The United States health insurance system. It’s such a for-profit racket that more taxpayer money goes into it per capita than any other system out there and its outcomes are worse and shittier.
I went to hospital ER once after being literally unable to walk (unknown spinal issue). After 4 hours, they took Xrays, gave me a steroid shot and some extra-strength Tylenol, told me I have mild scoliosis, and then discharged me. I was bedridden for nearly 2 months after that. I then received a bill for 4000$.
Would medicare for all be a good next step to push for? Are any progressive politicians putting forth a viable plan for getting us closer to universal healthcare?
It’s not the worst next step, but Medicare is far from a perfect system.
Just the question of what’s covered can sometimes be almost as complex as tax code. It also carries a 20% coinsurance, which for big ticket stuff can still bankrupt you in a hurry. And there’s a big push towards privatization/contracting out the administration to the big companies.
The one thing Medicare does well is that it covers everyone. Hit 65 years old and you’re in. It’s an entitlement. There’s a lot to be said for establishing a standard of health care coverage as an entitlement (veeeery loosely translated as “human right”) no matter what age.
american healthcare will continue to suck as long as politicians are friends of instead enemies of private health insurance. as long as both parties are on payroll of big insurance we’re all getting screwed
Yeah, well, I have to disagree with you on this one.
A few years after I met my wife, we had to sell her apartment so we could move to another city together for jobs. We tried to be cheap and sell the place ourselves to save money. We teamed up with a lawyer that specialised on selling real estates privately. We had a few viewings, but people were hesitant to bidding. We got a lot of questions about why we didn’t use an agent.
After a few weeks, we contacted a real estate agent, and sold the place after just one viewing for a better price even after paying the agent fee.
I think it is important to leave the job to professionals when selling thing with high risk and high value.
Americans take it as received wisdom that homes are meant to generate income through higher valuations over time. We just assume home prices go up over time and if it’s not actively increasing in value, the home was a failure.
Many other countries don’t treat homes this way. They are dwellings, invest what you want to your liking, but it’s not a retirement account.
This focus on wealth generation creates lots of perverse incentives, such as exclusionary zoning, building on lots that are overly large, and suburban sprawl. These don’t reflect people’s actual, desired form of housing but rather maximize wealth for homeowners at the expense of everyone else.
We have a completely warped view of housing that causes us to be preyed upon by real estate agents, landlords, HOAs and the like.
DLCs: Games are expected to have DLCs nowadays, so game devs purposefully hold back some ideas for potential DLCs, often crippling the main game as a result.
Subscription services: For pretty much anything, but especially those automated monthly payments, which you won’t bother cancelling, even if you feel like you’re not using the service to its fullest.
It’s got to the point some people complain when there isn’t DLC. They just want to play the same game forever. Also, paid games with free to play style bullshit. At least as scummy as these free to play games can be you can at least try them out.
Also, DLC is almost a complete misnomer nowadays. Everything is content and is downloadable.
Even fewer will know that osteopathy is exactly the same type of nonsense. No, an osteopath is not (necessarily) a “bone doctor”.
The main confusion is that, in the US, schools of osteopathic medicine picked up enough real science that US Doctors of Osteopathy are real physicians… Even if the osteopathy part of their training is still pseudoscience.
Actual health insurance is literally illegal in the USA. It’s all some sort of partially pre-paid health subscription crap that you get punished for not buying. Every time the government steps in the help they make it worse, even as far back as WW2 with “salary caps” leading to extra non-monetary incentives, like medical insurance, company car, etc. Then the government gives business tax breaks to provide insurance making it more expensive for an individual to buy so now your health is tied to your work. Then they help by… etc. etc. etc.
Eh, no, surely not. Pool the risk and only pay for your share of the risk. Somebody takes some risk in that, because statistics don’t always pan out, even at large, so the risk taker gets a return. Literally couldn’t be further from a “scam” - it’s one of the few amazing upsides to using money instead of bartering.
Ah right. Yeah US healthcare is utterly fucked. I’m very happy to live in a place with decent public healthcare, even if the local government is trying to screw it over.
Stock can be used well for some things but the stock market needs to be significantly limited. It’s ridiculous how much is contingent on it. And because of legislation in place in America, good markets rarely benefit the average person, but bad markets often hurt the average man.
Unpaid overtime is usually illegal too. Highly depends on your position though. A lot of software engineers are marked as exempt when they shouldn’t be.
The annoying thing is, depending on your job and financial situation, it hardly matters whether it’s illegal or not. I’m not talking about my comfortable situation as a software engineer, but rather people working crap jobs and not having alternatives.
If you know, you’ll be out of work for longer if you get fired, you basically cannot report any illegal stuff your employer is doing.
I used to work for IBM’s CIC (colloquially known as the “cheap labor division”) and starting pay for a junior dev was only 30k/year. If you got assigned to a contract, you were told that you had to work 44 hours/week exempt, regardless of if you had work to do or not, and everyone knew it’s so the could charge the project more without actually pating the devs any extra. Needless to say I got out ASAP and have 0 intention of working for them again, in any capacity.
And they wondered why everyone kept jumping ship right after getting those nice required onboarding certs onto their resumes…
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