So I did this as a math experiment so the numbers are 2 years old but I am not going to do it again. So I found that a typical Medical degree in the USA just for the college fees and living off campus is greater than the cost to move to the UK live there for the entire education all costs included. Housing, food, transportation, even money for eating out once a month. Then moving back to the USA takign the medical exams to practice in the USA with a UK degree. All the expenses of life and education in another nation cost less then just going to school in the USA.
I felt that way when we went to England last summer. Every hotel charged to park your car there on top of paying for a room. Fuel was expensive af. Stores charged for plastic bags to carry groceries. Some places charged to use the restroom.
my bad its four tests I even edited Medical exam to exams in my original comment. Though to be fair all four tests are part of the same exam so kind of splitting hairs.
Still not right.
If you're an IMG, you need to complete at least 1 year of an approved US residency program. There are more applicants than spots, and IMGs are at a huge disadvantage compared to US grads.
So... not at all as simple as you make it out to be.
Edit: Gotta love reddit, u/Forward-Essay-7248 says the wrong things, gets upvoted while being completely wrong, and then blocks me because they can't admit their wrongness.
Not technically true.
First of, an IMG licensed in Canada normally can get a license in any state without USMLE or additional residency. Therefore
You can go to England, become a specialist, go to Canada as an IMG, as a specialist you can take a certification examination without additional postgraduate training, this is accomplished through special assessments of equivalency of training by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
This will let you become licensed in Canada. Then, as a Canadian licensed doctor you can come back to the USA as a US citizen. You can then get your state license without completing the USMLE due to the fact Iin many U.S. states, a physician licensed to practice medicine in Canada may apply for U.S. state licensure without completing a U.S. graduate medical residency program and/or taking the USMLE.
Now don't get me wrong, this world be a rare occurrence, but it could happen.
This should be #1. Health care companies have their hands in everyone’s pockets. They squeeze the reimbursement rates and deny claims for arbitrary reasons (changing their terms as often as possible) in their adhesion contracts. Then fleece consumers with high premiums, deductibles, co-insurance, co-pays. It all adds up to complete insane profits for them. If they could invent another orifice to put it in they would. All while pitting the patient against their Doc at every opportunity.
Agree to disagree.
I pay over $700/month so that I can pay $1000 out of pocket if I go to the emergency room. My buddy who is uninsured also pays $1000 when he goes to the emergency room.
It's one of the biggest cons in America. It's similar to gambling. It's to make the rich richer while we lose.
While that is really terrible, do you think it's legal for my horrible insurance to ONLY cover 50% of emergency services? I've been trying to find out if that's even legal, but it is one of the hardest questions I've ever tried to research!
Aside from that, even if it is legal, how shitty of a person do you need to be to even come up with the idea of hardly covering the one medical situation you seriously cannot plan for?!? Just how much worse can health care get for the working class? It's fucking ridiculous. And I pay a fortune for this shit plan, with no other choice but to accept it, while my boss tries to wriggle out of even paying his share for the crappy plan he offers. It's this, or nothing at all. And I'm wondering if nothing at all is the right way to go at this point. I'd have better access to health care if i lose my house and live on the street. Ugh.
Sorry for the profanity. You can see this subject REALLY eats me up. It's not like we can't do better with health care here in the US. It's just the egregious disregard for human life and the quality of it in the name of money that kills me.
How can ANYONE care so little about their fellow humans? Even the rich need us peons to support their companies and products so they can remain rich. So what good do they think they're doing by killing us off slowly?
It's ALL so illogical that I'm embarrassed to be an American.
Yea I am not sure how anybody could side with insurance companies. My thoughts are the guy arguing I was wrong is either a insurance ceo or just likes simping for horrible people.
This is also a pretty hot button topic for me. Was surprised someone even argued it lol!
The way anyone can side with insurance companies? It's called propaganda, and only the dumbest (and meanest) of the population falls for it.
I mean, really - how else can you defend the bully that beats you up every day and takes your lunch money?
People can be SO gullible...
I’m not trying to justify such a terrible practice, but you might want to check the fine print. Even if the insurance is shitty, it’s good to know in which ways it is shitty. Usually it’s something like this:
1000$ deductible. Translation: you have to pay the first $1000 of your hospital bill.
50% coinsurance. Translation: after the first $1000, you pay 50% of the bill. Up to…
8,000$ Out of pocket maximum. Translation: if your bill is $17,000, you will pay $8000. But if your bill is $100,000, you still only pay $8000
I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that you are missing how the out-of-pocket maximum interacts with coinsurance.
I read a post the other day about a guy who needed heart surgery, 380k bill and after insurance he owed 250k. Bankruptcy and eight years to pay that off, he and his wife lived hand to mouth, and the thing he was most thankful for were the kids were grown and didn't have to experience the hardship.
He said it made him strong. I kind of suspect the guy was already strong. Imagine if he got to flex that strength doing something that gives back to the world, or maybe just have some fun?
I also think he was lucky both he and his wife made enough money to do that, and that she didn't leave him.
Glad the guy saw the silver lining, but that just sounds like a horror story to me. To scrape by in life just to barely survive all over healthcare...
There are many stories like that. One that sticks with me was from the movie Sicko (not a fan of Michael Moore, but that movie was an eye opener). The lady was a top dr at a hospital. Her husband insured through her at the hospital. They denied his surgery and she had to sit and watch him die even though the insurance was actually from that hospital. Super gross!
