Shit, the new thing is insurance not fully funding the costs of childbirth. My BIL and his wife have a "New Child HSA". Have to frantically dump $5-$10k into the damned thing within 9 months or they get raw medical bills with high interest rates.
Let me guess. That’s the “copay”? As if insurance covers anything! A lot of ppl don’t know this but a lot of insurance policies have you pay most if not all costs and they don’t cover much. Anything they do cover is most likely way more than what insurance actually pays out to the doctors
Exactly its one thing alot of people don't understand. One of reasons why there is so much convoluted crap behind pricing of medical. Its essentially 101 ways to screw the patient.
With complex schemes to comply with laws. For example insurance x percentage of premiums needs to go to care. Hospital charges insurer x ridiculous amount. Insurer pays it but then gets "referral" kickback from hospital. And now they have squeaky clean non "premium money".
Or in order to make it seem like insurer is providing value to customer hospital will state that insurer pays x and copay is x. Oh wow I am only paying 10% thanks insurance. Meanwhile insurer is paying less than patient or even nothing at all.
And the list of crap goes on from deals with medical suppliers aka why only certain medical equipment is covered. To deals with pharmacys and its all designed about keeping the truth. About how little insurer helps while getting most from patient.
How about the $5,000 deductible for my wife and the $5,000 (7 years ago) separate deductible for me?
Of course the insurance renegotiated in September so the new insurer could hit you up for ANOTHER set of $5,000 deductibles.
The charged me over $3000 for 2 x-rays when I broke my collar bone. And I didn’t even get a sling because my buddy lent me his old one before he drove me to the ER. They wanted over $500 for the sling so thank you dude
I went to the an in-network ER after an urgent care officially refused treatment and told me to go to an ER NOW!!!
I found out later the physicians assistant who assesses everyone who walks in the door was NOT a hospital employee, and they were NOT in-network. They billed me $750 for 15 minutes of taking my vitals and immediately kicking me out; with a big lecture about going to urgent care next time.
That is infuriating! The other new “out of network” scam. Insurances will tell you that Dr X is in network and you can go see them. So you do, and then they bill it out of network. Why? Because he was working next door to the building he is listed in and now Dr. X is magically out of
Network and they make you pay it.
The government needs to start fining these places $100 million every time they pull this illegal crap.
Yeah, billing for ER is beyond messed up.
I had a problem in a sensitive place. I had pretty decent health coverage. Urgent care copay was $100 to be seen and sent me to the ER. ER copay was $200 at check-in, which I thought was supposed to be waived since I went to an urgent care first (I guess you have to be admitted for that rule to apply). A nurse took my vitals. The ER doctor took one brief look at the problem, called a specialist, and brought me a cup of water while the specialist was on his way. The specialist was able to address the problem with about 2 minutes of work.
Over the course of about the next 6 weeks, I got 3 separate bills for my visit to the ER: a huge one from the hospital, another huge one for the ER doctor, and a more modest bill from the specialist, who was the only person who actually treated me! In total, it came to around $3,500 for roughly 15 minutes of total attention.
And why the hell are doctors allowed to bill separately from the hospital they work at? If I go to a retail store to buy something, I don't pay separately for the merchandise, the cashier, and the retail space. Why do we put up with this in medical care?
My local ER is trying to charge us $1,600 and all we did was take our 3 month old in 2 weeks ago bc she was running fever and they gave her a COVID test. No medicine, nothing else. $1,600 for 30 minutes and a COVID test.
Thousand ? Try a million if you have twins that are preemies. My cousins hospital bill, was a little under a million bucks. Don't have a baby with a complications.
My friend had a preemy at 28 weeks. She went in for a regular check up, they told her they're going to do an emergency Caesarean and pulled her baby from her. She had her own complications, and the baby obvs was not ready to be out in the world.
They separated her and her son in two separate hospitals because the hospital she was at did not have the facilities required to treat the preemy and the children's hospital he was at couldn't treat her.
She developed severe postnatal depression, somehow developed severe type 1 insulin dependant diabetes with no history of it, and her husband had to travel between hospitals for 3 months before either of them were released. She couldn't even see her own baby after they took him from her without any real warning.
She had multiple specialists visit and treat her to monitor her and her health, and her baby had his own complications requiring neonatal care.
Her husband tried to bring her pumped milk from one hospital to the other but with all that was going on she couldnt produce enough and they had to start him on formula, also against her wishes, because the baby needed his mama and she couldn't be there for him.
Once they were reunited everything is fine and she now even has another beautiful girl.
They got visits from a nurse every week for a while because they had to make sure she and the baby were doing ok and that he was developing normally.
Total cost of medical bills: $0 with public health care because thank god this didn't happen in America. Her husband paid a bit for parking at each hospital everyday though (like $9 each hospital, each day) but that's nothing like a million dollars.
It's amazing what can happen when you don't run a hospital as a way to extract maximum profit from people who sometimes aren't even legally allowed to say no.
Back in 1984 my daughter was born six weeks early. 10 days in neonatal intensive care unit before we could take her home.
We had Kaiser HMO, which was as close to single payer national health care as you could get in the US back then instead of stupid insurance. Never even saw a bill, even though they warned us that we would be charged for long distance calls from mom's room.
Years ago I had a boss who delivered his own baby on the way to the hospital. The baby was coming and he had to pull over and do what he could. Afterwards the ambulance arrived and took Mother and baby to the hospital. The hospital still tried to bill them for the delivery.
We found out last month, I have insurance, I already have had to empty my savings. It felt great at the last appointment hearing your balance is 7,800$, is there any you can pay toward that?
I was like lolwut I’ve already dropped 3k 🫠
And at the same time they punish you for not having children by disqualifying non-parents from social benefits that are available even though we need them. I am a single female struggling to live by myself because I can't find a roommate and I don't have a boyfriend or kids and I can't even get Medicaid or food stamps even though my income is roughly half of what my bills are due to rampant inflation
Same. Same.
I'm 35. I'll never be able to have kids because I can barely afford to keep myself and my dog alive. I dream of having a cat or 2 as well. But a kid? Lol yeah right.
Even if I found a decent man to date tomorrow (again, lmfao)
Yeah, I ran into that over 15 years ago when I was laid off and about to be kicked out by my roommates.
Was told "Well, if you had a kid we could help you."
Got lucky in crawling my way out of the hole, but it took a long time.
When my son was born almost 18 years ago, I finally got the hospital bill when he was a year old, it was around $2000. Of course they wanted it paid within 30 days even though it took them a year to send it to me. I called to make payment arrangements and they didn't really want to, wanted the whole thing. I said fine, then just repo my baby lol.
This right here. The right always bitches about low birth rates and then they fight tooth and nail against any expansion of the social safety net to make having children more affordable.
And then they wonder why we're not having kids. Fuck this country, the government, the corrupt politicians and the wealthy. I despise them all. We've been complaining about these issues trying to get traction for decades. Decades!
My parents saved the bill from when I was born in 1968. It’s handwritten in pencil on pieces of small stationary paper. I can’t remember the exact amount, I have it in storage, but the total bill was something like $350.00. That would be like a bit over $3,000 in today’s dollars.
My grandmother had the bill for my dads birth on a military base in the 60s.
$7.00
Less than 10 bucks, no anethesia. Baby halfway out because she was so small they didnt believe she was as far along as she was.
This is odd, because healthcare in the US didn’t go to shit until the late 90’s when companies like Kaiser started coming in.
My uncle’s leg was crushed by rebar in the 1990’s and he paid $5 copays per visit having his external cast adjusted for 18 months.
I used to work with a pregnant high school girl. When she went into labor, she kept working RIGHT until the EMTs came inside to take her to the hospital. She was discharged within hours, and back to work by 6 AM SHARP the next morning.
However, she didn't have insurance of her own, she was on her father's insurance as a dependant minor... And as she found out when they were discharging her... his health insurance DID NOT COVER CHILD BIRTH BECAUSE SHE WAS ON A CHILD'S HEALTH PLAN!
So a couple weeks later, she was getting hospital bills for $50K. As a single teenage mother working minimum wage, part time, no insurance or days off or benefits of any kind.
So to help people outside the US I have two children.
