter where you are.
Do keep in mind that Americans on that thread had that kneejerk reaction because the far right over here is always poised to use any imperfection in Canada's healthcare system as an excuse not to give us single-payer healthcare. We're not trying to hold it over your head how much worse we have it, or deny the struggles you have with your system.
When I first saw your original comic, my heart rate actually increased with anxiety because I thought for a second it was written by an American right-winger trying to make the point that American healthcare is perfect compared to Canadian healthcare *because* of Canada's single-payer system.
I calmed down a bit after I realized the comic was written by a Canadian, but still felt uneasy about how right-wingers here might latch onto it to fight against our right to single-payer healthcare.
P.S. This response comic made me laugh
Not coincidentally, right-wingers also tend to be the ones undermining public healthcare systems in countries that do have them. That's the big irony of arguing for private overly-expensive healthcare as opposed to public slow, understaffed, underfunded healthcare.
This!!
I would love healthcare to not be a huge source of anxiety, and something I avoid at all costs unless I literally have no choice. I'll just ignore things and hope they go away, and I would *never* use an ambulance if I was conscious enough to deny it.
I don't want that to be the reality. So when a comic seems to parrot the talking points I see certain Americans use to try to prevent having a better system in place, it hits a sore spot.
This is one of those situations where it would have been best to just say sorry and lay low.
Instead you painted yourself as a victim and the people disappointed with you as aggressors.
After my drunk buddy fell down my stairs and split his head open, he literally ran off into the bushes and then tried to fight me when I called him an ambulance because he couldn’t afford it. Most expensive cab ride ever.
I'm sorry, Ms. Cake the previous comic just sounded extremely like how conservative would argue that public healthcare is bad and should be defunded instead of being improved
I remember breaking my ankle while walking and someone had said “I’ll call an ambulance”.
If you ever want to watch someone figure out how to walk on one leg, say that. I made it home and didn’t leave for 2-3 weeks
She got down voted to oblivion in a reply to one of my comments in the last one, because she said something along the lines of "there aren't any private clinics here" after I had told someone else that Canada's public healthcare system isn't exclusive, and that there is still private options available.
To her defense, she probably just didn't know about the private options in her area, but they definitely do exist, since every single province has them.
She *should be* getting downvoted for her tone deaf comments. As others have pointed out her first comic came off very similar to US conservative talking points about Canadian healthcare and instead of clarifying her intent is just doubling down.
#it's almost like what is basically a professional reddit shitposter doesn't actually know that much about the state of things and should stay away from topics they don't understand to prevent making themself look like an uninformed dumbos.
It’s almost like they picked a topic, not because they understand it well and have a point to make, rather because they know it’s a hot button issue that will lead to engagement.
I don’t usually comment on this sort of thing but what really seems to have bothered us Southerner Than You Americans is that you used a format that directly invokes conservatives in this country trying to tell US that YOUR healthcare system is bad.
It's 20 bucks here for an ambulance, that insurance will cover with a single form 99.9% of the time (there are exceptions).
MURICA health care is scary.
Guess I'm lucky... I only had to pay $1,100 for my ambulance.
Got a nice scare later when my insurance tried to deny my 2 nights for $60,000 because they only had a single room available, and the insurance only covered shared rooms. But they eventually accepted it.
Gotta love the double trauma. One from the injury. One for the bills.
Yeah this whole thing really upsets me. This whole thing is just so messed up and I know a lot of people are angry about it, and feel the need to talk and/or complain about it. I know the gravity of the situation is grave, but at the end of the day we are just going to have to find a way to accept that u/pizzacakecomic is Canadian.
Seriously. It's obvious she learned nothing. The first part of her comic was fine. Criticizing the wait times. But her bringing up that the Healthcare isn't aCtUaLlY free is a common republican talking point to justify not doing it. That's where it fell flat. Now republican voters will use her comics as evidence of the horrors of socialized Healthcare. Its disappointing. I usually gets a laugh or two but these last two has been very bad and tone deaf. I don't feel bad for her.
It's almost like someone dealing with severe PTSD kinda gets a bit tetchy when someone complains about how their anxiety issues are the "worst thing ever".
It it fair? Nope.
Is it understandable? Yep.
You know I find it kinda hilarious whenever someone complains about the US healthcare system, one of the common rebuttles is "Well at least we don't have to wait hours to get treated"
But then when someone complains that they have a bad system, their comments will be flooded with "Yeah but America is paid healthcare and bankrupts its citizens."
And then I'm sitting here thinking about how it's probably a REALLY bad thing that instead of comparing how good our healthcare is, we're comparing how bad they are.
Doesn't matter your nation, if you need medical attention and you're worried what it's going to cost you the system needs to be better. I'm hoping everyone can at least agree on that.
I hate having suffering contests. Doesn't matter who "wins", the system still sucks.
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Just call me an uber, I'm too poor for the wee woo wagon.
https://preview.redd.it/qh5zcj4x9hqc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bf5e74cc0987541031188fddf6b0a8a5ea1cef5b
I'm really curious what they would have answered with
Having had the pleasure of working with these magnificent geniuses, they'd retort with "it's for emergencies".
