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bunnyofdoom posted:You could also be like me and be such a genetic nightmare/oddity that you are used as a guinea pig by the biggest medical research facility in the world What's Area 51 like?
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Nov 17, 2023 20:35
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If my doctor doesn't call me after a blood test then I'll just assume all is good. I go once a year due to having Hypothyroidism (I was born without a thyroid gland) and all is clear as far as I can tell. I am sure the doctors aren't gonna let you just die.
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Nov 17, 2023 20:38
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bunnyofdoom posted:You could also be like me and be such a genetic nightmare/oddity that you are used as a guinea pig by the biggest medical research facility in the world What's it like working with Umbrella Corp.?
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Nov 17, 2023 20:39
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Precambrian Video Games posted:TVO's Agenda has a series of episodes about Ontario healthcare and unnecessary medical testing and treatment a while back. I'm receptive to the argument that false positives can lead to unnecessary invasive procedures but I am wary when the debate turns to availability of follow up care, even diagnostics (which ultimately means the cost thereof) rather than only patient wellbeing. Indeed, this is why I was careful to state I wasn't being critical of Kraftwerk or their situation. None of this is to excuse when the system or individual doctors drop the ball and I have seen the consequences of bad medicine in my immediate family. Unfortunately we do sometimes have to be strong advocates for ourselves and our loved ones and it's just getting worse lately. 
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Nov 17, 2023 20:49
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It took more a long time to find a GP that would listen to me and take my concerns seriously. I think I’m very lucky.
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Nov 17, 2023 20:55
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Health Anxiety is a mother fucker - it's gotta be tough on the patient but also really tough on the GP - can't say too little, but also on the same hand, can't divulge too much lest you feed into their compulsions and set back their progress on developing thier proper coping mechanisms.
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Nov 17, 2023 20:59
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Please indulge my screed about "choice" and "efficiency" in the context of American health insurance. In the US, if you want to find a doctor, your main criterion is going to be that they are in your insurer's network; if they aren't, you're going to have to foot 60%, 80% or 100% of the bill yourself, depending on your insurance plan. So you go to Zocdoc, a site which is like Yelp for the medical profession. It's gonna let you search for a doctor that accepts your insurance, so it has to know what insurance you have, so it's got a list of all the insurance plans you could have, which makes it a good lens into the degree of choice available. If you go to the site and open the "choose insurance" dropdown, it will ask you to pick a carrier, and show you 700+ options. Wow, choice! Can't wait to try to choose which of those 700 companies has the best track record. Anyway, let's say our insurance is from Aetna, one of the big trusted names. Zocdoc then asks you which plan you've got. Aetna lists 500 options. Cigna has almost 200. So across those 700 providers, there are... tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of possible insurance plans to "choose" from. This isn't like going to the cereal aisle, it's like going into a skyscraper that is entirely filled with cereal aisles. And of course each one is represented by a thick document describing what they do and don't cover, copays, premiums, procedures you have to follow. And each one is accepted by a random assortment of doctors, or rather has vetted a random assortment to be in their 'network'. Good luck comparing even the two or four plans your workplace offers, much less the thousands and thousands of open-market options. The cereal doesn't have a brand name or package, just a gigantic nutrition label in six point type. So what do you do with that? Well, you pick what your employer provides, because it's what's in front of you and they pay for part of it. Or you pick what your friend has, or what your parents have. Because you can't meaningfully compare even a dozen of the gigantic catalogs detailing what is and isn't covered and to what degree, much less ten thousand of them. Even though your job sucks, you decide not to change it, because then you'd have to change insurance and that means you'd probably have to change half your doctors... until your employer itself negotiates a deal with a different carrier, and forces you to change, and now you have to find a new doctor anyway, unless you're able and willing to start paying out of pocket. Choice!!! And how does all that choice affect efficiency? If you're a doctor, 700 insurance providers means there are 700 potential billing systems you might want to integrate with, 700 companies that want to vet you and your services. And every plan is going to have different thresholds for what price they consider 'fair' for every procedure you offer, so you might be on a network for one Aetna plan but not another. Getting set up for even a few dozen plans is going to be a godawful pain in the rear end. So you just go with some of the big names, and once you've got enough business to fill your time, you stop. Efficient! -- As an American, I was blown away when I moved here and had my first real experience with Ontario healthcare. My wife slipped on the ice and thought she might have fractured her shoulder, so we went to a clinic for a check-in and then a hospital for an X-ray. And how did we choose where to go? Hours of poring over our insurance documents making sure we knew who was in network? Of course not, we just went to the one that was nearest. And how efficient was it? We showed up, we waited for like 20 minutes, we saw the doctor, my wife gave her health card and we left. No need to fill out a first-time patient document and give all your insurance information. No niggling worry that maybe we'd read the policy wrong and this wasn't going to be covered, and no eventual reality that it WASN'T covered and we now owed the insurance $600. Sure, Canadian healthcare is not perfect. As a newcomer it took me a long-rear end time to get on OHIP and then find a primary care doctor. But the only way things south of the border are better for you is if you've got enough money that you can just pay your way past the line, and that threshold is moving higher and higher every year. Lol why is the post size limit 50,000 loving characters, Muscle Tracer
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Nov 17, 2023 21:03
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ZShakespeare posted:It took more a long time to find a GP that would listen to me and take my concerns seriously. I think I’m very lucky. How did you convince your GP that lovely posting was a legitimate medical concern? 
