3mo ago

Deregulation ≠ Efficiency

132 comments

Reagan loved to talk about 'deregulation' when what he was really talking about was letting businesses steal from consumers.
- What do you think deregulating is outside of that?
  
  The brainwashed thinks that if industry had less red tape, they'd be able to innovate more, let the market decide pay and hiring, and cost us less taxes in monitoring. All despite history proving that it only leads to the rich getting richer and more powerful while everyone else becomes peasants.
  That's why all Trump voters are just dumbfucks. Some of them think they're the strong men that will get to take advantage of the weak in this system, but they're really just dumb sheep that tongue a butthole up to middle management at best. They're the ones who picked on special needs kids at school because punching down is easy and they need a win.
  
  Killing people - speed and amount varie
- Don't forget he was also talking about letting companies dump toxic waste into our drinking water supply.
- It's not theft. It's price gouging.

"wtf is wrong with this country"
LOL buckle up
- Unfortunately, people like this likely won't make it. So I have a hard time laughing about it.
  
  it's fucking gut-wrenching. i've been severely depressed since wednesday morning. what everyone needs to do now is stop asking what's wrong with the country, and start asking how do i get out
- Strap on in.

In America, your entire existence is a money making opportunity for someone else.
- The land of opportunity... (Opportunity to exploit the less fortunate). Freedom costs a buck-o-five, have you paid yours?

I felt so defeated when I went to pick up some medication last night which was $100 instead of $60 which it had been the previous month. I asked if there were any coupons available and the pharmacist said that was AFTER the coupon price. $100 for 15 pills.
I've been paying out of pocket for this med for years since my insurance company determined I had reached the "lifetime benefit limit" for that drug. I submitted an appeal earlier this year and was shut down. I've talked to my doctor about alternative drugs, and he said pretty much all the rest have significant side effects.
And after this week's elections, I'm sure it's only going to get worse over the next four (or more) years.
- "Life time benefit limit for that drug" is some of the most dystopian shit I've ever heard.
  "You pay us for this service, but it's time to die now."
  What a shitshow. I'm sorry.
- lifetime benefit limit
  This is such bullshit.

Meanwhile, my brothers-in-law have hemochromatosis so need to be bled regularly to reduce the iron in their blood, and they have to pay for the privilege. One put off getting the diagnosis as long as he could because as long as it wasn't official, he could donate blood and achieve the same effect, but once diagnosed, he can't donate blood anymore- not that there's anything wrong with it, but to be classified a donation, the donor can't benefit from it in any way. Such irony. America, fuck yeah.
- "Such irony" 👈😏👈
  
  The door is over there
- That's interesting, because I was diagnosed with hemochromatosis last year, and I go to the local blood donation center and bloodlet every 4 weeks. They don't consider it a standard donation, but a therapeutic phlebotomy. But both my blood doctor and the donation center state that my blood is still used as if it were a donation, and I don't pay anything.
  I wonder why there's a difference.
  
  Different state laws probably
- Coincidentally I am being tested for hemochromatosis and here in France you can donate blood: https://dondesang.efs.sante.fr/articles/le-don-saignee
  It looks like I will be a regular donor! Yay?
- Can’t he just not tell them that he has it? At least in Germany that was generally the solution for gay people to donate blood: The only person who could potentially be liable would be the physician if they knew for a fact that you were lying. Which was very unlikely, considering that those red cross people rarely included the local GPs. (The legal situation might be different in other countries though, so check!)
- Why did he end up being diagnosed after all?
  
  Other health problems made it inevitable.

Oh it's efficient alright. At filling billionaires' pockets, that is

There's nothing wrong, it's working as intended. It's just not intended to work for YOU.

Deregulation doesn't means less rules to benefit the people. It means less of the rules which keep the rich and corporations in check. The less rules, the more free they are to exploit the people.