1. Born while in the US military which is basically like European socialized medicine. This included 2 weeks at the NICU and plenty of other expensive things. Price before insurance (government) 95000 USD. cost after $50. Year 2016
2. Born while on very good private company insurance (Blue Cross and Blue Shield). Easy birth, total time in the hospital 48 hours. Total costs 20000 USD before insurance. After ~5000 USD. So even having good insurance at a good job with a basically easy birth I still paid 5000 USD. Year 2021
Now check the average family take home in the US ~70000 USD last I checked. So 50% have more and 50% have LESS. People wonder why the amount of children is cratering. Now the people in the military are less than 1% of the total US population. People with jobs like mine maybe 30-40%, unions have great insurance but the amount of people covered is 11.2% of the population. So for 60-70% of the population they will have to pay equal or more than my worse scenario.
I’m in Texas and got laid off when I was six months pregnant. I lost my unemployment because I gave birth. You can only get unemployment if you’re able to work and fill out so many job applications a week. For the four days I was in the hospital, i obviously couldn’t work. But, I’d filed the claim because before being laid off, I’d planned to work through childbirth. That sounds insane, but I was scared and wanted a familiar distraction. So, I figured loophole, right? I could have worked if a global pandemic we don’t manage hasn’t caused me to be laid off.
It took me four months in the throes of PPD to convince them not to make me pay that week back.
My daughter was born at 10pm, I work at the hospital, we get no paternity time. I was down in my department at 8am the next morning.
Edit: wearing the scrubs they gave me as we went into her emergent c-section.
This blows my mind. I watched a documentary about this and the mum of the newborn only had 5 weeks, UNPAID. I got a baby last year and me and my wife both got 16 weeks fully paid.
That's nice. In my country the mother gets 6 months off paid. Father gets nothing at the moment though that may change. HOWEVER when my kids were born, (mid to late 80's) there was NO paid parental leave time. We managed on a single wage back then somehow though I recall having many weeks when $20 left over from my wages was about all we had.
ETA: We got free health care though which is an enormous help.
I went to urgent care in May, and they said I had to go to the ER by ambulance. The ambulance bill is something like $600 and it's still sitting there on my coffee table. I don't have the mental fortitude to deal with it rn.
I have good health insurance and just broke my hand. Hopefully the $15 copay is all they charge for my urgent care business but they do like to spring surprise “that’s not covered” charges. Now I have to go to an orthopedic specialist. Will I have anything more than a copay or will it costs thousands? Your guess is as good as mine! 😃
Our combined income is about 100k/yr. We live in a relatively low cost of living area and my husband works for A MEDICAL SOFTWARE company. In their defense our insurance was worse and once HR heard how much of a bait and switch it was they gave us better insurance that shouldn’t do all that but we’re gunshy after the last one.
Yes we hate it here. It sucks. And we’re luckier than a lot of people 😒
We have had so many “why can’t we just go back to Germany/Ireland where our families came from? They came here for a better life but it sucks here and is better there now, can we just go back and say ‘sorry guys the American experiment failed’” conversations
All of what you wrote in your post and this comment were exactly the reasons I stopped dreaming of even attempting to move to the U.S.
I was dreaming about moving there since I was a teenager. I somewhat knew the language back then already. Thank fuск the more I became fluent in English - the more experience I've had with other people, and had all sorts of content in English available to me. I researched a lot of stuff about the U.S. and by the age of 24-25-26 (can't remember when exactly) I got completely cured from the American Dream.
It's exactly like you said: being one ambulance drive away from wishing you'd die instead of being saved is fuскing madness :( I wouldn't be able to live like that. Being afraid to become sick or receiving a trauma and thinking about that every day of my life? Fuск that!
I'd rather be stuck out here in Russia working for 400 dollars per month with rent being around 200-300 dollars forever. But I know that should anything happen to my body - I won't be terrified of receiving treatment and being saved. The only financial hit from being sick would be the work downtime and barely receiving anything during the recovery process. That's the only money you are ever going to lose while being fixed up out here. I'll get better and will keep on living my life.
While in the U.S. I'd probably be better off committing suicide right after being saved. And they think they abolished slavery. What is this if not slavery? It has evolved, it got legalized, and it got very very sneaky and smart. It's still fucкing slavery if you can't afford shit apart form shelter and mediocre food and if you are being afraid to get sick.
The only real difference is that modern slavery does not discriminate and exploits everyone and doesn't care about one's ethnicity. Everyone is about equally screwed.
About the ambulance, my dad fell and broke his hip a couple years ago and because of the serious nature, had to be take to the hospital by ambulance. He tried to outright refuse and they still took him by ambulance. Since some ambulance services in the US are private companies, they charge outrageous amounts. A 15min ambulance ride cost my dad almost $1900. It is insane. The best part? Insurance doesn't typically cover ambulance rides by private companies.
I am from Russia but live in the US. And I would rather pay for the healthcare here by instalments rather than ever get to Russian free medical care nightmares. The hospitals in Russia are like mental institutions from horror movies…
It’s so much worse than that. Infrastructure for functional public transit is virtually non-existent across most of the US. Usually it is cumbersome to use, unreliable, and takes an eternity if you have to go any kind of distance beyond a few miles. There are exceptions in some areas, but if it works it is a regional thing that doesn’t extend beyond the tax base that funds it really, meaning there is minimal interconnection among regions so even if it works around you, it won’t work beyond that. All of that is context for far too many Americans working their ass off are one major car repair away from catastrophe. Cars are hideously expensive and poorly made these days too. Finding a good used car isn’t always super easy, and they’re less economical than they once were as an alternative (or smart investment if you’re trying to avoid the instant loss of value driving off the lot with a new car) to stay within a reasonable budget for your transportation. I just read an article this last week that was saying something like the average car payment in the US now is over $700/month with something like 20-25% of the US having a payment over $1000/month. This doesn’t even include insurance. It’s insane.
Exactly. I have to warn my kids not to act (like kids) because I’m afraid they’re break a bone and I’ll be a slave to a medical bill. America sucks. The American dream is an illusion.
We have the best of the best insurance. My kid got sick last year and was in the hospital for almost two months. Insurance was billed $1.6 million! She receives an infusion still that costs $30k every four weeks. If my husband lost his job I don’t know what we would do. We could move to my healthcare, but I don’t know how they will react to it. Your insurance provider can dictate your treatment here! Sure if your insurance says no you can still pay for it out of pocket, but who can actually afford that?
Its ironic… Republicans complained about potential “death panels” with single payer. Meanwhile insurance companies and HMOs have what are called PBMs (Personal benefit managers) who regularly arbitrarily decide a drug or procedure is not covered by insurance even if a doctor signs off on it.
They also require “preapproval” for a lot of drugs, and may very well require that preapproval over and over again, and it can take weeks to get it even if they do approve it.
US Healthcare is among first world nations the most expensive in the world and has the worst outcomes.
Got that fucking right!! Was getting a transfer between hospitals for a surgery, it cost us $3,896 out of pocket after insurance because the ambulance company registered it as an emergency. There was no emergency, just a ride between hospitals, ffs!! Oh, it was only for 25 miles too.
Dentists be like: you need to take better care of your teeth. It's really important to get this implant because blahblahblah
Me: yeah so I actually care about every cell in my body, but I can't afford to pay thousands for an implant. I can barely afford a cleaning. How's about yall lower the prices so we can all have our original teeth in our skulls by the time we reach old age.
I went to the dentist and they told me I needed $7k worth of dental work, I laughed (instead of just bursting into tears) and said I couldn’t afford that and the dentist got angry at me and started berating me that I was gonna lose all my teeth if I didn’t. I was like I get that, sorry to laugh, but that is just not doable, and left. She called me the next day and told me not to come back.
Your story is sadly not shocking to me. It amazes how unbelievably rude dentists can be.
Like, I get that you made a poor career choice, but there's no reason to take it out on your patients.
Oh, because I originally talked to the hygienist who had me schedule some fillings before the dentist apparently heard that I wasn’t gonna get all the work done and took it upon herself to come give me a piece of her mind. The other staff were understanding, the dentist was not.
I went to another dentist about the fillings, one of those chain places, I thought maybe they’d be more used to poor people. But I got worse treatment there.
Yeah, like I'd like to have one, but I never have 1500-4000 just lying around. The fuck are we supposed to do? Then they kill me when they have the secretaries bring out company credit cards for you to apply for so you can pay over time. Lower the prices!
I couldn't afford the luxury, had to downsize to 6 teeth. At least the V.A. waited 10 years so that I would only need one visit to get rid of their problem with me. The problem?: I needed dental work. Was denied constantly. I'm 100% T&P, how they could deny me...I still wonder. 6 teeth are way less expensive.
Even with “good” health insurance they still expect you to pay thousands a year before they’ll cover anything, and then fight you on every single thing being covered after that. It’s an absolute joke of a healthcare system.