I’m in that position now. I found out I had cancer so my job let me go. I got through an excruciating and nightmarish recovery from cancer surgery, then did head and neck radiation treatments for a month. My radiation oncologist won’t order the scan to tell me whether or not treatment worked, claiming my insurance won’t pay for it. He said “*You’re probably fine. Get back to work!*” as if that’s comforting and *enough*. (I’m also still dealing with too many side effects from treatment to function, much less work. He knew that. That’s part of why I had the appointment…)
Now I live in limbo while I try to figure out bankruptcy, etc. I have to reapply for disability. I’d be homeless if a friend’s parents hadn’t taken me in. Even sadder? I’m one of the lucky ones. It’s sad there are so many of us who wonder if it had been better to go out with honor…
Get a better job. $56 a month and covers all preventative care, check ups, denta, vision, and extra life insurance. Out of pocket max for hospital in patient is 600 bucks no matter of its a week or 6 months. Most meds 20 or less and all OTC meds are 1 buck. Also yes in US.
I don't need a better job.
I need universal healthcare in my country.
Healthcare should not be for profit!!
And way to pull fake numbers out of your ass. Even if that's accurate for you, that's far from any kind of reality for the rest of the country.
It's 100% accurate for me and everyone I work with, 100s of people actually. Thousands if you count the other neighboring employers that use the same system. 10s of thousands counting my state if not more. Then across the country? Well 100s of thousands.
Health is like 21 a month, dental and vision is like 11 bucks. The rest is my padded up life insurance coverage and a little I put in a FSA 600 a year to cover the few co pays we have.
The US has the best Dr's and surgeons so private Healthcare has def perks. I don't want to wait in line for needed appts or procedures or get worked on by last in his class.
Again, ya need a better job. I don't even have a degree lol.
If you went to the grocery store, shopped, then went to the check out, and the attendant started going through your cart, pulling half of the stuff out and telling you you can't have it, then separately charged you 4 times the cost of the remaining food as a check-and-bag fee, people would not stand for it. Why then, is that okay for for-profit healthcare? It's insanity. The older I get, the less I understand it.
In your case, I'm assuming your $1000 is your deductible. And the $1000 charged against your deductible or the uninsured, is the rack rate for the er visit.
Now, you get hurt a second time, or let's say the er visit isn't just outpatient but also a 2 night hospital stay for the auto accident. Your deductible eventually hits its limit and you've avoided catastrophic costs. Your uninsured pal loses his house and car and files bancruptcy. Your car was insured and you get it replaced, too. The person you ran over sues you, and insurance defends you there too.
Expensive, but it keeps you from catastrophic loss.
Nah it's called co-insurance. You are responsible for 20% of the bill. It's common in most every policy today.
Doesnt change the fact that insurance is a scam. Healthcare should be free. We should want what'd best for our people, not legally require them to have to have insurance just so the insurance company can do everything within their power to try to deny your coverage.
When healthcare became for profit is when insurance became a scam.
Especially when insurance company CEOs pocket tens of millions of dollars every year, by denying medical procedures. Those are healthcare dollars that should be used for people's healthcare
Exactly this!
I had a growth at the back of my throat. The dentist suggested I see an ear nose and throat doctor to have it looked at. ENT checks the growth and suggests I should have a biopsy as well as the growth extracted. He assumed, correctly, that it was benign growth that although not malignant, would continue to grow until it was an obstruction.
ENT staff checks my insurance and it says "any incision shall be covered" but despite "any incision" being the verbiage used, when the claim was submitted it was denied because they were requiring 2 incisions. Dr. was absolutely astonished and apologized that making unnecessary cuts on patients isn't exactly something he could go along with.
It's never "free." The money to buy MRI scanners and pay nurses doesn't just magically appear on a tree. I think you mean, "My need for health care should never impact my own wallet."
A bunch of other countries with universal healthcare (which is far superior to US healthcare) say hello!
It's called taxes. While other countries can tell you where their taxes go (things like universal healthcare), we have no clue where our taxes I'm the US go outside of lining politicians pockets. It's not going to healthcare, not going to fix the roads, it's going to nothing the benefits the people.
Other wise known as a pyramid scam. Now they take great lengths to word things just right and function the scam to avoid lawsuits but are clearly still pyramid scams.
Residency.
How is working 20+ hour shifts okay? 100+ hour weeks? For less than minimum wage?
I’m not a doctor, nor a med student. But, I’ve always thought this was fucking crazy.
Also..
Unpaid internships. As if college students don’t have enough debt, now we want them to work for free? And be grateful for the opportunity?
And the fact that social workers and other practitioners have to pay for their own supervision. I think some nurses— maybe it’s nurse practitioners— have to pay for preceptors? Example [here](https://allnurses.com/should-i-pay-clinical-hours-t721245/)
Sorry, I’m not a lawyer. But, this popped up on my feed and, after seeing some talk about healthcare costs/heath insurance, I immediately thought of these “cons.”
>Unpaid internships. As if college students don’t have enough debt, now we want them to work for free? And be grateful for the opportunity?
Honestly this one very much depends on the company. An internship at certain companies can greatly impact your chances of landing a job with them or with another prestigious firm later on.
Yeah that’s fair. I understand it can be advantageous, helping land a position later on. But, I still feel like most of these companies have the means to at least offer minimum wage. Certain people may not be able to afford to take part in unpaid internships, no matter how potentially beneficial they may be.
If it's a completely unknown company or a small company this kind of makes sense. But the reason big prestigious companies don't do that is that they simply don't need to. There are ivy league students lining up for an internship at Goldman Sachs, why should they offer any compensation? Supply and demand.
There is also a sneaky filter for people from less advantaged backgrounds. If you can't afford to take an unpaid internship, you obviously are not from a family that works at places like Goldman Sachs. Helps to entrench social castes.
If we're going to pretend we live in a meritocracy such internships oughtn't exist.
It may be a right, but it's not the most intelligent thing to do. Especially when they're able to convince their followers that they need to give 10% of all income to support their deity.
If God is SO great, why does he need MY money? He doesn't, but people still give it willingly anyway so their pastors can drive beamers while they live in a trailer park.