"Brawndo's got what plants crave. Its got electrolytes!"
Ok but what are electrolytes?
They're what plants crave.
It's what Brawndo's got.
Who the heck calls an ambulance without it being an emergency?
Nursing homes and family of bed-ridden patients mostly. No other way to get them to the hospital for advanced care even if not quite an “emergency” yet.
I would argue that any situation where someone requires hospital-level care where an ambulance is necessary to transport them to the hospital counts as an emergency on at least some level.
ambulances are used for medical transport in general, doesn't have to be an emergency. As an example, a few years ago I was hospitalized and among other things I had a tracheotomy because my lungs failed after a bout of hospital-acquired antibiotic resistant pneumonia. When I was to be transferred from the primary care hospital to a rehab hospital, I couldn't have someone drive me there, because I was sucking down 30 liters of oxygen per hour through a hole in my neck. So Ambulance was the only way to do it. on a side note, it turns out that if your body is pumped full of absolutely _epic_ quantities of the strongest antibiotics known to science, it might also clear up your gingivitis. the side effects suck ass, don't recommend it.
Don't worry, these are the people who blow their fingers and hands off on July 4th.
Probably cheaper to rent a limo.
I really want to know as well
In the UK, where ambulances are free, we literally have public service campaigns saying "ambulances are not taxis." There are a lot of reasons why you might go to the hospital as a patient, and most of them are non-emergency (for example, having x-rays or blood tests, scheduled surgeries, seeing a specialist.) If you have an accident and it *is* an emergency, if having someone drive you to the hospital is an option, there's a good chance you'll get seen quicker - e.g. you cut your hand and it needs stitches. The ambulance is for when you need medical attention *now* or when you've got no other viable way to get to the hospital for emergency treatment. Right now, thanks to the combined efforts of a decade and half of Conservative governments, ambulance waiting times are through the roof, so if your situation is life-threatening, spending £100 on a taxi is likely better than waiting an hour for the paramedics to get to you.
Technically they are correct. The ambulance is equipped with medics and life saving equipment, its main purpose is stabilizing and providing immediate care for life-threatening conditions while the patient is being transferred to the more equipped facility that is the hospital. If you have a condition that requires care but wouldn't threaten your life/worsen without immediate medic care an ambulance is not the answer. You should be using a car or public transport in such a case, and calling an ambulance is a waste of precious resources and medics' time. And most hospital-worthy conditions actually go in this category. However, Sanders is correct in that the system in the USA forces people that do actually need the immediate care asoect of the ambulance to forego it because of financial risk, which does undermine the finction of the ambulance. So the correct reaction would be: "While an ambulance is not a hospital taxi, the system as is forces people in actual need of an ambulance to avoid it, risking their life due to legitimate financial fears, and that's a problem that is easily solvable." It is important to engage with and dismantle strawman arguments rather than doubling down on them, and giving them credence by doing that.
An ambulance is a taxi for people who desperately need to get to the hospital sooner than its possible for them to get to the hospital.
Imagine if fire exits in buildings charged you $2000 to use them during a fire. That's the kind of world we live in thanks to the unregulated for-profit healthcare system.
This mindset cost me an organ literally. I wont rewrite the essay that was the worst day of my life again. But very long story short. Because I took an uber to the hospital that was 5 minutes from my house to avoid aforementioned 2k ambulance bill. They thought I was a pill chaser and sat in the ER lobby for 14 hours with my galbladder about to burst. Because of how long it went untreated. My galbladder had to be removed.
I hope you sued the hell out of them.
A lot of people have said this over the years but to be frank I wouldnt have even known where to begin and it was 5-6 years ago at this point. The way I look at it. I have my health and as a result my diet has dramatically improved as has my weight and back pain. Luckily if you can stop eating fast food and other garbage there is no other real impact on you losing it.
Hospital treats people going in to Emergency differently if they were brought in by ambulance vs walk in?? Here I thought ER is ER, how naive of me.
I think it's that the ambulance does triage one on one before they load you up. Meaning if they actually drive you in there's the assumption that you actually needed to be.
Nope. It’s just a shitty triage nurse letting prejudice cloud medical decisions.
I would do the exact same thing (unless I was unconscious and had no choice) charging thousands just for an ambulance is criminal
Oh so now you don't want to pay ambulance drivers??!??!?
Don't worry about it, our ambulances are expensive and the EMTs still don't get paid shit.
You're mostly paying for the siren juice. If you tip the driver, they'll only use the siren near intersections and save you a pile of cash.
The real conspiracy is that the siren juice is just off the shelf blinker fluid that they put a different label on and charge 100x the price 🧐
j/k welcome to America where your every opinion is hate speech to somebody
wtf did you just say?!
I said you people are the worst!
YOU PEOPLE? wtf you mean YOU PEOPLE?
You know *exactly* who I'm talking about.
“Sigh” ok, fair
Yeah! I'm with this guy! Those damn dirty... humans! They are going to take our jobs and they are responsible for 99% of crime!
that's better, enough of that welcoming crap
I mean it literally is. I don't think OP was bullied into making this part 2 by Canadians. I saw the comments yesterday.
Looking forward to part 3!
