this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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Imagine the kinds of things that even top athletes wouldn't care to bring to the attention of doctors or dont get treated because of the cost hurdle. Imagine extending that to the entirety of the American population. Most of medical costs in america are because of the privatization of health care, administration overhead and artificially inflated costs.
Its insane to me that people who are incompetent, especially at their own jobs, can get paid orders of magnitude higher than skilled workers. I did jury duty recently and in the case, the VP of a nursing facility was getting paid in excess of 200k and had the gall to claim they did everything by the book in a negligence case (they did not) and constantly failed to answer the attorney's questions properly (she'd always answer a different question than what was asked, refuse to answer yes/no, contradict clear facts about what was on the page in front of her). Not sure who she thought she was fooling. Attorney literally had to ask her if they were looking at the same paper because she was in a different world. Its people like that that keep our healthcare system so expensive that people cant afford to survive.
I have no doubt that people will fight tooth and nail to keep their trashy privatized health care - let them. Its just stupid to me that they refuse to allow lower cost health care of the same quality by the government. My brother in christ you could use it too if you stopped fighting for it to not get passed
So many are fooled into needing to be "better than" others. They look down on fast food workers, "illegals", homeless people, etc. They should be looking up to the corporate overlords and billionaires who are creating the problems.
I have a theory that many Americans believe that if you are poor/suffering, then you are obviously being punished by God/karma and therefore deserve to suffer. I believe it's a rationalization for their own selfishness.
This is related to the prosperity gospel, which Puritans were fully on board with. If God blessed you, you would prosper. Ergo, if you were prosperous it was because God had blessed you. Likewise, if you weren't prosperous, it was because God was punishing you. And if God is punishing you, who am I to stop it? So not only is helping your fellow man who is struggling more than you not really what God wants you to do, you're actually interfering in God's punishment of this person.
Or it could just be an excuse to be shitty to people who weren't as fortunate as you.
Americans are (generally) just shitty human beings. This has been true since the first landing of the pilgrims. Yknow, the gang who were famously religious extremists considered too extreme for 1600s Europe.
This is the natural outcome of an individualist society. Similar to how capitalism will always result in total economic collapse, individualism is a poison to society.
Even going back thousands of years, people generally helped each other out. You can go to a random village in the Russian countryside where people live in desperate poverty and they’ll share some food and water with a smile on their face. This is generally true anywhere in the global South.
People depend on communities and societies. America has systematically destroyed all semblance of the human experience, and it shows.
This is the aspect of human nature that fascism seeks to exploit.
Nope, it's the insurance and pharma industries.