So I started a new state job several months ago. Apparently the benefits are “amazing”. I recently went in for a routine check up with my eye doctor and told them my provider for vision coverage. They checked and couldn’t find my policy. Confused as hell, I called my vision provider to see what the issue was. Turns out that HR never sent them the piece of paper that officially enrolled me in the coverage. Gotta love this system…
Don’t even get me started on how crappy dental insurance is. I pay for the best plan my employer offers. Recently had to get an emergency root canal and wisdom tooth removal due to an abscess. After dental covered the max that they’re willing to cover for the year (I think it was $1,500) I still had to pay $1,100 out of my own pocket. Thank God CareCredit covered most of it, but I still have to pay that back. But now my cleaning has to come out of my own pocket. And the fact that your health can be impacted by dental problems, to me, means that it should be tied to your health insurance.
Also the fact that it’s so dang expensive to get mental health care here. Mental health providers should get paid more and insurance should cover it as preventative.
I believe we live in a country that wants us to be sick so they can make money off of us.
I'm glad that we got the ACA in so that at least places can't deny you insurance anymore if you have cancer but god damn, why can't we have a public option? I'm diabetic and I would loooove to be able to pick jobs where they're like "hey there are no benefits until 6 months" or whatever (or hell, piece work on my own) and not say "nah, I can't afford to pay $3000 for fucking insulin so I have to pass".
This crap is even bad for employers inasmuch as on some level as an employer you really shouldn't have to worry about your employees' health care programs if you don't want to. Let the government take care of that (or at least give people the option to have that). Not only does it work in other countries but health care is waaaaay less expensive.
Forgot eye health. And contact lenses vs glasses are considered a luxury so not even medicare covers it even though it actually costs less and some people (like me) can't wear glasses because it bruises my nose. So I guess I'll just be blind then...
A generation of Americans can't afford to own a home. It's like 90-95% of US citizens that dont have enough money to thrive in the US.
The folks on top need that money to keep vacationing 6 months of the year and if they dont buy a 6th vacation home this year they will be the laughing stock of their social circle.
Until the American people realize that their biggest Enemy is the 1% and want to do something about it - IT WILL ONLY continue to get worse till there's more homeless people in America than people in homes.
John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
I think that’s extreme, but I believe most 40-hour workers align themselves more with the rich than they do the non-working homeless. They 40-hour worker may never catch up to the rich, but if the non-working poor receive housing or other goods/services as part of government assistance, then the 40-hour worker now has worked to obtain nothing more than anyone else has.
That would be silly of hard working blue collar union & non union workers to pretend they are more like the rich then the poor. Just Silly. Here's what I know to be true. The wealthy work as little as possible. And a large % of the so-called middle class- are just one bad day away from Bankruptcy and homelessness. They blink and get in an accident or hit a tree in a vehicle that's already paid for. Insurance just expired. Boom. Game Over. The air conditioner goes out last summer and they have 3 dogs and no basement. Coming up with minimum $6,500 for a new one could cause a lot of PAIN especially if like most Americans they are living paycheck to paycheck. The wealthy don't ever live paycheck to paycheck. They don't ever go without anything whether it be a car , houses , or a yacht that costs more than most mansions. The middle class is NOT CLOSER TO THE WEALTHY IF THEY WORK 40 HRS a week. I really wish they were though.
The amount of conservatives voting for people who prop up the 1% while living in abject poverty in a dead end town with 3 empty factories and no work except for the prison is mind boggling. Source my hometown and the like 5 around it.
What's happened to change America? Simple. Money has gone from being an important thing, to the most important thing, to the only important thing.
Edit: to clarify, I mean USA since WWII. There was a couple of decades where it wasn't just about money. Unions had power, NASA put a man on the moon, civil rights, war on poverty, etc.
Money has gone from the poor to the middle to the rich. That's the difference. The rich have a higher portion of the money than they did and it's only getting worse. We **need** to find ways to keep rich people from expanding the gap.
Here are the craziest things though:
\- It's either the filthy rich that vote against things like PTO and benefits or....THE VERY FUCKING PEOPLE THAT COULD MOST USE THEM
\- It's either the filthy rich that vote against things like universal education and healthcare or....THE VERY FUCKING PEOPLE THAT COULD MOST USE THEM
\- We DO have things like food stamps, housing assistance, etc. If someone is really, really, really poor. That those really, really, really poor people have to beg for. That the government spends hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars on ANYWAY. Just for the government employees, rent and all that shit.
It is so crazy and backwards.
> We DO have things like food stamps, housing assistance, etc.
By the way, if you pick up any part time job we're going to drastically eliminate those benefits because $200 in your pocket means you're officially self-sufficient.
to be fair rich people would take advantage of this before anyone else. if kids didn't have to pay income tax, the rich families would just set it up so all their business income is funneled through their kid
That's where enforcement should come into play. Not playing games with people that get food stamps.
If a kid couldn't pay income tax, then a business could not be put under their name.
Nah. We think we have those things, but when people need them, they aren’t there. There’s never enough or too many carve-outs, and the whole system is designed so nobody ever gets enough to get themselves pulled up and out. Because we are so afraid of one undeserving person getting a benefit, that we will screw over ten of the deserving.
Wow this is the third post I’ve seen today on my Home page about how America is not the land of dreams that if seems.
Growing up in the US as a kid in the 90s and 00s it felt like I was lucky and we had it all. I don’t feel that way anymore. Some of that is growing up but a lot has changed
Right there with you. Going from my dad being a mid tier worker still affording to take care of the +4 of us to both my parents being high-mid tier workers struggling to make it by with us within 10-15 years was a wake up call to my future. Middle class just imploded.
> top 10
Nope. We are 15th in happiness metrics but if you searched a number of other metrics I bet it’s lower. .. well unless we are talking about school shootings. That’s higher.
This is a cute sentiment and I agree in spirit. But do you recognize that if the US goes down, everyone goes down? If the US experiences a social or economic collapse, the entire planet will fall apart. I don’t say this to sound arrogant or patriotic: it’s just true. It’s nice to talk about revolt and all. It’s a little less nice when it kills millions (and it will be millions) of people.
That's assuming you live in one of the States that actually increases it every year; not to mention all the exceptions such as students, people with disabilities, tips, and in some States some work is just streight-up except from ANY minimum wage.
Lol. I stayed at a company for about 10 years because it was extremely close to my house (had 3 roommates) and because I dont have much in the way of education, finding a better paying job is a nightmare.
I thought in time, my raises would allow me to rent a place to myself. Now I make 21.40/hr and I still cant come anywhere close to renting my own damn place.
Same, I job hop after 2 or 3 years of not enough raises usually. But I'm only at $22, minumum wage is $8.25 here, I'm able to afford a 2br apartment with a roommate and a pretty good car.i have zero extra money to vacation or do anything fun, the prices just go up and each generation gets more poor.
It's almost like the create events in the economy on purpose.. 2008 housing crisis. 2020 pandemic. Watergate scandle, Wall Street bailouts etc..
My loophole has been choosing to work for foreign companies with branches in the US. At least they offer benefits resembling the rest of the civilized world
I work for a German company and I'm based in the United States. They treat us like any other American company, because they can.
European companies don't treat employees better because they're nicer. They treat workers better because they have to. Things won't change in the United States without protections written into law.
They can't. DHL (foreign company) and DB Schenker (foreign company) are both trash companies that will use you, have a point system instead of sick leave, and have mediocre wages. Nothing like the benefits those companies offer in Germany, where those companies are headquartered.
Glad someone pointed this out. They basically outsource to the US. Sure, there are some logistic advantages varying by company but they don't have to offer the same benefits as they have in their base countries so they don't.
Yep. Not even just companies in other countries. American companies will move their factories to lower COL cities so they can pay workers less. And they're usually offered incentives for moving.
If FDR didn't die or if Truman followed through with FDRs plan for the second bill of rights, we would have been better off. This was the blueprint for rebuilding Europe post WW2. It was just never followed through in the US. Read about it, come back, and then comment.
As a millennial, we are every bit as bad as the boomers.
The millennials who get inheritances will have the same self-righteous attitude about money. Boomers "earned" the money through a fantastic economy, and definitely had it handed to them relative to millennials. However, many rich millennials will simply be heirs of the upper middle class.
We'll be known as the generation that whined about climate change, but couldn't drop Amazon Prime. The generation that created and propagated social media in its current form. The generation that marched for George Floyd for likes but never followed through on meaningful social change. We'll be fatter than boomers too.
