Ooh dear ...

She really mentioned Gab. LOL. She's the same one that said we were doomed to die in a Socialist hell when Biden won the election and then talked about her SSI in the same paragraph. Nobody got hacked, they're just dumb, and for sure her husband spent that $45.

 

Sums it up perfectly:

 

I actually had to look that tweet up because I couldn't believe it was real... It's apparently real. Weird.

 

Like many successful countries around the world, New Zealand (where I live) is a social democracy. It holds socialist principles (looking after people) in a capitalist framework (we have a free market economy). It is absolutely NOT communist, and socialism and communism are two very different ideologies. One does not lead to the other. It never ceases to horrify me that so many living in the USA reject any programme or policy that will actually help suffering people by calling it socialism. Most of those people also do not get the hypocrisy they are spouting - if their house was burning down, would they not ring the fire brigade to come and put it out without needing to pay for their services? That's socialism in action.

I suppose a lot of it is due to the cult of the individual that is so rampant in the USA - but do people not realise that to help others less fortunate doesn't actually mean you lose anything? It's not a fulcrum - to raise one side doesn't mean that the other side drops. It does mean that your side may not be raised as far or as quickly, but bringing others along with you means that society in general wins.

Looking in from the outside as a historian about this socialist-bad-leads-to-communism rubbish that many in the USA use to scare the bejeebers out of the uninformed, I can see that it's simply 1950s reds-under-the-bed McCarthyism repurposed.

 

I find the American medical sector confusing.

Some voices in America >>We Hate Tax for medical service!! It's a socialist system
.....Hospital fees are so enormous that every PAYS a private medical insurer....if the overall service price increases everyone's premiums increase.
->For those who can pay, how is this different to tax?
.....People who cannot pay for private medical insurance avoid medical institutions and get less quality of life or become ill with no access to medical care. If they go to hospital they will end up paying a mortgage for the rest of their lives to said hospital.
-> I'm sorry but I don't understand why you would want to kick someone when they are down.

Edit: Added this one. Guessing some people are thankful that obamacare came about.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/16/coronavirus-hospital-bill-healthcare-america

 

See, that's totally crazy to me. The most I would pay for a 3-day stay in hospital is 3 days worth of parking - around NZ$50 (and probably capped at a lower rate for long term).

All medical diagnostic procedures, imaging, the bed, the food, the drugs, nursing, specialists, operations - everything is paid for through our income taxes (which aren't that high and are scaled according to income bracket), including that new titanium knee or hip joint you've just had replaced. Sure, we have a waiting list for non life-threatening conditions - if you turn up at a hospital with a broken toe, you will wait while they deal with the heart attack or stroke victim that comes in after you. You would expect that, though.

Prescription medicine costs are capped - you pay NZ$5 per item up to a limit of 20 items in a calendar year, thereafter all items are free. How does this work? A government agency called Pharmac negotiates supply directly with the pharmaceutical companies, getting heavily discounted rates. The government subsidises medicines for us - the $5 is a nominal co-payment (it was raised a few years ago from $3 per item).

 

$50 US is the co-pay you pony up to get in the door at a doc-in-a-box. From there it's off to the races.

Paying a lot on medical crap for the last couple of years, last year's events were expensive enough to push a lot of things over the edge. I'm avoiding the medical establishment entirely when I can because I'm broke enough from previous visits.

Didn't used to be this bad. ACA did NOT help in the slightest.

 

Much the same for dental, too. We pay over $150/mo for our family plan, with coverage limits our dentist/ortho hadn’t seen before (not a generally available plan). Still paid more than $3,000 out of pocket for two of the kid’s orthodontist appointments/teeth straightening program. “Normal” plans would have been closer to $5-6k, according to the billing lady.

I had a virtual doc appointment that I scheduled myself online, that lasted 8 minutes (according to Zoom). Insurance got billed almost $300 for an office visit, and I had a $20 co-pay. ☹️

We didn’t get rid of the mafia, they just went “legit” and moved into the healthcare racket….

 

As a Brit its scary to see just how much you guys pay in health care. The NHS here gets a lot of ****, but not going into thousands of debt for medical emergencies is nice.

 

I find it totally scary to see a 'care' industry profiteering so badly from the sick and vulnerable they're supposed to be helping.

 

And just think, we haven't even gotten into the morass of guidelines surrounding a Health Savings Account (HSA)!!

Everything you need to know about health savings accounts

 

It's like both camps in both places take the worst ideas from the other nation and run with them.

I'm literally at the point where I just want government to **** off on account of everything they try to do to "help" just makes things even worse.

Apparently "First, do no harm" does not apply to politicos.

 

This is how dead the OF boards are:
Producer's Letter: Summer 2021 Edition | EverQuest 2 Forums
Two and a half hours since it was posted and no responses yet - even a fanboi one! And no apologies for the crappy service this year either

 

New content in 7 days but we'll tell you about it later at an unspecified date... sounds about right. In their defense, not having bullet points about overseers is progress, I guess.