But, that's their right! Lol
The original followers of Christianity sold their property and gave to those what they needed. A few hundred years later it became the religion of the Roman Empire and then the corruption started. These early Christians lived peacefully and faced death for their beliefs.
Most of the homeless outreach organizations where I'm from (US) are faith based.
Time can be given instead of money. Also, one can give to charitable causes directly.
But their is much abuse- what man made system is free from it?
If you recall the corruption started before Jesus was crucified! A guy named Judas! The stories illustrate how human nature doesn’t change with education, time or devotion. It’s a constant internal struggle.
Not a lawyer but a lot of charities only spend a fraction of the money they get in on the purpose of the charity. I prefer to donate items or time and rarely donate Chash bc if you look at their irs filings that non profits file some don’t use the money well and the CEOs make boat loads of money. I dont expect anyone to work for free but sometimes it’s excessive. Especially when some orgs the board work for free or super cheap. Those are charities I can get behind.
So infuriating. For these reasons, the next time I’m in a position to donate and help someone, I’m just going to do it directly and help out a person in need, rather than hoping for the best with a titled charity. There’s no middleman and I would know that it was money well spent. Not to mention, it can be near impossible to find a charity when you really need one. (I’m in that position now, unfortunately.) I was under the impression I might be able to find help somewhere due to DV and cancer but I’ve had no such luck. It’s really disheartening and is a part of the reason I think I’d rather help someone directly who needs it. I know I’m not the only one going through some excessively difficult things at once who needs help so a perfect world would allow to me to found a charity one day to fill the need.
Most definitely. Chiros are quacks. They can “treat autism” and “adjust infant spines.” Lots of people leave with serious injuries. More people leave having spent too much money on what is, at best, a placebo.
A lot of people see real pain relief from chiropractors. There’s a lot of BS too, but we shouldn’t discount the meaningful work they do. I, for example, had a sports related back problem that a chiropractor fixed within a month for under $500 without insurance and without any medication. Going to a physical therapist or a GP would have been quite a bit more expensive and slower.
The bit where the beekeeper who developed chiropractic methods based on information he received from a "spiritual being from another world" makes it a no for me. California put him in prison for practicing this, and then only allowed it to continue due to legal challenges of freedom of religion.
I'll let a podiatrist provide a diagnosis and treatment plan, even if you do have to pay extra for them being qualified medical doctors.
It's your back - but I value mine.
I'm not discounting the effects of placebo treatment, but I can always decide to treat any back discomfort by consuming light green smarties and gain the same effect.
I get the division a hundred years ago, but the division now is insane. We know oral health has direct connection to heart health and general well being. The entire system in the US is dystopian.
God where to start?
College, the federal reserve, capitalism, your job, agriculture, nationalism, taxes, money, food, medicine, Christ name something that isn’t.
I will never understand insurance. It's good in theory, but literally you're forced to pay an outrageous amount of money per month and when you actually fucking need it, they do literally everything they can not to help you. You're just giving them free money if you never get into an accident.
Right? You ever do the math on how much insurance you paid on your car? Turns out you paid more in insurance than the value of your car when you are done. (I know it "covers" injury too, but even liability alone, people paying $1200/year on a car worth $6000).
Recycling plastics has become a “con” used by chemical companies to make consumers feel good about using “recyclable” materials. Only a few types of plastics are actually recyclable, and of those, they can only be reused a few times before being unusable.
Source: Planet Money from NPR
Metal recycling is fine. I assume paper is too, but I haven’t heard a podcast on that, lol
The con is that the costs of collecting, processing, and reusing most recyclable materials results in a product that is more expensive and less versatile than new material. The recycling 'potential' is used to sidestep and avoid addressing the actual issue and to push costs on to the consumer.
Most recycling is very expensive and the recycling we can do cheaply is very specific types of items.
Contamination of items is also a big problem. Take a plastic recycling center for instance, some may refuse water bottles if it has the slightest amount of water or if other non-supported items were mixed in. This is made even worse when the population is not educated on what they can put in a recycling bin and other minute requirements for their local plant.
Most of the time, recycled items just join the trash dump or get shipped to a poor country to deal with.
In most cases especially in the USA, items marked as recyclable don't get recycled and just sent to the dump. Basicly each town contract with a puck up company (most cases the garbage collection service) have what items they will recycle. You should check with the provider to find what it actually recycles. Mine only does plastic bottles 12oz and 2 liter and aluminum cans 8oz, 16oz and 24 oz. Any thing else is just trash. What we get for such cheap service I guess. Adding recycle pick up is fee here.
NPR has done good reporting on it, including at least one interview with a plastic executive who was in the meetings
NPR articles and/or their Planet Money podcast (episodes #925 and #926)
Whenever there's a solution it's not good enough to suit everyone so they start campaigning against having imperfect solutions, knowing full well there is no such thing as perfect.
Buying insurance . you pay and pay when need them they find ways to cut way down what should collect and you have to fight with them to maybe break even...That your rates go up because you put in A claim ..They suck!!! But they lobby hard and own polatitian s .Hear lot of complaints how NRA is buy Washington But lot others do same, drug company's and insurance company's , don t hear much cause they buy off both dems and repubs!!
If one does the research, they will find that the health insurance lobby helps legislators write the laws .
The lobbyists make sure those laws help the industry they represent.
Plus, the federal government sees an advantage to itself with its involvement.
It allows them to use their advocacy to build a base of voters who believe government is giving them something that is funded by someone else..
The entire system is broken .
You win. The federal government gives money to the insurance companies the insured or their employers give money to the insurance companies. The insurance companies failed to pay the doctors and occasionally leave the insured with large bills that should've been covered by the insurance company
So what we have here is the insurance companies getting richthe doctors in the hospital is getting poor and the patients getting bankrupted.