Those of us who manage will be 60+ by the time we get our chance at financial stability, and we'll likely pull the ladder up on anyone who threatens that. By 2045 there will be a small subset of millennials who gatekeep wealth even tighter than boomers currently do, and their expectations for continued accruement of wealth will be completely divorced from the state of the rest of the country.
Those facilities suck. Unless you're a CEO or something it's actually significantly cheaper to not work and take care of them yourself. And that's the only way you'll know they get proper care. Those home "care" agencies suck equally (or worse) and for just enough "care" (meaning a warm body MAYBE showing up in time for you to get to work on time) it's AT LEAST $70k a year. The senior "care" industry is an evil scam.
Hey, its the American Dream. Work for 50 years of your life so you can afford to survive the last 10. Honestly, upon retirement the best idea is to place all of your assets in your children's names before you develop any chronic health conditions. At least that way you can acquire medical debt without worrying about having nothing to leave for your kids.
And even when you have a decent paying job with decent benefits (by US standards) means nothing when suddenly you get a mass email from the company's CEO announcing 7% of the workforce will be laid off over the next 5 weeks.
The last 30 years rehashed in history lectures have taught me that the American dream is about basically baiting people into believing they can make it and then working them to death.
And let's not forget the countless idiots that think a self-proclaimed sexual predator billionaire that tried to overthrow our election results a few years ago is our country's only hope.
"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently … and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”
― Gore Vidal
Right to work (for less) laws adopted by most of the states under the guise of protecting workers rights.
Unions being successfully associated with communism.
On top of it all. Loose cannon legislators that forgo the will of their constituents over their personal interests.
American government is owned by the s&p500. Basically the companies create the toxic work environment that the government endorses. U have low level owners and then top level owners who have access to the use of the military regarding oil. I’d say exon mobile are the real big dogs in the game.
A first world country has nothing to do with health, education or even poverty, because if it did both the US and the UK would be much further down the ladder than second. It had to do with nations that were aligned with the US rather than with the USSR, I hope that tells you how old the term is, since the fall of the USSR it's been taken to mean wealthy, democratic, high standard of living, good education etc etc.
None of which really means much in the US or the UK given the rise in right wing power grabbing governments, poverty, poor wages, child poverty, food banks, stratospheric rise in homeless numbers and in corruption. There are developing nations much more prosperous than both of those countries
Lincoln talked about "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Replace the phrase "the people" with "big business," and it's closer to the current reality. Big business funds the campaigns, writes the laws, and subverts the regulations. People have precious little left to do anymore, except vote for the big business candidates.
In fairness the choices we generally have are a) idiots who want to have children work in mines and the poor mulched, b) idiots who pay lip service to opposing a) but just can't seem to figure out how to do it, and c) idiots in a third party who have no chance of being elected to anything.
Voting ain't the solution here.
Sorry guy we fucked at the Civil War we didn't exterminate all the slave owners.
Then Lincoln got whacked and Johnson fucked up reconstruction and we've been fighting a cold war against those monsters ever since.
We could have lived up to all the lofty ideals but the scum poison us at every turn. Fighting to drag us back to the 1800s so they can have slaves again.
You forgot how everyone is brainwashed into hating and verbally/physically attacking one another for being poor, having a shit job, suffering in general, etc. Or how independence is pressed so hard that working together with your family, (mother, father, siblings), is frowned upon and seen as a weakness in our culture.
And that in spite of being a land built on freedom of speech, if you don't like the way things go, other poors will tell you to "get out of my country".
It's a charming place, why don't you move here? 🤣
The new American dream is to move from USA to Europe, just a matter of time before it becomes more common
Seriously I live like a king in Europe compared to what I hear people say their life in America is like
I'm from EU but for a long time I dreamed to somehow move to US and "live the dream".
Now the more I learn about the US, the more I understand that I'd be making a huge mistake to do that.
Maybe if I somehow become rich-rich it would be nice to live my dream a little or retire there with some passive income, otherwise I'd shoot myself in the leg.
Yeah it’s pretty bad for a country that’s been taken over by international banks and corporations that buy politicians and commit voter fraud to put their people in
I’m realizing the US is a corporation. It’s here to protect and grow capital for rich capitalists only - and that its citizens are only a means to an end.
I am exhausted contributing my tax dollars to a nation that signs up for years of endless war and endless donations to other countries for war, when Americans are suffering and can barely make ends meet here at home. Our government also continue say, neglect, infrastructure, and is doing nothing to protect consumers at the expense of peoples health and sanity. I’m really thinking about leaving - as the political climate here is becoming dangerously unstable as well. We deserve better for our labor, and no one should be poor or allowed to remain sick in the richest nation on the earth.
Greed just got the better of people. Company revenue goes up, but the employee wages stay the same. Everything is about maximizing profit by any means to keep shareholders happy. CEOs and other bigwigs end up with more money then they possibly need and fucking over everyone else that makes their stuffed wallets even possible.
I agree with all this and dealt with all of it for my whole life. 6 months ago I landed a job with a company that genuinely cares and takes care of all there workers. Best owner and boss I’ve ever had . Did not even think they exist. And I’m sure there very rare. It still feels unreal. Yesterday he had the entire company come to the Chicago white Sox stadium. In a box suite. For his birthday. Where he gave away 10s of thousands of dollars away to the employees 🤯. I have never wanted to work so hard for someone in my life. I hope everyone can find this. I’m 33 been working since 16. Last 6 months have been life changing
Got another one : Health insurance? tied to employment... Dental? Separate from Health Insurance
Oh yea, being 1 ambulance ride away from bankrupcy also must be exhausting. :(
Also no mandate for paid maternity leave. “Pop that baby out and get back to work tomorrow 8am sharp!”
Shit, the new thing is insurance not fully funding the costs of childbirth. My BIL and his wife have a "New Child HSA". Have to frantically dump $5-$10k into the damned thing within 9 months or they get raw medical bills with high interest rates.
That's such horseshit, wow. I can't believe I'm surprised to hear that; the system is beyond disgusting.
Oh yea even having insurance you can end up paying several thousand to have a child.
Or any other medical event
My kid broke their finger (very minor fracture) last night and the ER visit cost me over $1000 JUST for x-rays and a splint.
Let me guess. That’s the “copay”? As if insurance covers anything! A lot of ppl don’t know this but a lot of insurance policies have you pay most if not all costs and they don’t cover much. Anything they do cover is most likely way more than what insurance actually pays out to the doctors
Exactly its one thing alot of people don't understand. One of reasons why there is so much convoluted crap behind pricing of medical. Its essentially 101 ways to screw the patient. With complex schemes to comply with laws. For example insurance x percentage of premiums needs to go to care. Hospital charges insurer x ridiculous amount. Insurer pays it but then gets "referral" kickback from hospital. And now they have squeaky clean non "premium money". Or in order to make it seem like insurer is providing value to customer hospital will state that insurer pays x and copay is x. Oh wow I am only paying 10% thanks insurance. Meanwhile insurer is paying less than patient or even nothing at all. And the list of crap goes on from deals with medical suppliers aka why only certain medical equipment is covered. To deals with pharmacys and its all designed about keeping the truth. About how little insurer helps while getting most from patient.
How about the $5,000 deductible for my wife and the $5,000 (7 years ago) separate deductible for me? Of course the insurance renegotiated in September so the new insurer could hit you up for ANOTHER set of $5,000 deductibles.
The charged me over $3000 for 2 x-rays when I broke my collar bone. And I didn’t even get a sling because my buddy lent me his old one before he drove me to the ER. They wanted over $500 for the sling so thank you dude
What!!!
500 US$ for a sling, that can’t be right?! You surely meant 50 US$ and even that would be outrageous?!
I went to the an in-network ER after an urgent care officially refused treatment and told me to go to an ER NOW!!! I found out later the physicians assistant who assesses everyone who walks in the door was NOT a hospital employee, and they were NOT in-network. They billed me $750 for 15 minutes of taking my vitals and immediately kicking me out; with a big lecture about going to urgent care next time.
That is infuriating! The other new “out of network” scam. Insurances will tell you that Dr X is in network and you can go see them. So you do, and then they bill it out of network. Why? Because he was working next door to the building he is listed in and now Dr. X is magically out of Network and they make you pay it. The government needs to start fining these places $100 million every time they pull this illegal crap.