America needs a bill of human rights added to the Constitution with attention to health care, shelter, voting rights, and privacy. Business greed has been at the helm of the country for too long.
- You’ve seen who they elected president, right? America couldn’t be further from doing what you proposed.
  
  And now we won't ever have the chance to vote for an alternative again.
  "If I win, you'll have have to vote again!"
- We have a Bill of Rights, we just need to expand upon it. We also need to reinstate the Fairness Act, and make corporations not people again. Those two actions of eliminating the Fairness Act and making corporations people are responsible for 90% of the condition we're in right now. Thanks Ronald ~~McDonald~~ Reagan!
- FDR tried for a second bill of rights
  
  Seriously, why didn’t Truman push this through?? What a difference that would have made!

This post doesn't mention the country they're in. But then, it doesn't really need to.
- Wild guess: Is it that country where they just voted to make these issues worse?
  
  You mean fatal?
  The previous trump presidency caused well over million to needlessly die, I'm just wondering how many will die this time...
  
  A president comes to make the issue better, then they choose one that destroys all progress
- Ah yes, the default country

So I looked up the account on the screenshot and fell into a huge rabbit hole.
The TL;DR is that the poster has a rare syndrome that makes it so his body simply doesn't have energy to perform most tasks, and it progressed to a point where merely interacting with other people causes his brain to use too much "energy" and makes him crash.
My TL;DR is a gross oversimplification of his story and doesn't do it any justice. When you have the time, please read what he has to say, it's eye opening: My Story by Whitney Dafoe
- Thanks for sharing. I have ME/CFS too.
  It’s not even that rare over 2 million people in the US have it, just quite a marginalised illness, mostly because it majoritarily affects women and was therefore blamed on “hysteria” till the 80s. A lot of the medical system still has prejudicicial views towards it.
  A decent chunk of the more severe Long COVID cases fit ME diagnosis criteria, which makes sense, because most ME cases have historically been caused by viral infections.
  
  Wishing you the best.

Republican “Death Panels”
But it’s ok because they’re profitable.
- Just because Trump won doesn't mean he's running things yet. Technically, the Biden administration is still in charge until January. This is happening on their watch.

inb4 Mexican cartels start selling Mexican insulin and other medicine to broke Americans at lower prices.

Like watching stages of denial play out.
Like half of the nation didn't believe the joker and thought he was a good guy?

The point is your money goes into billionaire’s pocket.

The US, by withholding any medical treatments and assistentance is actually on big eugenic experiment

America: where they sell you a dream and make you repay it or else it's a crime

If the prices of meds were that low, then our taxes wouldn't go towards manufacturing missiles to supply to other countries to kill people.
People are so selfish. /s

Psychopaths control important things and leverage them for money and power and influence so they can get away with being psychopaths without going to prison.

Bro just lick a block of iron
- Better yet, take my blood. I don't process iron like others and it accumulates in my body. The only treatment is bloodletting (therapeutic phlebotomy).

The answer is capitalism. This is a direct result of capitalism.
- That's nonsense, because whenever there is a product being sold at such massive markups, there is a HUGE opportunity to make money simply by undercutting the market (i.e. selling a cheaper alternative).
  Either this is the result of overregulation forbidding cheaper, imported alternatives to be sold, monopoly control, or there's more to the story than OP is telling us (such as iron only being this cheap in Germany because it's subsidized / covered by insurance, etc.)
- That's only part of the answer. Without capitalism the infusion wouldn't even exist. It's unfettered, unregulated, fundamentalist capitalism that's the problem.
  
  Lmao so capitalism only works when it's HEAVILY regulated.
  I hate to tell you this, but you're saying that capitalism only works when it's not capitalism.

What we need are the names of the actual executives who greenlit that. As many as are responsible.
Don't make it about the company.
- Nah fuck the company too. It's a person let's execute it. Capitalism will find a better solution right?

Get a cast iron skillet, bro.
- again, he’s on a feeding tube
  
  Cast iron feeding tube!

