What’s ironic is that the big opposition from the GOP to ObamaCare was this ludicrous idea of “Death Panels” weighing human life against budgets.
And yet, when the panels are a dictatorial insurance algorithm, where is that classic 2009-2010 outrage?
The panels are often just an automated script that always replies with Denied the first time too, since people sometimes dont fight it.
Every accusation is a confession with Republicans
You probably already know but, those arguments aren’t why the GOP were outraged. It’s what they thought would be most likely to get the public outraged.
“the public” seems dumb as fuck.
Yes, you can blame the GOP for defunding education as well.
(I have exactly zero love for the Zionazi-owned Dems either but I’m not aware of them ever defunding education)
Or discriminating against gays, or cutting food stamps, or invading Greenland, or storing nuclear secrets in bathrooms, or…
I do recall them being unabashedly genocidal in Palestine though, so I’m not exactly in a rush to give them credit for less-than-the-bare-minimum.
That’s table stakes in the US unfortunately. There’s no option for “no genocide”, you need a complete reform of the electoral system (basically anything newer than 18th century will do) and then some new political parties. But since that is wishful thinking at the moment, the lesser of two evils will do.
There’s no option for “no genocide”
Weird, I was able to find one.
the lesser of two evils will do.
“genocide is the lesser of two evils” is exactly where this mentality has gotten you. You may be compromised enough to sign your name off on that. I am not and never will be.
The public is way less intelligent than “dumb as fuck” hopefully we can get there on the way to marginally dumb. But I doubt it
That no longer matters as they are not the ones in charge anymore…
That’s not true, and a dangerous cop out
That’s not true
We shall see, only time will tell (though it’s interesting that any sitting President is allowed to legally assassinate anyone they want with virtually no oversight that we are told of).
a dangerous cop out
Fair.
Whenever an economic argument is invoked to justify for or against doing something, it’s always a vacuous position.
Economics must be subservient to the needs of the society it exists within.
Heck yes! Even the implementation of AI, and people getting let go. If enough people are unemployed, who’s actually buying the products that these companies are selling, peddled by the same AI that replaced the employees with? Feels like a free for all with these tech, not necessarily watching out for the overall impact on human societies…
This is why we need the Mario Party
Why didn’t they get the procedure done anyway? So what, they owe $50K.
Does his hospital insist on payment up front? Last time that I went, I was billed, though it was for much less money.
How “new” was the treatment? Has it proven effective prior? He had gone metastatic already.
the family briefly considered tapping their retirement savings to cover the out-of-pocket cost.
So… they let him die to keep from dipping into their retirement savings? Am I reading this right?
I am not generally a pro-insurance company person… but 50K? Even if I had NO retirement savings, personally I’d prefer bankruptcy over death
We have had doctors and hospitals deny or refuse medical treatments because of insurance reimbursement. It does in fact happen. A lot more than people think. My guess is he felt the savings would be completely depleted because the cost would be more than they had and then his family would be left with nothing.
They’re really tryna create another Luigi aren’t they?
I suspect they’ve created many.
Only one became active. Allegedly.
So far.
Life is not medically necessary
In fact its a massive risk factor.
It’s the ultimate pre-existing condition.
I work in EMS. My advice to students and brand new EMTs is always the same: don’t freak out when your patient is in cardiac arrest. Those are the easy calls. I have to keep people alive and if someone is crashing in front of me I have to figure out why and what I can try to do to stop it so they don’t die. The ones that are already in cardiac arrest aren’t getting any more dead, and the only outcomes are that we improve on that or we don’t. We can’t make them worse. Dead is the most stable condition.
Thank you for your service and for sharing your insight.
Imagine all medicine working that way.
It does in most of Europe
Yeah, but then your patients often get a 3000 dollar “ambulance” bill bcz ambulance companies are still privately run.
Some places have volunteer-only EMT services, and still charge thousands of dollars for an ambulance ride…
Forgive the long comment, and this is very US centered and doesn’t apply to every area in the US. EMS systems vary broadly between states and even municipalities within states…
To put some of that in perspective:
- A new ambulance costs about $250-$400k depending on the type.