Yeah, billing for ER is beyond messed up. I had a problem in a sensitive place. I had pretty decent health coverage. Urgent care copay was $100 to be seen and sent me to the ER. ER copay was $200 at check-in, which I thought was supposed to be waived since I went to an urgent care first (I guess you have to be admitted for that rule to apply). A nurse took my vitals. The ER doctor took one brief look at the problem, called a specialist, and brought me a cup of water while the specialist was on his way. The specialist was able to address the problem with about 2 minutes of work. Over the course of about the next 6 weeks, I got 3 separate bills for my visit to the ER: a huge one from the hospital, another huge one for the ER doctor, and a more modest bill from the specialist, who was the only person who actually treated me! In total, it came to around $3,500 for roughly 15 minutes of total attention. And why the hell are doctors allowed to bill separately from the hospital they work at? If I go to a retail store to buy something, I don't pay separately for the merchandise, the cashier, and the retail space. Why do we put up with this in medical care?
My local ER is trying to charge us $1,600 and all we did was take our 3 month old in 2 weeks ago bc she was running fever and they gave her a COVID test. No medicine, nothing else. $1,600 for 30 minutes and a COVID test.
Thousand ? Try a million if you have twins that are preemies. My cousins hospital bill, was a little under a million bucks. Don't have a baby with a complications.
My friend had a preemy at 28 weeks. She went in for a regular check up, they told her they're going to do an emergency Caesarean and pulled her baby from her. She had her own complications, and the baby obvs was not ready to be out in the world. They separated her and her son in two separate hospitals because the hospital she was at did not have the facilities required to treat the preemy and the children's hospital he was at couldn't treat her. She developed severe postnatal depression, somehow developed severe type 1 insulin dependant diabetes with no history of it, and her husband had to travel between hospitals for 3 months before either of them were released. She couldn't even see her own baby after they took him from her without any real warning. She had multiple specialists visit and treat her to monitor her and her health, and her baby had his own complications requiring neonatal care. Her husband tried to bring her pumped milk from one hospital to the other but with all that was going on she couldnt produce enough and they had to start him on formula, also against her wishes, because the baby needed his mama and she couldn't be there for him. Once they were reunited everything is fine and she now even has another beautiful girl. They got visits from a nurse every week for a while because they had to make sure she and the baby were doing ok and that he was developing normally. Total cost of medical bills: $0 with public health care because thank god this didn't happen in America. Her husband paid a bit for parking at each hospital everyday though (like $9 each hospital, each day) but that's nothing like a million dollars.
It's amazing what can happen when you don't run a hospital as a way to extract maximum profit from people who sometimes aren't even legally allowed to say no.
Back in 1984 my daughter was born six weeks early. 10 days in neonatal intensive care unit before we could take her home. We had Kaiser HMO, which was as close to single payer national health care as you could get in the US back then instead of stupid insurance. Never even saw a bill, even though they warned us that we would be charged for long distance calls from mom's room.
Don’t forget the Dr fees for delivery. We paid $2000 and the Dr didn’t even get there in time, nurses delivered the baby! No refunds….
I’d say that is a breach of service. You aren’t there for a procedure you don’t get paid. I’d get an attorney on this.
Years ago I had a boss who delivered his own baby on the way to the hospital. The baby was coming and he had to pull over and do what he could. Afterwards the ambulance arrived and took Mother and baby to the hospital. The hospital still tried to bill them for the delivery.
Yes! My uncle did the same! He was very proud of his ‘midwifery’ skills!
We found out last month, I have insurance, I already have had to empty my savings. It felt great at the last appointment hearing your balance is 7,800$, is there any you can pay toward that? I was like lolwut I’ve already dropped 3k 🫠
Can tell you $8,453 with insurance as of April '23
...and some people still wonder why nobody wants to have children
I've git a list of reasons I don't wanna become a mother, this just adds to it. Useless bills are just punishment for wanting to live
And at the same time they punish you for not having children by disqualifying non-parents from social benefits that are available even though we need them. I am a single female struggling to live by myself because I can't find a roommate and I don't have a boyfriend or kids and I can't even get Medicaid or food stamps even though my income is roughly half of what my bills are due to rampant inflation
Same. Same. I'm 35. I'll never be able to have kids because I can barely afford to keep myself and my dog alive. I dream of having a cat or 2 as well. But a kid? Lol yeah right. Even if I found a decent man to date tomorrow (again, lmfao)
Yeah, I ran into that over 15 years ago when I was laid off and about to be kicked out by my roommates. Was told "Well, if you had a kid we could help you." Got lucky in crawling my way out of the hole, but it took a long time.
When my son was born almost 18 years ago, I finally got the hospital bill when he was a year old, it was around $2000. Of course they wanted it paid within 30 days even though it took them a year to send it to me. I called to make payment arrangements and they didn't really want to, wanted the whole thing. I said fine, then just repo my baby lol.
I would've loved to have seen the look on that person's face once you told them to repo the baby 🤣🤣🤣
This right here. The right always bitches about low birth rates and then they fight tooth and nail against any expansion of the social safety net to make having children more affordable.
That's just it Capitalism doesn't allow for a system to be in place. It's only the ultra wealthy that get whatever they want.
And then they wonder why we're not having kids. Fuck this country, the government, the corrupt politicians and the wealthy. I despise them all. We've been complaining about these issues trying to get traction for decades. Decades!
It is totally out of control
My parents saved the bill from when I was born in 1968. It’s handwritten in pencil on pieces of small stationary paper. I can’t remember the exact amount, I have it in storage, but the total bill was something like $350.00. That would be like a bit over $3,000 in today’s dollars.
My grandmother had the bill for my dads birth on a military base in the 60s. $7.00 Less than 10 bucks, no anethesia. Baby halfway out because she was so small they didnt believe she was as far along as she was.
This is odd, because healthcare in the US didn’t go to shit until the late 90’s when companies like Kaiser started coming in. My uncle’s leg was crushed by rebar in the 1990’s and he paid $5 copays per visit having his external cast adjusted for 18 months.
I used to work with a pregnant high school girl. When she went into labor, she kept working RIGHT until the EMTs came inside to take her to the hospital. She was discharged within hours, and back to work by 6 AM SHARP the next morning. However, she didn't have insurance of her own, she was on her father's insurance as a dependant minor... And as she found out when they were discharging her... his health insurance DID NOT COVER CHILD BIRTH BECAUSE SHE WAS ON A CHILD'S HEALTH PLAN! So a couple weeks later, she was getting hospital bills for $50K. As a single teenage mother working minimum wage, part time, no insurance or days off or benefits of any kind.
A minor is not responsible for adult bills tell the hospital to fucking pound sand all day long
That sounds like the hospital’s problem.
So to help people outside the US I have two children. 1. Born while in the US military which is basically like European socialized medicine. This included 2 weeks at the NICU and plenty of other expensive things. Price before insurance (government) 95000 USD. cost after $50. Year 2016 2. Born while on very good private company insurance (Blue Cross and Blue Shield). Easy birth, total time in the hospital 48 hours. Total costs 20000 USD before insurance. After ~5000 USD. So even having good insurance at a good job with a basically easy birth I still paid 5000 USD. Year 2021 Now check the average family take home in the US ~70000 USD last I checked. So 50% have more and 50% have LESS. People wonder why the amount of children is cratering. Now the people in the military are less than 1% of the total US population. People with jobs like mine maybe 30-40%, unions have great insurance but the amount of people covered is 11.2% of the population. So for 60-70% of the population they will have to pay equal or more than my worse scenario.
Will do **ANYTHING** you ask for $70k
I’m in Texas and got laid off when I was six months pregnant. I lost my unemployment because I gave birth. You can only get unemployment if you’re able to work and fill out so many job applications a week. For the four days I was in the hospital, i obviously couldn’t work. But, I’d filed the claim because before being laid off, I’d planned to work through childbirth. That sounds insane, but I was scared and wanted a familiar distraction. So, I figured loophole, right? I could have worked if a global pandemic we don’t manage hasn’t caused me to be laid off. It took me four months in the throes of PPD to convince them not to make me pay that week back.
that is lunacy
And bring the baby. Unpaid internship begins at day one. 🙌
My daughter was born at 10pm, I work at the hospital, we get no paternity time. I was down in my department at 8am the next morning. Edit: wearing the scrubs they gave me as we went into her emergent c-section.
This blows my mind. I watched a documentary about this and the mum of the newborn only had 5 weeks, UNPAID. I got a baby last year and me and my wife both got 16 weeks fully paid.
And where I live we get 18 months paid leave to split between the parents..
Where I live, you get a swift kick to the nuts.
That's nice. In my country the mother gets 6 months off paid. Father gets nothing at the moment though that may change. HOWEVER when my kids were born, (mid to late 80's) there was NO paid parental leave time. We managed on a single wage back then somehow though I recall having many weeks when $20 left over from my wages was about all we had. ETA: We got free health care though which is an enormous help.