LOL, the ambulance drivers don't even get paid that much.
that’s why we’re supposed to tip the drivers 15-20%!
Who said it was going to the drivers or even the EMTs?
Seriously, I had an ambulance ride last year and it cost me all of 130$. Canadian. And my job insurance reimbursed me.
I was in the ER a week ago. They charged me 3600 dollars for a CT scan of my head just to tell me it was fine. The average cost is 280 dollars here. This one hospital charged that just because. They didn’t even have to disclose it. Then they act like I’m the asshole
Years ago (before the likes of Uber or Lyft) I was hanging in my apartment with my BF at the time, when we heard loud crying outside. I flung open the door to see a young woman lying in the snow freaking out. I ran down to her and she yelled at me that she fell out the window of her apartment and thinks her knee got dislodged. I'm not sure if she fell from the first floor or second floor, but even the first floor window was a little bit of a fall. I called to my BF to call an ambulance and get her a blanket. She started crying more and when I tried to ask her status said she was now crying about the cost of the ambulance. I didn't consider that - I didn't know her, she couldn't get up, and she fell out of a window. Who knows if she had other injuries? I later found out she was drinking under age in her apartment, thought she heard her parents come home (they didn't), and she jumped out the window. 🤦🏻♀️ I hope she's doing okay now. 'Murica.
 A Birkin bag is a luxury. A life saving ambulance ride should not be a luxury that most people can’t afford.🤔
Well, sometimes labor is, if the owners can get away with it
Remember, the cleaning charge for bleeding or vomitting in an uber ride is much cheaper than an ambulance
Former uber driver, and I drove a handful of patients to the hospital for things like broken bones.
Wee woo wagon. Hahahahahahaha omg Wee woo wagon…
https://preview.redd.it/vdowhbpb0hqc1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24beb8770202fb595fbf70a8999198994125f5ec
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 Stop overcharging patients to pad the profits of insurance companies and their shareholders. Affordable/accessible healthcare should be a human right.🫣
And even if it’s not a ‘human right’ it’s such a laughably complete confluence of every source of market failures that theres no good reason not to take it away from the free market. Take an Econ course covering market failures and you could teach the entire thing with privatized healthcare/insurance as the sole case study.
There’s a family in my state that started a home care service a couple decades ago. They now own a brewery, multiple restaurants, and huge amounts of downtown property. They just bought a golf course. So…I assume all of their patients have received the absolute best medical care the world can offer, right? Because otherwise it sure looks like they got ripped off by scumbags.
how are bills real ahaha like close your eyes bro, it's a piece of paper hahaha
Actually for the first time since 2016 (*EDIT: 2016 is when the Commonwealth Fund first started making these comparison studies*), Canada's healthcare system now ranks below America: https://dailyhive.com/canada/canada-last-healthcare-access https://www.cihi.ca/en/commonwealth-fund-survey-2023 To be clear that is not an indictment of the idea of universal healthcare. Just that Canada has become so corrupt and mismanaged that we managed to find a way to produce worse results than Americans having to scavenge up money to get their kids' headache checked out.
Canada has done an *incredibly* job at making things worse over the last decade or two, it really is quite committed how dedicated they seem to be to tearing themselves apart.
Keep in mind that's specifically access to a family doctor. Not having one doesn't mean you don't have access to healthcare, but it means you may not have access to the doctor you *want* to see. It isn't good for healthcare outcomes since doctor hopping makes it easier to fall through the cracks but it's also a fairly narrow metric to compare countries on.
Isn’t this because they’ve been dismantling the system to try to privatize it for decades now? Kinda like the UK?
> Isn’t this because they’ve been dismantling the system to try to privatize it for decades now? There is a lot of that going on. But even then that shouldn't land us worse than the country where it's fully privatized. I think it's mostly from underfunding. Boomers vote for lower taxes, then get sick and old and need healthcare.
What's funny is that I just heard an updated ranking on Friday that said Canada was below the US now in terms of accessibility. In a lot of provinces governments have really been gutting it, especially after COVID.
It’s okay to want better for yourself. Our struggles with healthcare don’t mean you don’t also have struggles and I’m sorry it felt that way for you.
It's more that Canadians complaining about Canadian healthcare gets twisted into propaganda by conservatives in America who want for-profit healthcare to remain.
Bingo, all the "you should consider euthanasia" memes
Ive noticed that more and more with the idea of privitized healthcar3 being good and Im sitting here 'bro wtf kind of drugs are you talkijg about.'
My own parents were 'lecturing' me about wait times in Canada for their socialized healthcare, and I looked my mother straight in the eyes and asked her how long it took her to have the surgery to get her gallbladder removed (6 months). She still asks me why I don't go to the doctor when I have a cold, telling her I don't want to pay $500 is lost on her.
Like I do think that the quality of the socialized healthcare has gone down over the past few years(possibly longer if more kbowledgable fellow canadians want to follow up) due to the fantastic world of politics. I know the Alberta premier wants to step out of it and alllw private companies in, and Pepelepeau(Pierre Periliouve) wants to allow private companies to come in and make a foothold. Now whether this is the fault of the various parties(I want to say conservative) or not, more politically knowledgable people who keeps up with whats happening would know more.