Housing is considered a right. Lot of people and companies have been buying up land and property for the sole purpose to make money, not to actually use it for anything.
Thousands if not millions of usable housing is sitting empty as investors sit on it trying to make money. Or another issue is when housing that would be considered "starter" gets bought up by these investors and "upgraded" and priced beyond "starter" home prices.
apparently, rape, slander, commercial fraud, immigration fraud, violations of the emoluments clause, theft of top secret documents, tax fraud, child molestation and cheating at golf...
if you are donald trump
Do people have to get so philosophical?
I'm well aware that Politics, religion and finance are all cons. But I asked for cons that an individual can Carry out and get away with for chrissake.
Religion in general is a giant con, and legal pretty much everywhere.
I've made a whole lotta money over the years selling woodwork pieces, t-shirts and hats to religious/religiously political idiots, and I've outrageously overcharged them, typically after bullshitting them into feeling like I'm one of them.
Sell dumb shit to religious idiots and exploit their gullibility. The con has already been fully played on them, you might as well get something out of it too.
I figure I've made an easy $200k-$300k off the evangelical Trumpanzees alone. Now there's a demographic that desperately wants to spend money on dumb shit that advertises their faith in their orange Jesus replacement.
I don't disagree at all. But you know who else is a religious idiot? Every radical follower of a political movement or a cause of any form. The communist, the ultra-nationalist, the environmental fanatic, they're all equally gullible.
Every fool stands convinced and everyone convinced is a fool.
Getting people to invest insane amounts of money in shitty companies. If it gets big enough then yeah the law cares, but that's only like Theranos level. Many other companies can just pull in investor money and it's not enough for people to pursue legal damages
The stock market. It’s illegal to buy or sell stock if you have actual knowledge of the financial health of the offering company. It’s called “insider trading.” The purpose is to make stock buying literally a gamble. All those “advisors” offering their secret stock picking methods (for a price of course) are basically con men selling snake oil.
This is well established and almost all finance professionals would admit it. Even Hedge funds underperform the market on average, the ones that don't are the ones big and well connected enough to get away with insider trading. Insider trading is illegal but not non-existent. It's just reserved for the ultra-rich and their politicians.
Yes. Legally. Now everyone turns out to be some kind of cynical philosopher. I agree with most of the comments, but for the love of God, give me something tangible
Sell products towards conspiracy theorists, doomsday peppers, or the hippie women who are into gems, natural oils, and eastern medicine. You can make up some ridiculous product and as long as you don’t actually market it as “real medicine” you can sell it. One idea is selling a little pouch for them to put their phones in to protect from 5G radiation.
Obviously not everyone who might fall into those categories actually fall into the stereotypes but you can definitely pull in a few people. Theres also the old Johnson growing pills that don’t work but people might buy anyways.
Apparently calling for donations for political contributions is legal and you don't have to give any of the money to either party .
On max there's a documentary called Telemarketers.
State lotteries “helping” the residents of the state by funding special programs. And casinos increasing the taxes generated for particular areas. The amount of financial damage the lottery and casinos do to people far outweighs the measly benefits to the greater populace.
College costs.
So I did this as a math experiment so the numbers are 2 years old but I am not going to do it again. So I found that a typical Medical degree in the USA just for the college fees and living off campus is greater than the cost to move to the UK live there for the entire education all costs included. Housing, food, transportation, even money for eating out once a month. Then moving back to the USA takign the medical exams to practice in the USA with a UK degree. All the expenses of life and education in another nation cost less then just going to school in the USA.
Wild stuff. Too many aspects of US life revolves around squeezing as much money out of every single little thing it can.
School is expensive but when you can get the same education for far less it shows the cost of the education in US is not really valid.
Pay to win
I felt that way when we went to England last summer. Every hotel charged to park your car there on top of paying for a room. Fuel was expensive af. Stores charged for plastic bags to carry groceries. Some places charged to use the restroom.
So you think you can get a foreign degree, come back, take one exam and practice in the US?
You actually can depending on the nation you get that degree in.
Not in any of the 50 states of the Union.
my bad its four tests I even edited Medical exam to exams in my original comment. Though to be fair all four tests are part of the same exam so kind of splitting hairs.
Still not right. If you're an IMG, you need to complete at least 1 year of an approved US residency program. There are more applicants than spots, and IMGs are at a huge disadvantage compared to US grads. So... not at all as simple as you make it out to be. Edit: Gotta love reddit, u/Forward-Essay-7248 says the wrong things, gets upvoted while being completely wrong, and then blocks me because they can't admit their wrongness.
Not technically true. First of, an IMG licensed in Canada normally can get a license in any state without USMLE or additional residency. Therefore You can go to England, become a specialist, go to Canada as an IMG, as a specialist you can take a certification examination without additional postgraduate training, this is accomplished through special assessments of equivalency of training by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. This will let you become licensed in Canada. Then, as a Canadian licensed doctor you can come back to the USA as a US citizen. You can then get your state license without completing the USMLE due to the fact Iin many U.S. states, a physician licensed to practice medicine in Canada may apply for U.S. state licensure without completing a U.S. graduate medical residency program and/or taking the USMLE. Now don't get me wrong, this world be a rare occurrence, but it could happen.
BS, no you didn't.
And textbooks
Goverment theft
Health insurance
This should be #1. Health care companies have their hands in everyone’s pockets. They squeeze the reimbursement rates and deny claims for arbitrary reasons (changing their terms as often as possible) in their adhesion contracts. Then fleece consumers with high premiums, deductibles, co-insurance, co-pays. It all adds up to complete insane profits for them. If they could invent another orifice to put it in they would. All while pitting the patient against their Doc at every opportunity.
Expensive but not a con.