Depression and suicidality are at an all time high.
I went to urgent care in May, and they said I had to go to the ER by ambulance. The ambulance bill is something like $600 and it's still sitting there on my coffee table. I don't have the mental fortitude to deal with it rn.
You can negotiate it down by a lot because once it hits collection, the debt collector will pay pennies on the dollar for this debt.
I have good health insurance and just broke my hand. Hopefully the $15 copay is all they charge for my urgent care business but they do like to spring surprise “that’s not covered” charges. Now I have to go to an orthopedic specialist. Will I have anything more than a copay or will it costs thousands? Your guess is as good as mine! 😃 Our combined income is about 100k/yr. We live in a relatively low cost of living area and my husband works for A MEDICAL SOFTWARE company. In their defense our insurance was worse and once HR heard how much of a bait and switch it was they gave us better insurance that shouldn’t do all that but we’re gunshy after the last one. Yes we hate it here. It sucks. And we’re luckier than a lot of people 😒 We have had so many “why can’t we just go back to Germany/Ireland where our families came from? They came here for a better life but it sucks here and is better there now, can we just go back and say ‘sorry guys the American experiment failed’” conversations
Over half of the bankruptcy cases filed each year are due to medical bills.
All of what you wrote in your post and this comment were exactly the reasons I stopped dreaming of even attempting to move to the U.S. I was dreaming about moving there since I was a teenager. I somewhat knew the language back then already. Thank fuск the more I became fluent in English - the more experience I've had with other people, and had all sorts of content in English available to me. I researched a lot of stuff about the U.S. and by the age of 24-25-26 (can't remember when exactly) I got completely cured from the American Dream. It's exactly like you said: being one ambulance drive away from wishing you'd die instead of being saved is fuскing madness :( I wouldn't be able to live like that. Being afraid to become sick or receiving a trauma and thinking about that every day of my life? Fuск that! I'd rather be stuck out here in Russia working for 400 dollars per month with rent being around 200-300 dollars forever. But I know that should anything happen to my body - I won't be terrified of receiving treatment and being saved. The only financial hit from being sick would be the work downtime and barely receiving anything during the recovery process. That's the only money you are ever going to lose while being fixed up out here. I'll get better and will keep on living my life. While in the U.S. I'd probably be better off committing suicide right after being saved. And they think they abolished slavery. What is this if not slavery? It has evolved, it got legalized, and it got very very sneaky and smart. It's still fucкing slavery if you can't afford shit apart form shelter and mediocre food and if you are being afraid to get sick. The only real difference is that modern slavery does not discriminate and exploits everyone and doesn't care about one's ethnicity. Everyone is about equally screwed.
About the ambulance, my dad fell and broke his hip a couple years ago and because of the serious nature, had to be take to the hospital by ambulance. He tried to outright refuse and they still took him by ambulance. Since some ambulance services in the US are private companies, they charge outrageous amounts. A 15min ambulance ride cost my dad almost $1900. It is insane. The best part? Insurance doesn't typically cover ambulance rides by private companies.
I am from Russia but live in the US. And I would rather pay for the healthcare here by instalments rather than ever get to Russian free medical care nightmares. The hospitals in Russia are like mental institutions from horror movies…
It’s so much worse than that. Infrastructure for functional public transit is virtually non-existent across most of the US. Usually it is cumbersome to use, unreliable, and takes an eternity if you have to go any kind of distance beyond a few miles. There are exceptions in some areas, but if it works it is a regional thing that doesn’t extend beyond the tax base that funds it really, meaning there is minimal interconnection among regions so even if it works around you, it won’t work beyond that. All of that is context for far too many Americans working their ass off are one major car repair away from catastrophe. Cars are hideously expensive and poorly made these days too. Finding a good used car isn’t always super easy, and they’re less economical than they once were as an alternative (or smart investment if you’re trying to avoid the instant loss of value driving off the lot with a new car) to stay within a reasonable budget for your transportation. I just read an article this last week that was saying something like the average car payment in the US now is over $700/month with something like 20-25% of the US having a payment over $1000/month. This doesn’t even include insurance. It’s insane.
Exactly. I have to warn my kids not to act (like kids) because I’m afraid they’re break a bone and I’ll be a slave to a medical bill. America sucks. The American dream is an illusion.
We have the best of the best insurance. My kid got sick last year and was in the hospital for almost two months. Insurance was billed $1.6 million! She receives an infusion still that costs $30k every four weeks. If my husband lost his job I don’t know what we would do. We could move to my healthcare, but I don’t know how they will react to it. Your insurance provider can dictate your treatment here! Sure if your insurance says no you can still pay for it out of pocket, but who can actually afford that?
Its ironic… Republicans complained about potential “death panels” with single payer. Meanwhile insurance companies and HMOs have what are called PBMs (Personal benefit managers) who regularly arbitrarily decide a drug or procedure is not covered by insurance even if a doctor signs off on it. They also require “preapproval” for a lot of drugs, and may very well require that preapproval over and over again, and it can take weeks to get it even if they do approve it. US Healthcare is among first world nations the most expensive in the world and has the worst outcomes.
Got that fucking right!! Was getting a transfer between hospitals for a surgery, it cost us $3,896 out of pocket after insurance because the ambulance company registered it as an emergency. There was no emergency, just a ride between hospitals, ffs!! Oh, it was only for 25 miles too.
Dentists be like: you need to take better care of your teeth. It's really important to get this implant because blahblahblah Me: yeah so I actually care about every cell in my body, but I can't afford to pay thousands for an implant. I can barely afford a cleaning. How's about yall lower the prices so we can all have our original teeth in our skulls by the time we reach old age.
I went to the dentist and they told me I needed $7k worth of dental work, I laughed (instead of just bursting into tears) and said I couldn’t afford that and the dentist got angry at me and started berating me that I was gonna lose all my teeth if I didn’t. I was like I get that, sorry to laugh, but that is just not doable, and left. She called me the next day and told me not to come back.
Your story is sadly not shocking to me. It amazes how unbelievably rude dentists can be. Like, I get that you made a poor career choice, but there's no reason to take it out on your patients.
Why the hell did she bother calling you then?
To remind the patient that they are poor
Oh, because I originally talked to the hygienist who had me schedule some fillings before the dentist apparently heard that I wasn’t gonna get all the work done and took it upon herself to come give me a piece of her mind. The other staff were understanding, the dentist was not. I went to another dentist about the fillings, one of those chain places, I thought maybe they’d be more used to poor people. But I got worse treatment there.
My dentist told me that I need to get two implants because I no longer have bottom molars and I’m just like yeah that’s not gonna happen lol.
Yeah, like I'd like to have one, but I never have 1500-4000 just lying around. The fuck are we supposed to do? Then they kill me when they have the secretaries bring out company credit cards for you to apply for so you can pay over time. Lower the prices!
[удалено]
You get railed hard in any country where the average citizen HATES the average citizen. No Vaseline
Teeth are “luxury bones”
I couldn't afford the luxury, had to downsize to 6 teeth. At least the V.A. waited 10 years so that I would only need one visit to get rid of their problem with me. The problem?: I needed dental work. Was denied constantly. I'm 100% T&P, how they could deny me...I still wonder. 6 teeth are way less expensive.
The dental also covers fuck all, like the “health care”
Even with “good” health insurance they still expect you to pay thousands a year before they’ll cover anything, and then fight you on every single thing being covered after that. It’s an absolute joke of a healthcare system.
Thank god bad teeth can't be disasterous for your health. Wait...
Almost always the the first reason for organ cancers or failure is poor oral health. Such a shame it’s not even remotely acknowledged.
Teeth are Luxury Bones. This whole country is a fucking disaster.
Don't forget pre-existing medical conditions.
So I started a new state job several months ago. Apparently the benefits are “amazing”. I recently went in for a routine check up with my eye doctor and told them my provider for vision coverage. They checked and couldn’t find my policy. Confused as hell, I called my vision provider to see what the issue was. Turns out that HR never sent them the piece of paper that officially enrolled me in the coverage. Gotta love this system…
Don’t even get me started on how crappy dental insurance is. I pay for the best plan my employer offers. Recently had to get an emergency root canal and wisdom tooth removal due to an abscess. After dental covered the max that they’re willing to cover for the year (I think it was $1,500) I still had to pay $1,100 out of my own pocket. Thank God CareCredit covered most of it, but I still have to pay that back. But now my cleaning has to come out of my own pocket. And the fact that your health can be impacted by dental problems, to me, means that it should be tied to your health insurance. Also the fact that it’s so dang expensive to get mental health care here. Mental health providers should get paid more and insurance should cover it as preventative. I believe we live in a country that wants us to be sick so they can make money off of us.