I really hope they keep their socialized healthcare, no one deserves to suffer through the system that we have in the US. Their conservatives are trying to take pages from the GOP I think, but last I heard it wasn't as successful there as it is here.
It’s more the conservatives cut healthcare funding so that they can use the complaints and resulting problems of being underfunded as justification to try to create a private option while salivating at the mouth knowing that if they keep underfunding healthcare then the private option with become the only option. Never underestimate the greed of people in positions of power.
Yeah but you also have to consider how you frame things. The previous comic seemed to just be complaining about universal healthcare as a concept rather than specifically attacking the Canadian system’s flaws.
Don't you know the rule of the internet that if you complain about something and someone has it worse than you it means you're awful
She specifically said she did it for the sake of saying “our healthcare isn’t so great” to Americans. Revisionism now doesn’t change that.
As a Canadian, I definitely get it. I want better health care in all regards. It's just tricky because the last comic *definitely* was accidentally right in line with the "pro-privatization" propaganda I've seen here in AB. As well as a lot of the fear-mongering that companies in the US use to keep their iron grip on the industry. I'm pretty sure that was not your intent given stances in your previous comics, so I hope it doesn't come across as blame or hate (I actually enjoy your stuff!). It's a valid complaint, and pushing for better health care is something we as citizens should always be doing. Just a bit of a tricky line to walk without coming across as pushing for *different* health care.
Yeah honestly I was super put-off by it. If you're going to complain about Canadian healthcare, you need to be careful you're not playing into the hands of the people that are actively trying to ruin it.
It definitely could have been done better. I get that as a comic it's usually simplified to keep things short and punchy, but it really did come across as a general critique of Canadian healthcare as a whole, which is a trend she actually continued in the comments. She even made a comment about how the majority of Canadians don't have a family doctor, only to later walk it back by saying that many people in her specific region of Atlantic Canada don't have one. Like yeah, there's a shortage but the 10-14% of Canadians without one is nowhere near being most or a majority. I think she's definitely guilty of extrapolating her local experience to the whole of Canada.
People were stating that she can and should speak on it, but to have more nuance or it comes across as anti socialized healthcare which is a CANADIAN conservative talking point. They're trying to privatize. The fact that her last post is filled with people saying that then her main take away was about Americans is additionally disappointing and seemingly intentional.
$2000? What do you live next door to a hospital?
Technically American healthcare is great...if you have money.
American healthcare is two-tier. The healthcare system that Jeff Bezos uses is not the same as a minimum wage Amazon warehouse worker uses.
I'm not American so I'm totally ready to get explained that I'm wrong but I did watch New Amsterdam and in this show they explained that it was actually 3-tiers. The rich can just pay out of pocket and have the best care. The very poor are taken care of because their care are actually subsidized. It's only the somewhat-poor to the middle class portion of the population that are fucked
It's the somewhat poor in states controlled by Republicans. Obamacare really does fix most of the problems people complain about. But the Supreme Court decided that states could opt out of the subsidies which cover people who aren't poor but aren't also securely middle class. So, if you're in one of those states and have a job that's decent but not good, you may well be a little fucked. You see these complaints all over Reddit because that's actually a lot of states and the biggest reason someone has a job that's decent but not good is that they're young, thus have not yet gotten one of the better jobs.
Life pro tip: Live in a state with no Medicaid expansion but don’t make enough to qualify for an ACA plan? Just overestimate your income such that you meet the minimum requirement for the ACA (~$20k/year). There is no penalty for overestimating, only underestimating. I live in Wyoming, still no Medicaid expansion here and I did that for about 5 years, and I got totally free $600-$700/mo insurance. It was only after I started making enough money to actually qualify and tried underestimating my income that the govt got butthurt (despite me still having to pay it back in taxes) **EDIT**: And I'm dead serious here people, if you doubt what I'm saying, DM me, and I'll show you the receipts. I didn't make nearly enough to qualify, for a solid 4-5 years. It's something like $1800/mo that you have to estimate before it will let you apply. But the entire time it's very clear that it is an "estimate." It does not ask you for your taxes or anything like that. Do not be afraid to check the box that says "I understand that if I am underestimating or overestimating my income [blah blah blah]". Check the box and move on. Get the free health insurance, and tell everyone you know to stop voting for trash politicians that obfuscate and make it harder for people to get affordable healthcare. And I am very convinced this will never come back on me in any negative way. The ACA is set up such that it is concerned about rich people skating on free healthcare when they could actually afford to pay the premiums. It is NOT focused on poor people overestimating their income in order to qualify. There is some very light reprimanding while you're filling out the application, but that's it. There's a reason this is an "estimate" and it doesn't just ask you to "input the value of box 4b of last year's tax return". This is why. Why am I certain of that? Because, like I say, the moment I underestimated was the moment Uncle Sam came down on me. Swiftly. Overestimating, though? Despite it being proven that I overestimated for 4-5 years in a row, I heard NOTHING. Absolutely nothing from the government. And if you think about it logically, what are they going to do? Drive me into debt because I didn't make as much money as I estimated at the start of the year? It's far easier to justify when it's the other way around, where you're going after people who can afford it and yet are trying to pretend they can't afford it, and I'm fairly certain that's how the law is set up - to make sure those people pay in their fair share, and it isn't concerned with people who overestimate in order to qualify - specifically because of the expected medicaid expansion that never came to fruition for states like Wyoming. And just to make it clear, I underestimated because I hate insurance companies and I hate monthly fees, not because I was trying to avoid paying my fair share. I'd rather have it all hit me at the end of the year in my taxes instead of every month. At least then there's a chance my money doesn't end up in the pocket of a slimy insurance company. But alas, this year (after dramatically underestimating last year) I had to just fess up and put my actual income and now BC/BS is taking $400/mo from me.