- The heart monitors we use are somewhere in the area of $10k-$25k a piece. That’s ONE piece of the equipment that we use, and they need maintenance and replacement every so often.
- There’s all the other equipment, and restock of medical items. Even if something doesn’t get used it has to be on the truck and has to be replaced when it’s outdated.
- Fuel is expensive. The last agency I worked for spent about $400k - $500k a year just on fuel.
- There’s insurance - auto insurance, liability insurance, workman’s comp, etc.
- Keeping an EMS certification active requires ongoing continuing education credits. We take classes constantly to stay current and to be able to renew our cert, which in some states costs money just to renew. I’ve spent hundreds just to be able to work, both in con ed classes and certs. Some agencies will help pay for this cost, and many provide free con ed classes for their providers. This costs money.
- There’s building costs, rent, electric, etc.
- Ongoing vehicle maintenance (ambulances break a LOT)
- administrative costs, and so many more I haven’t listed
And that’s all before you get into paying anyone for their work. You aren’t paying thousands of dollars for YOUR ambulance ride. You’re paying for the fact that the ambulance existed to respond to your emergency in the first place. Many agencies don’t get taxpayer money, and if they do, it’s minimal. My last agency had townships paying them $2k a year to provide 24-7 ambulance service with paid providers. That doesn’t even cover fuel, let alone anything else.
Is it absolutely bullshit that people should have to be bankrupted to pay for an ambulance bill? 100% No one should have to worry about money when they’re having an emergency.
If you don’t like it, advocate for a municipal tax. If every household paid something like $75-$100 a year you could have the best EMS service with well trained, well paid providers using the best, most up to date equipment available and you would never have to worry about an ambulance bill. The places that implement those taxes generally either don’t bill at all or bill insurance and only take what insurance pays them, there’s no balance billing of the patient.
But no one wants extra taxes, even if it could save them thousands of dollars, and for some reason people come out and support funding for the fire departments and the police departments and no one wants to advocate for support and funding for EMS, so instead you get this mess where EMS is somehow expected to hold itself together and be a profitable enough business to self sustain. You end up with a system where providers are underpaid, have to work 70+ hour weeks to survive (and thus are incredibly burnt out and exhausted - you really want a provider who has worked 70 hours in 5 days on 10 hours of total sleep making life or death decisions?), the good providers head to places where they can get better pay, the equipment and ambulances are old and being held together by sheer will of the providers, and patients still have insane bills.
Patients should not fund EMS. Government should fund EMS. It’s a service, not a business, but under the current system in most places, it has to be a business if you want to be able to call 911 and have someone there to respond.
You pretty much addressed my responses to the first half of your comment in the second half.
That all sounds like reasons why the city/county/municipality/state should pay for EMS services.
People are already paying taxes, so it’s not unreasonable for them to expect the governments that they’re funding to provide the critical services that everyone needs. It’s in everyone’s interest to have a smoothly-operating EMS service that doesn’t need to be run likely a business.
Tax money already pays for police, and their budgets are already bloated as is. Why the hell can’t tax money be used to pay for all those costs of maintaining an EMS service? No one should be landed with a multi-thousand dollar bill for having a medical emergency.
Healthcare in general should run this way, but especially emergency medical services. It’s absurd that it isn’t. But too many americans are afraid of the big scary “socialism,” so they continue to let billionaire oligarchs fuck them over like this. It’s insane.
This would be enough to “radicalize me”, but I don’t think it’s all that radical to be against a system that treats people this way.
That’s the point, we’re not living a neutral situation, we’re under attack by bad people doing disgusting jobs
It’s us against the Epstein class, really.
It isn’t. It’s inhumane the way these companies are behaving. They’re a threat to society and this is humans’ instinctual response to eliminating threats.
We are giving thousands of dollars of our money to a company to insure that our life and health will be taken care of, it should NOT be up to these companies what methods of remedies that a person needs to be kept alive and healthy are “deemed necessary”
Furthermore; these companies CEO should NEVER be paid more than an average citizen… full stop. There’s no reason an insurance company employee owns a yacht.
average citizen
Median citizen. The average is raised significantly by a few rich folks.