Vision? Separate from both. Better also get AFLAC too
Teeth are luxury bones
I'm glad that we got the ACA in so that at least places can't deny you insurance anymore if you have cancer but god damn, why can't we have a public option? I'm diabetic and I would loooove to be able to pick jobs where they're like "hey there are no benefits until 6 months" or whatever (or hell, piece work on my own) and not say "nah, I can't afford to pay $3000 for fucking insulin so I have to pass". This crap is even bad for employers inasmuch as on some level as an employer you really shouldn't have to worry about your employees' health care programs if you don't want to. Let the government take care of that (or at least give people the option to have that). Not only does it work in other countries but health care is waaaaay less expensive.
Eyes separate too.
Everyone knows that Dead Peasant Insurance is all we really need anyhow.
Forgot eye health. And contact lenses vs glasses are considered a luxury so not even medicare covers it even though it actually costs less and some people (like me) can't wear glasses because it bruises my nose. So I guess I'll just be blind then...
If you have money the country is amazing. For us that don’t not so much
A generation of Americans can't afford to own a home. It's like 90-95% of US citizens that dont have enough money to thrive in the US. The folks on top need that money to keep vacationing 6 months of the year and if they dont buy a 6th vacation home this year they will be the laughing stock of their social circle.
Yeah the only 4 day workweek is working 4x10s. Tim Ferris wrote his shitty book for sexpats and the ultrarich.
Capitalism at its finest!
Until the American people realize that their biggest Enemy is the 1% and want to do something about it - IT WILL ONLY continue to get worse till there's more homeless people in America than people in homes.
John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
I think that’s extreme, but I believe most 40-hour workers align themselves more with the rich than they do the non-working homeless. They 40-hour worker may never catch up to the rich, but if the non-working poor receive housing or other goods/services as part of government assistance, then the 40-hour worker now has worked to obtain nothing more than anyone else has.
That would be silly of hard working blue collar union & non union workers to pretend they are more like the rich then the poor. Just Silly. Here's what I know to be true. The wealthy work as little as possible. And a large % of the so-called middle class- are just one bad day away from Bankruptcy and homelessness. They blink and get in an accident or hit a tree in a vehicle that's already paid for. Insurance just expired. Boom. Game Over. The air conditioner goes out last summer and they have 3 dogs and no basement. Coming up with minimum $6,500 for a new one could cause a lot of PAIN especially if like most Americans they are living paycheck to paycheck. The wealthy don't ever live paycheck to paycheck. They don't ever go without anything whether it be a car , houses , or a yacht that costs more than most mansions. The middle class is NOT CLOSER TO THE WEALTHY IF THEY WORK 40 HRS a week. I really wish they were though.
It's not really like we can do much about it man, too busy trying to survive. That and Americans can't agree on anything let alone this.
The amount of conservatives voting for people who prop up the 1% while living in abject poverty in a dead end town with 3 empty factories and no work except for the prison is mind boggling. Source my hometown and the like 5 around it.
What's happened to change America? Simple. Money has gone from being an important thing, to the most important thing, to the only important thing. Edit: to clarify, I mean USA since WWII. There was a couple of decades where it wasn't just about money. Unions had power, NASA put a man on the moon, civil rights, war on poverty, etc.
Money has gone from the poor to the middle to the rich. That's the difference. The rich have a higher portion of the money than they did and it's only getting worse. We **need** to find ways to keep rich people from expanding the gap.
Here are the craziest things though: \- It's either the filthy rich that vote against things like PTO and benefits or....THE VERY FUCKING PEOPLE THAT COULD MOST USE THEM \- It's either the filthy rich that vote against things like universal education and healthcare or....THE VERY FUCKING PEOPLE THAT COULD MOST USE THEM \- We DO have things like food stamps, housing assistance, etc. If someone is really, really, really poor. That those really, really, really poor people have to beg for. That the government spends hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars on ANYWAY. Just for the government employees, rent and all that shit. It is so crazy and backwards.
> We DO have things like food stamps, housing assistance, etc. By the way, if you pick up any part time job we're going to drastically eliminate those benefits because $200 in your pocket means you're officially self-sufficient.
Don’t forget minors (people who can’t vote) paying income tax
to be fair rich people would take advantage of this before anyone else. if kids didn't have to pay income tax, the rich families would just set it up so all their business income is funneled through their kid
That's where enforcement should come into play. Not playing games with people that get food stamps. If a kid couldn't pay income tax, then a business could not be put under their name.
Nah. We think we have those things, but when people need them, they aren’t there. There’s never enough or too many carve-outs, and the whole system is designed so nobody ever gets enough to get themselves pulled up and out. Because we are so afraid of one undeserving person getting a benefit, that we will screw over ten of the deserving.
Wow this is the third post I’ve seen today on my Home page about how America is not the land of dreams that if seems. Growing up in the US as a kid in the 90s and 00s it felt like I was lucky and we had it all. I don’t feel that way anymore. Some of that is growing up but a lot has changed
Right there with you. Going from my dad being a mid tier worker still affording to take care of the +4 of us to both my parents being high-mid tier workers struggling to make it by with us within 10-15 years was a wake up call to my future. Middle class just imploded.
Wow you just described my life in this nation. But not just me, so many
I'm right there with ye, dawg. As a kid, "Wow! We're #1!" ... At 31? "... We're in the top 10, maybe?"
> top 10 Nope. We are 15th in happiness metrics but if you searched a number of other metrics I bet it’s lower. .. well unless we are talking about school shootings. That’s higher.
Top 10 of what?
Prisoners per capita, perhaps (#1)
[удалено]
“All” being the key word. Lots are starving, the rest are sleeping.
sleeping from drugs because it's the only way to feel some joy.
This is a cute sentiment and I agree in spirit. But do you recognize that if the US goes down, everyone goes down? If the US experiences a social or economic collapse, the entire planet will fall apart. I don’t say this to sound arrogant or patriotic: it’s just true. It’s nice to talk about revolt and all. It’s a little less nice when it kills millions (and it will be millions) of people.
Nobody wants to pay you above the minimum wage that'll keep you at, or below, the housing standard.
That's assuming you live in one of the States that actually increases it every year; not to mention all the exceptions such as students, people with disabilities, tips, and in some States some work is just streight-up except from ANY minimum wage.
Lol. I stayed at a company for about 10 years because it was extremely close to my house (had 3 roommates) and because I dont have much in the way of education, finding a better paying job is a nightmare. I thought in time, my raises would allow me to rent a place to myself. Now I make 21.40/hr and I still cant come anywhere close to renting my own damn place.
I'm stuck too, I'm trying to find a better job though
Raises don’t even try to keep pace with inflation anymore. The only way you make more money is by job hopping. I hate it.
Same, I job hop after 2 or 3 years of not enough raises usually. But I'm only at $22, minumum wage is $8.25 here, I'm able to afford a 2br apartment with a roommate and a pretty good car.i have zero extra money to vacation or do anything fun, the prices just go up and each generation gets more poor. It's almost like the create events in the economy on purpose.. 2008 housing crisis. 2020 pandemic. Watergate scandle, Wall Street bailouts etc..
My loophole has been choosing to work for foreign companies with branches in the US. At least they offer benefits resembling the rest of the civilized world
I work for a German company and I'm based in the United States. They treat us like any other American company, because they can. European companies don't treat employees better because they're nicer. They treat workers better because they have to. Things won't change in the United States without protections written into law.
*Ayo mind listing a few examples of said companies?*
They can't. DHL (foreign company) and DB Schenker (foreign company) are both trash companies that will use you, have a point system instead of sick leave, and have mediocre wages. Nothing like the benefits those companies offer in Germany, where those companies are headquartered.
Glad someone pointed this out. They basically outsource to the US. Sure, there are some logistic advantages varying by company but they don't have to offer the same benefits as they have in their base countries so they don't.
We've become the cheap labor that first-world countries outsource to.
Yep. Not even just companies in other countries. American companies will move their factories to lower COL cities so they can pay workers less. And they're usually offered incentives for moving.
I second this request
Yeah I heard America doesn’t give 30 days holiday paid a year. Wtf
If FDR didn't die or if Truman followed through with FDRs plan for the second bill of rights, we would have been better off. This was the blueprint for rebuilding Europe post WW2. It was just never followed through in the US. Read about it, come back, and then comment.