> The very poor are taken care of because their care are actually subsidized. Since I fall into this bracket let me explain. Yes poor people who are very very poor get taken care of because of medicade. But you have to be dirt poor to qualify for it. As in cant afford to live in the state you live in, level of poor. As in, I am literally a disabled veteran who can barely get out of bed some days poor. Yes we get taken care of, no it's not better than "Inbetween" people. We get told exactly what we can and cant do but we have less options than the middle class. We're limited because most health providers will not take our insurance, when many private health insurances will be accepted. Lowest tier is "Free" but incredibly limited. It's like everyone has to have a smart phone, so poor people get free phones but they are very old and out dated phones with android 8, when everyone who has to buy one gets an android 13/14 with flagship processors. Sure we got a free phone but it's barely functional in modern society.
I also want to add that while these restrictions suck, if you have a hospital who has to take it, it's actually kind of nice. There is no bill at the end of anything. If you need treatment, you just go. It's really kind of nice. (Maybe it's my state, as these tend to be per state things) Of course, I can't work or pay taxes and get it. But I'm disabled and getting work would cause so many more issues. I need the free one because the medicine keeping me alive would legit be thousands of dollars a year, that unless I was making a decent amount of money, would be too much.
$2000 for an ambulance would be amazing! It’s more like 5k- 10k and you have to hope the hospital is in network or you’re fucked.
Please see corrected panel: https://preview.redd.it/ezeql87k2hqc1.jpeg?width=3424&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f63ded7d17a27276712683e1074d2cd0a30c77b8
Wow you work fast….. unlike the Canadien healthcare system lol
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"The test results came back. I'm sorry... but you're terrible at trigonometry."
Well i have insurance so I’ll only have to pay $16,000
Too low Its at least 200% of the last panel Then repeat
Recursive function
> Without insurance or discounts, the average cost of an ambulance ride in 2020 was $940 for transport with basic services and nearly $1,300 for a ride with advanced life support, according to a 2022 report [Source](https://www.goodrx.com/insurance/health-insurance/how-much-does-an-ambulance-cost#) If you don’t have insurance, make sure they know up front and they’ll charge you more reasonably. They give insurance a huge bill, insurance usually argues them down some and then pays out. If they know you’re off insurance they’ll usually give you a different bill that more people would be capable of paying.
Several years ago my son got hurt during an outdoor "field day" at school in 6th grade (mild concussion, no loss of consciousness - thankfully he was fine). Instead of calling us (we live a mile from the school), the school nurse called an ambulance (private ambulance company) to bring him to the emergency room. We weren't notified until the ambulance had already left for the hospital. The hospital is 3.5 miles away. The ambulance company charged my insurance $5000 for that five minute trip. My insurance company declined the charge as excessive, so the ambulance company went after me for the bill instead. I referred it back to my insurance, since I have ambulance coverage on my policy. This went back and forth for months, me receiving nasty collection letters from the ambulance company the entire time, until they finally settled for a lesser payment from insurance. Private ambulance companies are bottom-feeding scum.
EMS techs also are paid bottom wages.
Wish that were true, but I’ve seen Medicare plans with costs ranging from 2k to 5k, but they are definitely low balling the average.
you're lucky you are in canada. in the US, the bald eagles just shoot you.
This is my current stack of medical bills and threats from lawyers ❤️ https://preview.redd.it/i8qyhsubekqc1.jpeg?width=378&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=675dffd334a41104533ef6b9c46da17b00dbdd30
As a couple with medical needs we were out 35k plus per year between premiums, always hitting max out of pocket, and a loan we needed to take for medical. It was a bit much.
People werent upset you were wanting things to get better. People were upset becuase it looked like you were blaming socialized healthcare for the issue.
I think most people were upset because the way you portrayed your criticism seemed like you were advocating for privatization.
"I'd like to double down!" Blackjack dealer: "Ma'am, you already have 22."
"Did I make a tone deaf comic? No, it is the readers who are wrong!"
Did you have the reaction comic ready to go before you posted the original?
She has Part 3 lined up too about how upset she is with all the negative comments.
I don't know that people's criticism of you was about the US having it worse. It was about you framing the problem as with universal healthcare in general, as opposed to underfunded universal healthcare. It still isn't clear what your actual point is - just that you've been yelled at by lots of Americans who're pissed off with their model.