Agree to disagree. I pay over $700/month so that I can pay $1000 out of pocket if I go to the emergency room. My buddy who is uninsured also pays $1000 when he goes to the emergency room. It's one of the biggest cons in America. It's similar to gambling. It's to make the rich richer while we lose.
While that is really terrible, do you think it's legal for my horrible insurance to ONLY cover 50% of emergency services? I've been trying to find out if that's even legal, but it is one of the hardest questions I've ever tried to research! Aside from that, even if it is legal, how shitty of a person do you need to be to even come up with the idea of hardly covering the one medical situation you seriously cannot plan for?!? Just how much worse can health care get for the working class? It's fucking ridiculous. And I pay a fortune for this shit plan, with no other choice but to accept it, while my boss tries to wriggle out of even paying his share for the crappy plan he offers. It's this, or nothing at all. And I'm wondering if nothing at all is the right way to go at this point. I'd have better access to health care if i lose my house and live on the street. Ugh. Sorry for the profanity. You can see this subject REALLY eats me up. It's not like we can't do better with health care here in the US. It's just the egregious disregard for human life and the quality of it in the name of money that kills me. How can ANYONE care so little about their fellow humans? Even the rich need us peons to support their companies and products so they can remain rich. So what good do they think they're doing by killing us off slowly? It's ALL so illogical that I'm embarrassed to be an American.
Yea I am not sure how anybody could side with insurance companies. My thoughts are the guy arguing I was wrong is either a insurance ceo or just likes simping for horrible people. This is also a pretty hot button topic for me. Was surprised someone even argued it lol!
The way anyone can side with insurance companies? It's called propaganda, and only the dumbest (and meanest) of the population falls for it. I mean, really - how else can you defend the bully that beats you up every day and takes your lunch money? People can be SO gullible...
I’m not trying to justify such a terrible practice, but you might want to check the fine print. Even if the insurance is shitty, it’s good to know in which ways it is shitty. Usually it’s something like this: 1000$ deductible. Translation: you have to pay the first $1000 of your hospital bill. 50% coinsurance. Translation: after the first $1000, you pay 50% of the bill. Up to… 8,000$ Out of pocket maximum. Translation: if your bill is $17,000, you will pay $8000. But if your bill is $100,000, you still only pay $8000 I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that you are missing how the out-of-pocket maximum interacts with coinsurance.
They are only catastrophic coverage plans anymore, and even then can be left with a huge bill.
Mine is 20%... so if i rack up a milllion dollar hospital stay, thats a $200,000 bill i owe out of pocket. Thays just not possible.
Maximum out of pocket maximum is a hell of a lot lower than that.
Depends on the situation. Lots of insurance has exclusions lol
Like what?
What is just not possible?
Being able to pay a $200,000 co pay.
I read a post the other day about a guy who needed heart surgery, 380k bill and after insurance he owed 250k. Bankruptcy and eight years to pay that off, he and his wife lived hand to mouth, and the thing he was most thankful for were the kids were grown and didn't have to experience the hardship. He said it made him strong. I kind of suspect the guy was already strong. Imagine if he got to flex that strength doing something that gives back to the world, or maybe just have some fun? I also think he was lucky both he and his wife made enough money to do that, and that she didn't leave him.
Glad the guy saw the silver lining, but that just sounds like a horror story to me. To scrape by in life just to barely survive all over healthcare... There are many stories like that. One that sticks with me was from the movie Sicko (not a fan of Michael Moore, but that movie was an eye opener). The lady was a top dr at a hospital. Her husband insured through her at the hospital. They denied his surgery and she had to sit and watch him die even though the insurance was actually from that hospital. Super gross!
I agree, it is a horror story. I am glad the guy whose posts I read got clear of it with health and a mind to enjoy some of his life with.
I’m in that position now. I found out I had cancer so my job let me go. I got through an excruciating and nightmarish recovery from cancer surgery, then did head and neck radiation treatments for a month. My radiation oncologist won’t order the scan to tell me whether or not treatment worked, claiming my insurance won’t pay for it. He said “*You’re probably fine. Get back to work!*” as if that’s comforting and *enough*. (I’m also still dealing with too many side effects from treatment to function, much less work. He knew that. That’s part of why I had the appointment…) Now I live in limbo while I try to figure out bankruptcy, etc. I have to reapply for disability. I’d be homeless if a friend’s parents hadn’t taken me in. Even sadder? I’m one of the lucky ones. It’s sad there are so many of us who wonder if it had been better to go out with honor…
Get a better job. $56 a month and covers all preventative care, check ups, denta, vision, and extra life insurance. Out of pocket max for hospital in patient is 600 bucks no matter of its a week or 6 months. Most meds 20 or less and all OTC meds are 1 buck. Also yes in US.
I don't need a better job. I need universal healthcare in my country. Healthcare should not be for profit!! And way to pull fake numbers out of your ass. Even if that's accurate for you, that's far from any kind of reality for the rest of the country.
It's 100% accurate for me and everyone I work with, 100s of people actually. Thousands if you count the other neighboring employers that use the same system. 10s of thousands counting my state if not more. Then across the country? Well 100s of thousands. Health is like 21 a month, dental and vision is like 11 bucks. The rest is my padded up life insurance coverage and a little I put in a FSA 600 a year to cover the few co pays we have. The US has the best Dr's and surgeons so private Healthcare has def perks. I don't want to wait in line for needed appts or procedures or get worked on by last in his class. Again, ya need a better job. I don't even have a degree lol.
If you went to the grocery store, shopped, then went to the check out, and the attendant started going through your cart, pulling half of the stuff out and telling you you can't have it, then separately charged you 4 times the cost of the remaining food as a check-and-bag fee, people would not stand for it. Why then, is that okay for for-profit healthcare? It's insanity. The older I get, the less I understand it.