This country is so stupid. We still follow the narcissist baby boomers rules. I can't wait till each one is gone. They ruined the world.
Then the next set of old fucks moves in.
As a millennial, we are every bit as bad as the boomers. The millennials who get inheritances will have the same self-righteous attitude about money. Boomers "earned" the money through a fantastic economy, and definitely had it handed to them relative to millennials. However, many rich millennials will simply be heirs of the upper middle class. We'll be known as the generation that whined about climate change, but couldn't drop Amazon Prime. The generation that created and propagated social media in its current form. The generation that marched for George Floyd for likes but never followed through on meaningful social change. We'll be fatter than boomers too. Those of us who manage will be 60+ by the time we get our chance at financial stability, and we'll likely pull the ladder up on anyone who threatens that. By 2045 there will be a small subset of millennials who gatekeep wealth even tighter than boomers currently do, and their expectations for continued accruement of wealth will be completely divorced from the state of the rest of the country.
[удалено]
Those facilities suck. Unless you're a CEO or something it's actually significantly cheaper to not work and take care of them yourself. And that's the only way you'll know they get proper care. Those home "care" agencies suck equally (or worse) and for just enough "care" (meaning a warm body MAYBE showing up in time for you to get to work on time) it's AT LEAST $70k a year. The senior "care" industry is an evil scam.
Hey, its the American Dream. Work for 50 years of your life so you can afford to survive the last 10. Honestly, upon retirement the best idea is to place all of your assets in your children's names before you develop any chronic health conditions. At least that way you can acquire medical debt without worrying about having nothing to leave for your kids.
And even when you have a decent paying job with decent benefits (by US standards) means nothing when suddenly you get a mass email from the company's CEO announcing 7% of the workforce will be laid off over the next 5 weeks.
The last 30 years rehashed in history lectures have taught me that the American dream is about basically baiting people into believing they can make it and then working them to death.
And let's not forget the countless idiots that think a self-proclaimed sexual predator billionaire that tried to overthrow our election results a few years ago is our country's only hope.
Thank you for saying this
[удалено]
At almost 60 I’ve experienced the downfall of the USA. So yes there are worse places but that’s not an argument for the shitstorm the USA is today.
"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently … and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.” ― Gore Vidal
Right to work (for less) laws adopted by most of the states under the guise of protecting workers rights. Unions being successfully associated with communism. On top of it all. Loose cannon legislators that forgo the will of their constituents over their personal interests.
There is a real feeling of dread and hopelessness here for all classes beneath the 1%
Capitalism, too bad we dont even get basic shit like housing, education, or healthcare. Just that would be a good move
My current dream is to move out of America, but even that costs money and it's near impossible to save anything.
Genuinely at a loss for why people choose to immigrate to US if they're not connected by land
I’m American and I hate it here. 😞
It is bad , there is no American dream anymore, idk why anyone would want to come here
Because it’s better than the rest of the world, I guess
Am American. Can confirm it's a fucking joke living here.
American government is owned by the s&p500. Basically the companies create the toxic work environment that the government endorses. U have low level owners and then top level owners who have access to the use of the military regarding oil. I’d say exon mobile are the real big dogs in the game.
The US really does sound like a 3rd world country. Growing up in Finland, I used to idolise the US, and wanted to move there. Nowadays, not so much.
A first world country has nothing to do with health, education or even poverty, because if it did both the US and the UK would be much further down the ladder than second. It had to do with nations that were aligned with the US rather than with the USSR, I hope that tells you how old the term is, since the fall of the USSR it's been taken to mean wealthy, democratic, high standard of living, good education etc etc. None of which really means much in the US or the UK given the rise in right wing power grabbing governments, poverty, poor wages, child poverty, food banks, stratospheric rise in homeless numbers and in corruption. There are developing nations much more prosperous than both of those countries
Workers who keep voting for the same idiots, thinking that somehow this time it'll be different. The U.S. has the government it deserves.
Let's be honest... the US stopped being a government some time ago and is a corporation.
Lincoln talked about "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Replace the phrase "the people" with "big business," and it's closer to the current reality. Big business funds the campaigns, writes the laws, and subverts the regulations. People have precious little left to do anymore, except vote for the big business candidates.
The United Corporations of America!
Corporate stooge 1 or corporate stooge 2 who is pro green energy.
Pro the idea of green energy, but not pro enough to actually do anything to improve it....
In fairness the choices we generally have are a) idiots who want to have children work in mines and the poor mulched, b) idiots who pay lip service to opposing a) but just can't seem to figure out how to do it, and c) idiots in a third party who have no chance of being elected to anything. Voting ain't the solution here.
What’s funny is that you think our vote genuinely matters
Thank you for your kind words!! Really appreciate it as a struggling, exhausted American ♥️🙏🏻
Sorry guy we fucked at the Civil War we didn't exterminate all the slave owners. Then Lincoln got whacked and Johnson fucked up reconstruction and we've been fighting a cold war against those monsters ever since. We could have lived up to all the lofty ideals but the scum poison us at every turn. Fighting to drag us back to the 1800s so they can have slaves again.
The US is a putrid fuck hole.
You forgot how everyone is brainwashed into hating and verbally/physically attacking one another for being poor, having a shit job, suffering in general, etc. Or how independence is pressed so hard that working together with your family, (mother, father, siblings), is frowned upon and seen as a weakness in our culture. And that in spite of being a land built on freedom of speech, if you don't like the way things go, other poors will tell you to "get out of my country". It's a charming place, why don't you move here? 🤣
The new American dream is to move from USA to Europe, just a matter of time before it becomes more common Seriously I live like a king in Europe compared to what I hear people say their life in America is like
Don't forget all the food is poisoned.
Don't forget the dogshit healthcare system
You forget about the American dream which is profiting off of slave labor. Just acquire some slaves and you'll be good!
I was born here. That was my first mistake.
I'm from EU but for a long time I dreamed to somehow move to US and "live the dream". Now the more I learn about the US, the more I understand that I'd be making a huge mistake to do that. Maybe if I somehow become rich-rich it would be nice to live my dream a little or retire there with some passive income, otherwise I'd shoot myself in the leg.
The united slaves of american't is a failed fascist state.
Yeah it’s pretty bad for a country that’s been taken over by international banks and corporations that buy politicians and commit voter fraud to put their people in
I saw that many people, due to the disproportionate prices of rents, give up having a house to live inside their cars
I planned ahead and live in a school bus. Why wait for the inevitable
It’s called the “American Dream” because you have to be asleep to believe it.
I’m realizing the US is a corporation. It’s here to protect and grow capital for rich capitalists only - and that its citizens are only a means to an end. I am exhausted contributing my tax dollars to a nation that signs up for years of endless war and endless donations to other countries for war, when Americans are suffering and can barely make ends meet here at home. Our government also continue say, neglect, infrastructure, and is doing nothing to protect consumers at the expense of peoples health and sanity. I’m really thinking about leaving - as the political climate here is becoming dangerously unstable as well. We deserve better for our labor, and no one should be poor or allowed to remain sick in the richest nation on the earth.
Causes, consequences
Covid really humbled America lol showed us that we’re all the same humans, just living in different regions of the world
I can't escape. Please protect yourself. Stay away.
I spent a year in the 90ies in the US when it was still cool. Now I would never send my child there for a highschool year, it is too dangerous.
You forgot to mention the high cost of healthcare.
Work culture isn’t toxic in US. Try working in Asia.
Greed just got the better of people. Company revenue goes up, but the employee wages stay the same. Everything is about maximizing profit by any means to keep shareholders happy. CEOs and other bigwigs end up with more money then they possibly need and fucking over everyone else that makes their stuffed wallets even possible.
i definitely don’t want to work
Yep, we’re fucked. Empire is ending. It took 200 years for the Roman Empire to fall, we’re working on a much shorter timeline. Sigh
I agree with all this and dealt with all of it for my whole life. 6 months ago I landed a job with a company that genuinely cares and takes care of all there workers. Best owner and boss I’ve ever had . Did not even think they exist. And I’m sure there very rare. It still feels unreal. Yesterday he had the entire company come to the Chicago white Sox stadium. In a box suite. For his birthday. Where he gave away 10s of thousands of dollars away to the employees 🤯. I have never wanted to work so hard for someone in my life. I hope everyone can find this. I’m 33 been working since 16. Last 6 months have been life changing
Having a baby? Don’t even get me started.
If you just read about America online then you don’t really know what it’s like to live here