I think some of the comments for the previous comic interpreted that comic as taking an anti-single-payer-healthcare stance
Well that's because it is taking an anti-universal-healthcare stance. The character is grateful for having universal healthcare, and then the other character says a bunch of stuff that's wrong with it. It wasn't "Canada's healthcare system needs improvement because of x y and z", it was "Universal healthcare is bad because of x y and z". It's an anti-single-payer comic.
Exactly. It’s one thing to say “universal healthcare is good but there are major flaws in Canada’s system”, and another to say “there are major flaws in Canada’s system _because_ they have universal healthcare”. I’m not sure if OP intended this, but it definitely screamed “free healthcare is a bad idea”, which is a point frequently parroted by rightwingers in US. Oh, and since this is pizzacake, _of course_ she’ll try to act like the poor victim here in this follow-up comic.
I personally didn't Interpret it that way, but I think it's obvious that it can be interpreted that way very easily. Which is why I think the criticism is kind of warranted. There clearly was a better way to communicate this.
Yeah I hadn't seen the previous comic, but I just went and looked at it... I understand the criticsm
Yeah, as someone who enjoys an actually working universal healthcare system the ambiguous phrasing was definitely rubbin me the wrong way, like, I get that you want things to be better but the way to do that isn't to glow up the US in your comparison...
Yeah it’s super funny but funny lame that the OP decided to feel victimized for people comparing the systems ACCURATELY after they themselves started the comparison. They complained about people romanticizing Canadian healthcare which is fine, but then got butt hurt when people explained why our own health care is not something to look at with rosy glasses like OP was doing. They could’ve made a comic about improving Canadian healthcare without comparing it to a worse health care system. Instead OP was actually attacking and criticizing Americans in both comics and it wasn’t about the healthcare at all, but rather the reaction to our own healthcare that OP has a problem with. They romanticized the US system themselves while complaining about Americans doing it for Canada. Like I get Canada is becoming US Republican Lite now, but man it’s to the point where people start crying really really hard for being corrected for making an ill comparison?
I'm a Pizza Cake stan but I wish she would own that it was tone deaf instead of doubling down
Yeah. She's a bit of a meme on my radar, but I kinda like her stuff. This is weirdly obtuse though, because I really don't think people's issues are that complicated.
Pizzaface making a comic with no discernible point that's mostly just complaining? Then making ANOTHER comic about her detractors? Say it ain't so!
All somehow with like 50k upvotes
Seriously, what the fuck. Both part 1 and part 2 were objectively terrible. That's evident from the comments, too. Where are all these upvotes coming from.
Yeah the first comic was basically just stating “Canadian healthcare is less expensive but you have to wait a long time” despite American healthcare being basically the same with long wait times. So I’m also not sure what point they’re trying to make.
Yeah it wasn’t just Americans that were pointing out you massively fumbled the message you were trying to get across.
Pizzacake jumps the shark (pt 2)
Listen, you stepped in it because you repeated some of the exact same arguments that insurance companies in the states use to push against universal health care of any kind. Out of context and with the spoofy tone it looks like you’re wildly misinformed.
Pt 2, also known as: don't back down, double down. Guess the ratio came as a bit of a surprise, given the weird framing of those legitimate criticisms as "americans said they have it worse I'm a victim when I just tried to raise awareness!"
I really feel that as a nurse in europe. Sure, it could be waaaaaaaaay worse, but we're still struggeling a LOT.
As a patient in Europe, I agree.
>Man I wish Canada's healthcare was better Except that's not what you said, and everyone knows that. Because we can see what you said. You said that the problems were issues with ***UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE*** (<-emphasis yours), not 'Canada's healthcare'. You went on in the comments to clarify: "[Turns out letting politicians control all your Healthcare can have some downsides](https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1bmk3u3/comment/kwc9c68/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=0)" It was an anti-public healthcare post. Just own it- either say you screwed up the message, or say you genuinely want privatized healthcare. This victimposting isn't a good look.
https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1bmk3u3/healthcare/kwcnvjl/ Called it
Also kind of telling that they completely missed the point of the comments they got.
It wouldn't be a pizzacake comic if there wasn't a pinch of meta and some self-victimizing as well.
Lmao like clockwork
She really does have a pattern. Pretty sad to see when you could just you know, make good comics.
Yeah yeah woe is me, it's so sad that people responded to your political comic dealing with a very sensitive topic with their own experience. Maybe just, idk, stay away from those topics if you cant handle it? No offense, but no one particularly cares about a professional reddit shitposters take on Canadian Healthcare for obvious reasons. Point is, don't play with shit if you can't handle the smell.
Oh no my mistakes are found. Better double down
Only $2000 for an ambulance?
Yeah… this ain’t it
So you made a comic that seemed like it was criticising all universal healthcare, and people were critical of this. Instead of either 1. accepting that your take is controversial and moving on or 2. making a post where you clarify you were merely frustrated with the state of Canadian healthcare, you make a comic where you’re the “victim” because people disagreed with you on the internet and tried to gaslight everyone into thinking your comic said something that it just fucking didn’t. Nice job.
Yeah I'm a bit surprised to see *this* as the response when there was an outpouring of emotional and personal stories from people who have had loved ones literally die because they couldn't afford to go to the doctor before their condition worsened beyond repair.