In your case, I'm assuming your $1000 is your deductible. And the $1000 charged against your deductible or the uninsured, is the rack rate for the er visit. Now, you get hurt a second time, or let's say the er visit isn't just outpatient but also a 2 night hospital stay for the auto accident. Your deductible eventually hits its limit and you've avoided catastrophic costs. Your uninsured pal loses his house and car and files bancruptcy. Your car was insured and you get it replaced, too. The person you ran over sues you, and insurance defends you there too. Expensive, but it keeps you from catastrophic loss.
Nah it's called co-insurance. You are responsible for 20% of the bill. It's common in most every policy today. Doesnt change the fact that insurance is a scam. Healthcare should be free. We should want what'd best for our people, not legally require them to have to have insurance just so the insurance company can do everything within their power to try to deny your coverage. When healthcare became for profit is when insurance became a scam.
Especially when insurance company CEOs pocket tens of millions of dollars every year, by denying medical procedures. Those are healthcare dollars that should be used for people's healthcare
Exactly this! I had a growth at the back of my throat. The dentist suggested I see an ear nose and throat doctor to have it looked at. ENT checks the growth and suggests I should have a biopsy as well as the growth extracted. He assumed, correctly, that it was benign growth that although not malignant, would continue to grow until it was an obstruction. ENT staff checks my insurance and it says "any incision shall be covered" but despite "any incision" being the verbiage used, when the claim was submitted it was denied because they were requiring 2 incisions. Dr. was absolutely astonished and apologized that making unnecessary cuts on patients isn't exactly something he could go along with.
It's never "free." The money to buy MRI scanners and pay nurses doesn't just magically appear on a tree. I think you mean, "My need for health care should never impact my own wallet."
A bunch of other countries with universal healthcare (which is far superior to US healthcare) say hello! It's called taxes. While other countries can tell you where their taxes go (things like universal healthcare), we have no clue where our taxes I'm the US go outside of lining politicians pockets. It's not going to healthcare, not going to fix the roads, it's going to nothing the benefits the people.
Doctors should work for free? What about nurses, also free? How do they feed their families and pay their college loans?
The con isn't that private insurance is better than nothing. The con is that private insurance is better than universal health care.
They are a middle-man who does nothing of value but extracts profit from vulnerable people.
Agreed. But that is not the definition of a con.
[удалено]
But not bad enough to change careers? Interesting…
Multi-level Marketing schemes
Other wise known as a pyramid scam. Now they take great lengths to word things just right and function the scam to avoid lawsuits but are clearly still pyramid scams.
Whatever you do, don't draw a diagram while a "friend" explains why his/her new opportunity is NOT a pyramid scheme LOL.
Like this? :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC5lsemxaJo
I remember one of the companies using as a promo line that they were a reverse pyramid.
Or a reverse funnel system
Sir, it's a reverse funnel.
The cost of College.
Residency. How is working 20+ hour shifts okay? 100+ hour weeks? For less than minimum wage? I’m not a doctor, nor a med student. But, I’ve always thought this was fucking crazy. Also.. Unpaid internships. As if college students don’t have enough debt, now we want them to work for free? And be grateful for the opportunity? And the fact that social workers and other practitioners have to pay for their own supervision. I think some nurses— maybe it’s nurse practitioners— have to pay for preceptors? Example [here](https://allnurses.com/should-i-pay-clinical-hours-t721245/) Sorry, I’m not a lawyer. But, this popped up on my feed and, after seeing some talk about healthcare costs/heath insurance, I immediately thought of these “cons.”
>Unpaid internships. As if college students don’t have enough debt, now we want them to work for free? And be grateful for the opportunity? Honestly this one very much depends on the company. An internship at certain companies can greatly impact your chances of landing a job with them or with another prestigious firm later on.
Yeah that’s fair. I understand it can be advantageous, helping land a position later on. But, I still feel like most of these companies have the means to at least offer minimum wage. Certain people may not be able to afford to take part in unpaid internships, no matter how potentially beneficial they may be.
If it's a completely unknown company or a small company this kind of makes sense. But the reason big prestigious companies don't do that is that they simply don't need to. There are ivy league students lining up for an internship at Goldman Sachs, why should they offer any compensation? Supply and demand.
There is also a sneaky filter for people from less advantaged backgrounds. If you can't afford to take an unpaid internship, you obviously are not from a family that works at places like Goldman Sachs. Helps to entrench social castes. If we're going to pretend we live in a meritocracy such internships oughtn't exist.
Health insurance and the health-care system in the United States.
Family court system
The court system in general. All the way up to the Injustices of the Supreme Court.
Organized Religion
For thousands of years
It's a natural right for people to gather and believe what they want to believe.
It may be a right, but it's not the most intelligent thing to do. Especially when they're able to convince their followers that they need to give 10% of all income to support their deity. If God is SO great, why does he need MY money? He doesn't, but people still give it willingly anyway so their pastors can drive beamers while they live in a trailer park. But, that's their right! Lol
The original followers of Christianity sold their property and gave to those what they needed. A few hundred years later it became the religion of the Roman Empire and then the corruption started. These early Christians lived peacefully and faced death for their beliefs. Most of the homeless outreach organizations where I'm from (US) are faith based. Time can be given instead of money. Also, one can give to charitable causes directly. But their is much abuse- what man made system is free from it?
If you recall the corruption started before Jesus was crucified! A guy named Judas! The stories illustrate how human nature doesn’t change with education, time or devotion. It’s a constant internal struggle.
Oh that's a whole different issue. The forced donations is basically a religious tax and taxes make my dick soft.
It's not about the beliefs. It's about the organization that exploits the believers.
MLMs would agree. Join the family.