At least Germany doesn't require a visa for us citizens
- Sadly the person who posted this is a sorta-famous ME/CFS patient who is completely bedridden. So they can’t even leave their room.
  
  I wonder if a nurse could get it from that country and bring it back.
- Only for 90 days

it's efficiency for corporation to exploit the poor. when people like elon promotes deregulation = efficiency, they just leave the latter part on purpose.

Surely this situation will improve with your newly elected president!

I wonder if it is feasible to book a trip to Canada or Mexico and just buy it there. I guess pharmacies accept prescriptions of 'Murican doctors there, if patients pay themselves...
- Not possible in this case Check the other comments :)
  
  I didn't find anything regarding that. I only found a fellow German who thought about shipping that stuff from Germany...

Your only option in America is to lick some steel-toed boots.
- Execs typically don't wear steel-toed boots.
  
  Donuts don't wear alligator shoes.

What country? They didn't say the country!
- What country? They didn’t say the country!
  Such a mystery!
  
  Literally impossible to know, best to not think about it.
  
  This looks like Norway. Those commies surely can't afford medicines

Fuckingcapitalists

So, I'm being naive here, but why don't people sue when they know this is the case? Like, it's a bit of a stereotype that American's are fairly litigious, but if you know that you're being swindled, can't you take them to court?
- Sure, go take whatever lawyer you can afford and go up against a multi billion dollar corporation in a court system that heavily favors that corporation. I'm sure it wouldn't result in you getting nothing plus also being bankrupted by court costs.
- This guy here is like heavily disabled on 8k per year disability benefits and are bedridden (can’t leave their bed), they wouldn’t be able to sue.

"IP" is completely regulated otherwise people could sell for less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Thought that was Willem Defoe for a hot second there

Non-American here, trying to understand.
Are these prices after insurance? If you have insurance through work, and you've paid a premium for "good" insurance (assuming you can do that for your family), are you still paying insane amounts for medicine and hospital care?
- They're saying that the insurance they have will not cover any of the cost of the other brand, so they have to pay full price. Many medicines are absurdly expensive here because the drug maker makes their money from insurance companies, not so much the people buying it. It's absurd, stupid, and backwards.
- Yes, after insurance prices. In this case it's because their insurance provider told them that they will not cover any of the cost of the $1800 infusion because the one that is out of stock is already approved.
  If you get one of the cheap plans (high deductible health plan, HDHP), you might pay $200 per month depending on how much of the premium your employer covers and then still have to pay $8,500 a year before your insurance provider will cover anything that isn't considered preventative care buried in the fine print of the policy.
  I went for an annual physical, standard check up and blood work, but my insurance decided the blood tests weren't part of the physical and tried to bill me $700. Had to appeal it with the insurance company which took several phone calls over a month to get them to void the bill.
- If it's covered under insurance then it's $5-$30 (depending on policy) for a co-pay and that's it. If it's not covered under your policy then it's eleventy bajillion dollars. The insurance will also pull stupid shit like not letting you pick up your refill early, or making you get some other medication that is similar, but not what your doctor prescribed. Of course the insurance company doesn't pay eleventy bajillion dollars, they've negotiated it down to 50¢, but that's what you'll pay if you don't have insurance.
  
  Your upper range is way too low. I've had $75 copays before with shitty insurance.

Fascism. That's what.

Profits before people

Can I donate some? I have unbelievably high iron levels for some reason
- Maybe consider donating your blood (its not quite "donation" in the USA though, is it?).
  
  I'm not in the USA, so I guess that doesn't concern me
  But I do smoke (or, well, did, been a month dry and clean as shit) so I don't think they'd want my fucked up blood lol

What isn't wrong at this point?

For the next...forever, I want to know who you voted for before I'm going to listen to your sob story or show you any empathy.
- Every time I hear about someone who died I want to know how the voted so I know how to feel.
  
  The only good nazi...
- They don’t make their vote public but are an outspoken critic of Trump.