Great point and an even better ultimatum.
Someone phone Luigi.
You are Luigi, We are all supposed to be Luigi
I’m so fascinated by the image of him having 8 downvotes while the comment calling for him by name only has 1 🤔
Maybe people think he is depicting Jesus here? I mean the heart he is pointing at with his left hand is often seen in iconic portraits of Jesus (I am not sure if it also appears in portraits of saints, but that’s not entirely relevant if the point would be whether people THOUGHT that or not)?
Oh who are we kidding, people probably just assume that the animation was generated by AI and so hate it for that reason:-P.
Death panels by any other name wouldn’t be so bleak.
Remember when the Republicans were all screaming that Obamacare was going to create death panels? Should have thought twice before giving health insurance companies ideas…
Long before the first Republican mentioned a “death panel,” private health insurance companies already had the same thing. And because Medicare was already a thing, the government also had the equivalent of death panels.
No, the truth is that “death panel” is just a scary sounding phrase and never had any real relevance. I’ve noticed that conservatives don’t use words for their meanings. They use them for how scary they sound.
That definitely tracks neuroscience’s finding that conservatives over-express fear in general. Probably one of the reasons why they cannot understand liberals.
This is flat out no different than shooting someone in my book.
This is why people are behind Luigi.
Hey, I’m a people! I’m behind Luigi! I’m proof of this!
What’s the guy gonna do? Sue them? He’s dead. Murdered by the capitalist authoritarians.
The only rightful place for kings is under the blade of a guillotine.
luigi tried to tell us
Can’t the family sue?
fam can do other things as well
Ah yes, America, where corporate murder and tragic loss of life is compensated with money.
Guillotines are too 18th century. I am a fan of woodchippers. Feet first, of course!
a scimitar would be sufficient.
I don’t want to hear a billionaire shrieking as their toes are mulched. Even if they’re parasites, it’ll still sound like a human shrieking as their toes are mulched.
Just guillotine them and redistribute their wealth already.
I believe this is what is meant by “pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps”
The most painful thing we can do to them is take their money and make them live like the rest of us.
IDK man, you got some lemon juice, duct tape, and a cheese grater?
Can we at least carve their highest net worth into their foreheads?
They might appreciate that - an instant indicator that they are different (“better”). Even if it makes it impossible to hide.
And yet it is often by law that people have to have insurance that pays them nothing when the time comes.
It is nothing short of robbery.
I wouldn’t use the word “robbery”.
I’d use the word “murder”.
It’s both, really. They take your money and provide nothing in return while you die.
They kill us through fraud And theft, and are surprised that we celebrated Luigi’s deeds. The truth is they will only start to care when more of them start to drop. How many more millions need to die because of this BS before we’re ready to bring justice down on their heads as a collective class?
Everyone needs to read Billionaire’s Island.
Is that a euphemism for the Epstein Files?
Nope. It’s a comic that happens to be a cautionary tale to billionaires, that they will absolutely ignore.
None your society is just as complacent as the greedy sociopathic class.
I think you mean complicit. “Complacent” doesn’t make very much sense in that context.
It’s also a hollow edgy take, the likes of which would be expected from a shut-in teenager who doesn’t actually interact with people. Most Americans are exploited to the point of exhaustion, which is a little more complicated than just “they’re complicit”, and some Americans are putting in quite a lot of effort to improve the shithole country we’re from.
Have you ever had a warehouse job, or anywhere else where you can actually speak with the exploited masses? If so, did you speak to them? Have you ever spend time in real-world organizing spaces? Not talking about just going to a protest, I mean getting involved with the people in your community who you’re accusing of being complicit. (PSL doesn’t count.)
Nothing like the nypost comment section to get you out of your bubble. Can’t believe there’s so many insurance company defenders
I’m actually surprised given how much Ben Shapiro got flack from his own audience for attacking Luigi.