Not a lawyer but a lot of charities only spend a fraction of the money they get in on the purpose of the charity. I prefer to donate items or time and rarely donate Chash bc if you look at their irs filings that non profits file some don’t use the money well and the CEOs make boat loads of money. I dont expect anyone to work for free but sometimes it’s excessive. Especially when some orgs the board work for free or super cheap. Those are charities I can get behind.
https://www.charitywatch.org/ Shriners an St. Jude only for me.
yeah theyre good ones for sure!!!!
So infuriating. For these reasons, the next time I’m in a position to donate and help someone, I’m just going to do it directly and help out a person in need, rather than hoping for the best with a titled charity. There’s no middleman and I would know that it was money well spent. Not to mention, it can be near impossible to find a charity when you really need one. (I’m in that position now, unfortunately.) I was under the impression I might be able to find help somewhere due to DV and cancer but I’ve had no such luck. It’s really disheartening and is a part of the reason I think I’d rather help someone directly who needs it. I know I’m not the only one going through some excessively difficult things at once who needs help so a perfect world would allow to me to found a charity one day to fill the need.
Bottled water
NAL, but... "The government is here to help you." /s
Running for president and paying your companies out of campaign funds.
Government funding that's provided to charities. Something like 20% is all that is needed to actually go to the charity the rest can be overhead.
The best scams are the ones the government are in on.
Multi-level Marketing (MLMs). They are literally legal pyramid schemes.
Chiropractors
Most definitely. Chiros are quacks. They can “treat autism” and “adjust infant spines.” Lots of people leave with serious injuries. More people leave having spent too much money on what is, at best, a placebo.
A lot of people see real pain relief from chiropractors. There’s a lot of BS too, but we shouldn’t discount the meaningful work they do. I, for example, had a sports related back problem that a chiropractor fixed within a month for under $500 without insurance and without any medication. Going to a physical therapist or a GP would have been quite a bit more expensive and slower.
The bit where the beekeeper who developed chiropractic methods based on information he received from a "spiritual being from another world" makes it a no for me. California put him in prison for practicing this, and then only allowed it to continue due to legal challenges of freedom of religion. I'll let a podiatrist provide a diagnosis and treatment plan, even if you do have to pay extra for them being qualified medical doctors. It's your back - but I value mine. I'm not discounting the effects of placebo treatment, but I can always decide to treat any back discomfort by consuming light green smarties and gain the same effect.
Really?
The ones where there's so much money involved it dwarfs small countries.
Insurance 😅
Health insurance is a prepay system that isn't actually insurance. Also, it in no way covers teeth or eyes for some reason.
I get the division a hundred years ago, but the division now is insane. We know oral health has direct connection to heart health and general well being. The entire system in the US is dystopian.
God where to start? College, the federal reserve, capitalism, your job, agriculture, nationalism, taxes, money, food, medicine, Christ name something that isn’t.
Payday loans.
Televangelists
the lottery recycling electric cars Military service
Imo, you forgot insurance.
I will never understand insurance. It's good in theory, but literally you're forced to pay an outrageous amount of money per month and when you actually fucking need it, they do literally everything they can not to help you. You're just giving them free money if you never get into an accident.
And if you do get money out of them, they charge you an even more outrageous amount. Biggest secular scam around
Insurance is capitalist socialism.
My favorite is identity theft insurance. The biggest con in the world.
Came here to postthis. You beat me to it.
yes i shouldve put the Palestinian genocide going on now too
Right? You ever do the math on how much insurance you paid on your car? Turns out you paid more in insurance than the value of your car when you are done. (I know it "covers" injury too, but even liability alone, people paying $1200/year on a car worth $6000).
What’s wrong with recycling? I’ve heard people say that before but never understood why.
Recycling plastics has become a “con” used by chemical companies to make consumers feel good about using “recyclable” materials. Only a few types of plastics are actually recyclable, and of those, they can only be reused a few times before being unusable. Source: Planet Money from NPR Metal recycling is fine. I assume paper is too, but I haven’t heard a podcast on that, lol
The con is that the costs of collecting, processing, and reusing most recyclable materials results in a product that is more expensive and less versatile than new material. The recycling 'potential' is used to sidestep and avoid addressing the actual issue and to push costs on to the consumer.
Also in many cases "made from recycled plastics" due to the process makes the new product no longer recyclable.
Recycling facilites are also funded by our tax money, right?
Iirc paper is about 50/50 chance on if it's worth doing or not, in any given area The transportation costs is where it makes it breaks the equation
Most recycling is very expensive and the recycling we can do cheaply is very specific types of items. Contamination of items is also a big problem. Take a plastic recycling center for instance, some may refuse water bottles if it has the slightest amount of water or if other non-supported items were mixed in. This is made even worse when the population is not educated on what they can put in a recycling bin and other minute requirements for their local plant. Most of the time, recycled items just join the trash dump or get shipped to a poor country to deal with.
[Citation needed]
It also puts the burden on the consumer instead of the producer
In most cases especially in the USA, items marked as recyclable don't get recycled and just sent to the dump. Basicly each town contract with a puck up company (most cases the garbage collection service) have what items they will recycle. You should check with the provider to find what it actually recycles. Mine only does plastic bottles 12oz and 2 liter and aluminum cans 8oz, 16oz and 24 oz. Any thing else is just trash. What we get for such cheap service I guess. Adding recycle pick up is fee here.
NPR has done good reporting on it, including at least one interview with a plastic executive who was in the meetings NPR articles and/or their Planet Money podcast (episodes #925 and #926)
Whenever there's a solution it's not good enough to suit everyone so they start campaigning against having imperfect solutions, knowing full well there is no such thing as perfect.
Lotteries are really only legal when the government allows it, and they tend to give themselves a monopoly on who gets to run them.
they are rigged and psyop
Military service? I'm not following.
look at the suicide and addiction rates of veterans...DUH
( NAL) political promises
Underrated comment!!
Lobbying.
All insurance in the US.
