• PraiseTheSoup@lemm.eeEnglish
    40·
    2 months ago

    I live in Minnesota and I have health insurance through my employer and I do not qualify for this program. It costs me over $200 just to walk in the door of the clinic. I recently had to get a CT scan and it cost me $1800. A fucking covid test cost $135, even though the state will mail them to me for free.

    I don’t make that much money. I can barely afford these bills. I’m a proud Minnesotan, but this post makes it seem like our healthcare is so much better than every other state, and I’m here to tell you that it most definitely is not

    • Grilipper54@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      15·
      2 months ago

      This is more a problem with your employers health insurance. Yes Minnesota healthcare is not perfect but if you’re very low income, it’s better than other states. MNsure certainly helped me a bit and provided free healthcare for awhile.

    • MashedTech@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      2 months ago

      So the bar was under the ground and it seems that Minnesota raised the bar to about 2 inches above ground. Not great, but better.

    • Lev_Astov@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, that was my experience with employer-run healthcare in general before I left to start my own business. I was paying $200 monthly for a terrible, high-copay situation like that from my last employer when I broke my knee. My friend with zero insurance had the same injury so I went to his doctor and surgeon. Afterwords we compared our total bills and mine was barely any less than his cash-only bill. I felt robbed.

    • Beetschnapps@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      Would it make you feel better to know those with insurance often also pay a lot of money?

      Does it make you feel better or worse to say that your employer is terrible?

      Do you see any difference between you having a shitty employer and your state protecting citizens from the worst you have suffered?

  • gibmiser@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    2 months ago

    But the government is literally incapable of ever doing anything right! We made sure of it! How is this possible!!

    • Frozengyro@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      No this is a failure of government, their job is to make poor people’s/ minority’s lives harder and keep them beaten down /s

  • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    2 months ago

    As a citizen of a civilized country: What is this “medical debt” Americans keep talking about?

    • NegativeInf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      2 months ago

      It’s how they punish us poor people for surviving instead of dying off like good little wage slaves.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        For ages, the American public does obviously not want any kind of social security, because you managed not to fix this basic problem for a number of differend government periods. So we are talking about happily agreeing victims.

        • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          Our system as it is set up is explicitly anti democratic and impossible to reform in any way without the buy in of the very officials who benefit from it being so. There’s no solution but revolution, and the people are so trapped in capitalist realism that many cannot perceive that any option exists other than to slowly watch as our quality of life degrades and our rights are stripped away one by one. There are a minority who are against such things as affordable healthcare, but there is literally studies done showing that regardless of popular support numbers for any given policy, there is no effect on the likelihood said policy will be implemented. Conversely, the support of the top 10% for a policy, or lack thereof, correlates directly to its likelihood of being implemented.

          All that to say, this country is definitively a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
      English
      3·
      2 months ago

      Kinda meaningless now, actually.

      As of 2022 it no longer shows up on your credit report, and the amounts are such incredibly high make-believe numbers ($15,000 for an ER visit in which you don’t even see a doctor), that the uninsured are essentially judgment-proof and those with insurance can just not pay anything past the deductible.

      Honestly, if they kept the bills at like $200 it would be may more distressing for the poor. Once the debt is so high it can’t be paid, it becomes meaningless. Owing several times your annual salary is no different than owing nothing at all.

        • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          Where I’m from

          1. You legally have to be insured and the only way to change your insurance is proving that you’re insured somewhere else
          2. If you’re employed, your employer pays the insurance for you, if you’re unemployed the responsibility to pay is on you
    • uis@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      As citizen of country that was civilized 25 years ago: I have no idea.

  • essell@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    2 months ago

    Doesn’t every state have a public program for low income families? That’s literally what Medicaid is, I believe?

    Some places are totally just not doing it right

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.eeEnglish
      18·
      2 months ago

      Depends on the state, mine only started participating in the Medicaid expansion program a year or two ago. Here low income families can have functional Medicaid coverage until you’re 18, then you get put on a limited care program that really only covers emergent care. However, both the child and adult programs recently got semi-privatized. Now the sate pays BCBS and Humana to run the Medicaid program for the state, letting them determine what coverage is like.

      So even in southern states where there is a Medicaid program, the adults rarely have coverage for everyday healthcare needs. It’s mainly there to make sure there’s some way to reimburse emergent care facilities.

    • NielsBohron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      2 months ago

      Some places are totally just not doing it right

      Repugnantcans: “It’s not that we don’t know how to govern, it’s just that government is inherently bad compared to the free market”

    • Lev_Astov@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      It seems like it’s up to the state to set the barrier for entry to their Medicaid system. In my state, the limit was <$24k yearly income, and I think that’s gone up since I last looked. In a friend’s state, it was <$12k to qualify, which is a lot harder to survive on.

  • niktemadur@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    2 months ago

    It’s almost like the people of many states decided to shoot their own foot off… with no insurance.
    Gee… I wonder if there’s a voting pattern we could discern from this map.

  • weariedfae@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    2 months ago

    Wait, I thought most states did? Meant for the really low income people on food stamps and cash assistance?

    Also, Jesus Christ Wyoming.

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      yo be fair, wyoming has a population smaller than major states bigger cities, so having access to a doctor in that reletively speaking, spread out isnt that easy, nor momentarily desireable for a doctor that would work there unless theyre heavily compensated.

  • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    2 months ago

    I don’t believe for one second that the central valley in California isn’t in the top tier. They’re probably just not counting half the workforce there.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      There’s really not a lot of people in the central valley compared to the coast (thank fuck).

  • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    Anyone know what’s going on in that one red triangle in Pennsylvania? I’m not familiar with that part of PA and nothing stands out on a map

    Aside from that, all of the northeast except Maine showing well.

    • NABDad@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      That’s Franklin County.

      Described as a Republican Party Stronghold, only three Democratic Party candidates for president managed to win the county since 1880. The most recent Dem candidate to win the county was LBJ.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        There’s lots of counties in PA that are deep red but don’t have that amount of medical debt. Is Franklin County riddled with cancer or something?

        • NABDad@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          No idea. Census info indicates more than 90% have health insurance. Maybe it’s related to distance from major medical centers.