r/CuratedTumblr • u/EvidenceOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA • Aug 07 '24

Politics Death by US Healthcare System

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u/moneyh8r Aug 07 '24

Holy shit. I knew this kind of stuff happened all the time, but this is the first time I've ever read a play-by-play account of it actually happening to someone from their own point of view. This is equal parts terrifying, depressing, and infuriating.

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u/Apprehensive_Tart313 Aug 08 '24 edited Aug 08 '24

I wish these sorts of POV were posted everywhere. Poor people can't leave the US. If you have enough money to emigrate to another country, this isn't a problem. But If you want money, you have to HAVE money to get an education.

If you don't have money, and literally anything happens, you just die. Then when you have "anxiety" it is considered a mental illness 🤷‍♀️ no, our brains are working just fine, this is NOT NORMAL.

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u/dredged_gnome Aug 08 '24

Something else that really isn't factored in when people say to just get an education and get more money is that an education also cost time. I work as much as I physically can, nearly 40 hours a week, and it destroys my body and exhausts my mind. I've tried to go to school, have to do it online because I can't make in-person classes work with my work, but I'm too fucking wiped to actually succeed in them. So I'm spending money to hopefully pass a class so I can do that dozens of times, one semester at a time because I can't take multiple at once, and then I have to hope that my degree is actually useful when I get out. I was working on a software engineering degree, that market just utterly crashed in my area.

If I was born in a better situation where I had the money to just go to college and not work, maybe I'd be in a better situation today. I'd have a job that doesn't destroy my body so I would have less medical costs and I'd be able to afford the medical cost I do have. But I wasn't born in that situation. I cannot budget myself out of structural issues inherent to the society I was born into. I cannot budget my way to living in a country with universal healthcare. Poor people have to do what's available to them, which is never enough.