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Jimmy Gleeson's avatar

I can offer you this anecdote.

In the states, if you have some huge crisis, say diabetic cellulitus, leading to an amputation, it could have a huge impact on the rest of your life, either with or without insurance. I didn't have insurance at the time because, 2021 was during Covid and I was finding it hard to get work. The social worker didn't help very much either when she came to assist me while I was in the hospital.

She should have told me that I could apply for healthcare with very low premiums if I was under the poverty level or rather "at" the poverty level. you see, if you don't meet the minimum employment income level, you can't get insurance. But there is a threshold you can enter that will get you the lowest premiums available, and it isn't an insurmountable number.

Because I do gig work, I can't predict how much money I will make each year. But in truth, I am industrious enough to be able to get at least the minimum amount. Although at the time, recovering in the hospital, I did not know what was possible. I was resigned to endure the mechanisms of what "falling through the cracks" had to offer, which as it turned out, was a glorified boarding house. I made more calls to 911 in that year and a half than I had in my entire time on this earth.

At my time of recovering in the hospital. Instead, I found this out near the end of my stay almost by accident with conferring with someone once the open enrollment period started.

Second, in terms of healthcare, there are outside agencies that will assist you. My amputation and recovery in the hospital was 400k. I don't have the exact figure any longer because all my possessions from my previous residence were inadvertently destroyed.

Part of the huge hospital bill, more than half, was, where I was previously staying did not have wide enough doors or ramps for a bariatric wheelchair. And the other reason is, for various reasons, my sister no longer wanted me there. Some of it was due to my own bad issues. I would say I wish I had sat down and communicated with her, and discussed things, but I never did...and she didn't iniate them either.

Some of it was Covid related. I listen and watch things Covid related now with headphones, but I didn't back then. I have no doubt she probably thought the things I was going through were "rantings of conspiracy theorists." Because while she was upstairs listening to Anderson Cooper and CNN, and working in a library at a state school, her brother was listening to "Perspectives of the Pandemic" and was delivering her information on why the pandemic was not going to be the next "Spanish Flu."

I doubt she will ever discuss it with me. We haven't talked since Fathers day of 2023.

DollarFor is an advocate for patients with huge hospital bills. And they helped me. But it wasn't an easy road. It was them writing letters and making calls on my behalf, and me doing the same. I would stay on hold at times for hours. I don't know where I would be if those bills still hung over my head.

But there are a lot of issues about healthcare. that need to be ironed out, the first being that there needs to be a way of transparency. It should be crystal clear how much things cost, but it is fairly opaque. And there are a lot of informed consent issues that should be brought to the forefront. I still am new to a lot of it. Another Substack, "Unbekoming" discusses a lot of the tangential issues that all seems to share similar parallels.

Tom Woods, a libertarian podcast, has had guests on who offer an alternative to the increasingly state and insurance run system. They are networks of healthcare professionals and doctors who it sounds like offer their services based on a subscription model, and from what I understood from these brief podcasts, are very transparent in how much their various interventions cost.

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BetterOffRed's avatar

I feel your pain.

"Universal healthcare" is a boondoggle, a scam, a tool of power and an opportunity for waste, corruption and injustice.

Visit or live in a country whose government has imposed such programs and you WILL know.

My parents' experience in UK was a revelation. Covered, as a visa-holding elite exec, thinking that "privatized" system was okay, they waited. And waited.

Finally flew back to USA for other-than-homeopathic long-wait care. US diagnostics determined cancer.

Lesson: gov't program=gov't waste, class warfare and the implementation of LCD goods, services and methods.

I hope you have strength and your efforts are successful in keeping your family together.

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