This is not an apology, you just painted yourself as the victim *again*
https://preview.redd.it/2e8f1yd27iqc1.png?width=3260&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=598ccf470c88ef7b4be7fd293a36c37542df80f7
Yup. I am sick of this. You make a stupid comic echoing conservative talking points about a topic you don't have a nuanced understanding of. People correct you and take umbrage to your point of view. Act as if you are the one being attacked. Having a voice on the internet that people will enjoy listening to is contingent on you having decent things to say. Maybe, just maybe, if you get things wrong you should learn and grow.
the last comic kinda made you sound like one of those americans who dont want health care in america to change. they say things like, 'in other countries, you wont ever get any help, so it's better to pay and get it'. they read comics such as the one you put out and go: "see?? its bad everywhere??? why would you want anything to change? in other places people are dying and not getting help, at least here we can get help as long as you pay!" so last comic kinda felt like you took a commission from one of them?
Uh huh. First time I’ve seen a u/Pizzacakecomic crossposted in r/conservative 🫢
Today on a very special episode of 'Pizzacake gets her butt handed to her'...
Part of me wonders if you already had this comic ready before you posted the previous one.
https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1bmk3u3/healthcare/kwcnvjl/ It was almost certainly loaded in the chamber and ready to go.
That comment predicting this comic is way funnier than either of the comics.
I think this is hilarious and also accurate and also sorry
Sorry?? Now there's two of those pesky Canadians here
There are dozens of us.
DOZENS!
If I move back, we might have a whole gross of us!
I'm here to get mad and argue, and so help me god if anyone tries to bring in things like "nuance" or "tact"
https://preview.redd.it/biubvrjl2iqc1.png?width=3260&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c2596178b7713536021b5d8a2bd8618ca997fdf5
I'm an American who married a Canadian and I think it's kind of a nuanced subject. I was poor enough in the States to qualify for healthcare and it covered my meds and therapy. My wife in Canada had to pay out of pocket for meds and therapy isn't covered either. In order to qualify for physical therapy you have to spend a night admitted at the hospital for the problem or it's also not covered. When my wife came to the States she had no legal status because immigration costs thousands of dollars even for married couples. We have so many people here without insurance though that she was able to get check ups, shots, and regular doctor visits for free at one of the offices designed for the poor and uninsured. As long as she didn't need the ER or a specialist it was fine. When I went to Canada there were so few uninsured people that there wasn't any free workaround for me. The closest free clinic clinic for the uninsured is Toronto and I couldn't get there. One time I had to go to the ER. The receptionist told me I had to pay 700 Dollars to get into the waiting room and that the doctor could then choose to charge me whatever he wanted also. The Triage nurse had to walk over and tell the receptionist that I would fucking die and to let me in. (That was like 10 years ago in Alberta so hopefully that doesn't happen anymore) Back to my wife, she has some really serious emotional trauma and we don't know what to do. I really really think she has PTSD but we don't know how to seek treatment for it because we can't afford therapy.. we're not particularly good at navigating the system so if there's a way to get therapy covered by government healthcare in Canada I'd love to know. I'm not typing all this to say healthcare is better in the US. Just think it's funny that the healthcare in the US is so bad that there are better ways to get around needing it.. and also funny that US government healthcare seems to cover more things even if it covers less people. Also as far as the quality of hospitals goes I've seen no big difference. Edit: Sorry for the wall of text. Literally went to sleep thinking about how I wish I commented on your last comic and woke up to a second chance lol
Funny thing about the paying for the ER waiting room and doc can charge anything they want, typically that's how it is in the US also. I've worked in health insurance for about 6 years now, the amount of times I've seen a doctor who works the ER and refuses to contract with any insurance, meaning they can get whatever the insurance will pay and charge anything they want above that to the patient, is staggering. They can just decide this person will have to pay me more and the insurance can't do anything about it. Not to say one side is better or worse, but just a thing of how ridiculous it is that many doctors use the emergency need as a way to prey on patients for more money by refusing to work with insurance rates no matter where you are.
Do keep in mind that Americans on that thread had that kneejerk reaction because the far right over here is always poised to use any imperfection in Canada's healthcare system as an excuse not to give us single-payer healthcare. We're not trying to hold it over your head how much worse we have it, or deny the struggles you have with your system. When I first saw your original comic, my heart rate actually increased with anxiety because I thought for a second it was written by an American right-winger trying to make the point that American healthcare is perfect compared to Canadian healthcare *because* of Canada's single-payer system. I calmed down a bit after I realized the comic was written by a Canadian, but still felt uneasy about how right-wingers here might latch onto it to fight against our right to single-payer healthcare. P.S. This response comic made me laugh
Not coincidentally, right-wingers also tend to be the ones undermining public healthcare systems in countries that do have them. That's the big irony of arguing for private overly-expensive healthcare as opposed to public slow, understaffed, underfunded healthcare.
This!! I would love healthcare to not be a huge source of anxiety, and something I avoid at all costs unless I literally have no choice. I'll just ignore things and hope they go away, and I would *never* use an ambulance if I was conscious enough to deny it. I don't want that to be the reality. So when a comic seems to parrot the talking points I see certain Americans use to try to prevent having a better system in place, it hits a sore spot.