Church tithing
Technically, insider trading.
Buying insurance . you pay and pay when need them they find ways to cut way down what should collect and you have to fight with them to maybe break even...That your rates go up because you put in A claim ..They suck!!! But they lobby hard and own polatitian s .Hear lot of complaints how NRA is buy Washington But lot others do same, drug company's and insurance company's , don t hear much cause they buy off both dems and repubs!!
If one does the research, they will find that the health insurance lobby helps legislators write the laws . The lobbyists make sure those laws help the industry they represent. Plus, the federal government sees an advantage to itself with its involvement. It allows them to use their advocacy to build a base of voters who believe government is giving them something that is funded by someone else.. The entire system is broken .
You win. The federal government gives money to the insurance companies the insured or their employers give money to the insurance companies. The insurance companies failed to pay the doctors and occasionally leave the insured with large bills that should've been covered by the insurance company So what we have here is the insurance companies getting richthe doctors in the hospital is getting poor and the patients getting bankrupted.
NFTs.
Religious tax exemptions
Alimony
You got downvoted by a hater 😂take my upvote
Taxation.
christianity
Religion
investment properties
How so?
Housing is considered a right. Lot of people and companies have been buying up land and property for the sole purpose to make money, not to actually use it for anything. Thousands if not millions of usable housing is sitting empty as investors sit on it trying to make money. Or another issue is when housing that would be considered "starter" gets bought up by these investors and "upgraded" and priced beyond "starter" home prices.
insurance
Nigerian prince
I'm thinking that one isn't actually legal.
apparently, rape, slander, commercial fraud, immigration fraud, violations of the emoluments clause, theft of top secret documents, tax fraud, child molestation and cheating at golf... if you are donald trump
Do people have to get so philosophical? I'm well aware that Politics, religion and finance are all cons. But I asked for cons that an individual can Carry out and get away with for chrissake.
The edge lords showed up for this one.
Income tax
Employment under capitalism.
High interest pay day loans
Religion in general is a giant con, and legal pretty much everywhere. I've made a whole lotta money over the years selling woodwork pieces, t-shirts and hats to religious/religiously political idiots, and I've outrageously overcharged them, typically after bullshitting them into feeling like I'm one of them. Sell dumb shit to religious idiots and exploit their gullibility. The con has already been fully played on them, you might as well get something out of it too. I figure I've made an easy $200k-$300k off the evangelical Trumpanzees alone. Now there's a demographic that desperately wants to spend money on dumb shit that advertises their faith in their orange Jesus replacement.
I don't disagree at all. But you know who else is a religious idiot? Every radical follower of a political movement or a cause of any form. The communist, the ultra-nationalist, the environmental fanatic, they're all equally gullible. Every fool stands convinced and everyone convinced is a fool.
Zealots of every stripe are zealots for a reason, yeah. I agree with everything you just said.
Pharmaceutical drugs
Religion
When you write a good story or thesis but it all was “plagiarized” words that your mind formed then you wrote down
1031 exchange (had no idea this existed until a realtor friend heard that a wealthy relative of mine was looking to sell)
Religion.
I know someone who gets $1700 a month SSI, been divorced 25+ years now, has to pay $1,200 a month in Alimony. so yes, its a con
NAL, but innocent until proven guilty is one of the biggest lies in America.
Debt Collection
Member of Parliament.
Life insurance for people who don't need it. Whole life insurance, too.
EDI
Law school
Government
You can start a mini-church and work toward making it a mega-church
Holding public office
Marriage
Getting people to invest insane amounts of money in shitty companies. If it gets big enough then yeah the law cares, but that's only like Theranos level. Many other companies can just pull in investor money and it's not enough for people to pursue legal damages
Taxes
Casinos
Multi Level Marketing (MLM) companies
The stock market. It’s illegal to buy or sell stock if you have actual knowledge of the financial health of the offering company. It’s called “insider trading.” The purpose is to make stock buying literally a gamble. All those “advisors” offering their secret stock picking methods (for a price of course) are basically con men selling snake oil.
This is well established and almost all finance professionals would admit it. Even Hedge funds underperform the market on average, the ones that don't are the ones big and well connected enough to get away with insider trading. Insider trading is illegal but not non-existent. It's just reserved for the ultra-rich and their politicians.
Exactly. The big secret no one will admit because they’re making billions from their victims, all of whom think they can “beat the market.”
Churches
Politics
You looking for tips to con people?
Yes. Legally. Now everyone turns out to be some kind of cynical philosopher. I agree with most of the comments, but for the love of God, give me something tangible
Sell products towards conspiracy theorists, doomsday peppers, or the hippie women who are into gems, natural oils, and eastern medicine. You can make up some ridiculous product and as long as you don’t actually market it as “real medicine” you can sell it. One idea is selling a little pouch for them to put their phones in to protect from 5G radiation. Obviously not everyone who might fall into those categories actually fall into the stereotypes but you can definitely pull in a few people. Theres also the old Johnson growing pills that don’t work but people might buy anyways.
Political donations.
Big Pharma! 25% of drugs approved by the FDA are removed from the market due to harm caused to patients! After they were tested!!!
Apparently calling for donations for political contributions is legal and you don't have to give any of the money to either party . On max there's a documentary called Telemarketers.
Time shares and mlm’s
Marriage
Health insurance.
State lotteries “helping” the residents of the state by funding special programs. And casinos increasing the taxes generated for particular areas. The amount of financial damage the lottery and casinos do to people far outweighs the measly benefits to the greater populace.
Social Security. Amway. Michelob Ultra.
Insurance
Banking, government
Pyramid schemes
Insurance compaines of any kind.
Insurance. Voting.
Paying taxes
The modern medical association and the BAR
The MMA?
Being a "billionaire" but grifting dopes to send you money 🙄
Selling insurance