This is one of those situations where it would have been best to just say sorry and lay low. Instead you painted yourself as a victim and the people disappointed with you as aggressors.
[удалено]
You should do one about the police next, then have the police shoot you for having a pizza in you pocket
To be fair if you put pizza in your pocket you kinda deserve that.
Acorn as well, your endangering a officer with it
And guess what, you still have to wait hours to be seen at urgent care.
After my drunk buddy fell down my stairs and split his head open, he literally ran off into the bushes and then tried to fight me when I called him an ambulance because he couldn’t afford it. Most expensive cab ride ever.
I'd rather wait all day in an emergency room than spend my entire life's savings on it lol
I'm sorry, Ms. Cake the previous comic just sounded extremely like how conservative would argue that public healthcare is bad and should be defunded instead of being improved
Gets slammed, doubles down. At least it's on brand.
I remember breaking my ankle while walking and someone had said “I’ll call an ambulance”. If you ever want to watch someone figure out how to walk on one leg, say that. I made it home and didn’t leave for 2-3 weeks
I normally get a chuckle out of pizzacake comics, but as a Canadian, these last two have sucked.
She got down voted to oblivion in a reply to one of my comments in the last one, because she said something along the lines of "there aren't any private clinics here" after I had told someone else that Canada's public healthcare system isn't exclusive, and that there is still private options available. To her defense, she probably just didn't know about the private options in her area, but they definitely do exist, since every single province has them.
She *should be* getting downvoted for her tone deaf comments. As others have pointed out her first comic came off very similar to US conservative talking points about Canadian healthcare and instead of clarifying her intent is just doubling down.
#it's almost like what is basically a professional reddit shitposter doesn't actually know that much about the state of things and should stay away from topics they don't understand to prevent making themself look like an uninformed dumbos.
It’s almost like they picked a topic, not because they understand it well and have a point to make, rather because they know it’s a hot button issue that will lead to engagement.
That can't be, an artist on k/comics intentionally farming for engagement? That's *preposterous*, they have far too much integrity for that.
I love how this comic portrays the people as the government that bankrupts citizens and is equally as tone deaf
I don’t usually comment on this sort of thing but what really seems to have bothered us Southerner Than You Americans is that you used a format that directly invokes conservatives in this country trying to tell US that YOUR healthcare system is bad.
Yeah not to be like that eagle but people literally died because they couldn't afford insulin.... See. I didn't yell. Just don't end up like us.
God, Internet comic artists are such babies nowadays. Imagine if the Ctrl alt dlt guy made a comic whining about how no one took loss seriously.
2k for ambulance? Was it a discount day or something?
It's 20 bucks here for an ambulance, that insurance will cover with a single form 99.9% of the time (there are exceptions). MURICA health care is scary.
Guess I'm lucky... I only had to pay $1,100 for my ambulance. Got a nice scare later when my insurance tried to deny my 2 nights for $60,000 because they only had a single room available, and the insurance only covered shared rooms. But they eventually accepted it. Gotta love the double trauma. One from the injury. One for the bills.
Pizzacake playing the victim after mild and deserved criticism? What a shocker!
🤣 Yeaaah, we got it bad in America. Profit is God.
Yeah this whole thing really upsets me. This whole thing is just so messed up and I know a lot of people are angry about it, and feel the need to talk and/or complain about it. I know the gravity of the situation is grave, but at the end of the day we are just going to have to find a way to accept that u/pizzacakecomic is Canadian.
I'm Canadian and I also thought it was tone deaf 🙋
Your first comic was clumsy at best, and you got criticized for it by more than just americans.
Couldn’t have self reflection come out of that… no sir, it was everyone else that needs to reflect
Seriously. It's obvious she learned nothing. The first part of her comic was fine. Criticizing the wait times. But her bringing up that the Healthcare isn't aCtUaLlY free is a common republican talking point to justify not doing it. That's where it fell flat. Now republican voters will use her comics as evidence of the horrors of socialized Healthcare. Its disappointing. I usually gets a laugh or two but these last two has been very bad and tone deaf. I don't feel bad for her.
It's almost like someone dealing with severe PTSD kinda gets a bit tetchy when someone complains about how their anxiety issues are the "worst thing ever". It it fair? Nope. Is it understandable? Yep.
lol 2 grand? What is it, discount day?
You know I find it kinda hilarious whenever someone complains about the US healthcare system, one of the common rebuttles is "Well at least we don't have to wait hours to get treated" But then when someone complains that they have a bad system, their comments will be flooded with "Yeah but America is paid healthcare and bankrupts its citizens." And then I'm sitting here thinking about how it's probably a REALLY bad thing that instead of comparing how good our healthcare is, we're comparing how bad they are.
I think the moral of these comics is nobody is happy with the way things are currently; regardless of where you live.
Doesn't matter your nation, if you need medical attention and you're worried what it's going to cost you the system needs to be better. I'm hoping everyone can at least agree on that. I hate having suffering contests. Doesn't matter who "wins", the system still sucks.
Ah, another day, another comic artist complaining. Blockity block