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Nov 17, 2023 21:05
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Vintersorg posted:If my doctor You have a doctor which is better than a lot of people. My sister has had hypothyroidism since childhood and there's probably a 30 percent chance that the random doctor she sees will reduce her dosage, despite tests coming back good, because they think she's taking it to lose weight. Doctors often don't give a gently caress about you.
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Nov 17, 2023 21:07
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Muscle Tracer posted:Please indulge my screed about "choice" and "efficiency" in the context of American health insurance. people have the loving gall to complain about hospital parking fees here without hesitation loving ghouls
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Nov 17, 2023 21:08
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I had a liver transplant this year and received excellent care in the hospital (nurses should be paid more!), and have also had great follow-up care since then. But now that I think about it, what would have made my experience so much better would have been shopping around to find the best deal on livers, and then getting a six-figure bill at the end of it.
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Nov 17, 2023 21:12
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bunnyofdoom posted:You could also be like me and be such a genetic nightmare/oddity that you are used as a guinea pig by the biggest medical research facility in the world Yes but that also gives you an 141 and 2/3rds chance at winning at Sacrifice against Samoa Joe.
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Nov 17, 2023 21:26
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I was like 3 months premature and spent the first month of my life in an isolette at the hospital, and if my parents lived in America they would have had to either go into life-ruining medical debt or let me die because they couldn't afford to keep me alive. Anyone who thinks this is somehow good or desirable can go gently caress themselves with something dry and sandpapery.
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Nov 17, 2023 21:33
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:Yes but that also gives you an 141 and 2/3rds chance at winning at Sacrifice against Samoa Joe. yes but it also spells disaster for the insurance company
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Nov 17, 2023 21:36
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Legit Businessman posted:How did you convince your GP that lovely posting was a legitimate medical concern? I showed him this thread
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Nov 17, 2023 21:37
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Slotducks posted:people have the loving gall to complain about hospital parking fees here without hesitation loving ghouls
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Nov 17, 2023 21:52
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Had a similar experience moving here. Had a bad fall and the first impulse was to get an uber, but no: ambulances are made for this. And I wasn't afraid of being bankrupted by the ride. All told we were out like $100 bucks from treatment to surgery to assistive equipment where in the states it would have been tens of thousands minimum (oh, and would have been fired for being an inconvenience, too). I tend to tune out anyone saying anything positive about the US healthcare system vs. Canadian healthcare after that. It's simply horseshit.
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Nov 17, 2023 21:59
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Muscle Tracer posted:
As an American now also residing in Canada, I was in the category of "cannot afford it", so don't have it. I was an 1099 contractor, working as my own business. If I got sick, it was "Is Something wrong? Whatever, if it doesn't kill me I'll live with it." And before I got out, it was legitimately cheaper to pay the PENTALTY for not having health insurance, than to get insurance, and what the insurance would have covered would have been NOTHING. The cheapest plan I could get onto, covered ONE physical per year, and nothing else, and was 200USD/mo or something silly. The not paying penalty, was like 500 for the year the first year. Edit: I guess, it also covered like an emergency if I got into a car acident or a one time major problem, up to 1.5m dollars or something. But effectively, I had to pay for the plan, to pay for pretty much _everything else_ out of pocket. When I had an issue here in Canada, like Muscle Tracer's partner, I went and got saw by a doctor, who escalated it to a specialist, and I had surgery at the end of the month. This just wouldn't have happened in the USA at all for me.
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Nov 17, 2023 22:00
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Since we're swapping "public insurance saved my life" stories I was hit by a cab while walking across the street in 07. My injuries luckily weren't too severe but after the x rays, CT scans, treatment and overnight stay in hospital and light physio afterwards it would've run up a tab of at least 10 grand or so in the US. I was a university student working part time and my family is not wealthy and that would've hosed my life up. In the best case I would've been forced to drop out of uni at the very least, and I have no idea how I would've been able to keep my apartment without the public insurance payout as I was also out of work for 3 months. It's not an exaggeration that without public insurance my life today would be much worse, don't know what I would have done in the land of the free.
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Nov 17, 2023 22:03
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Slotducks posted:Health Anxiety is a mother fucker - it's gotta be tough on the patient but also really tough on the GP - can't say too little, but also on the same hand, can't divulge too much lest you feed into their compulsions and set back their progress on developing thier proper coping mechanisms. Let he who has not called an ambulance while high because he gaslit himself into thinking his intestinal stricture was ripping apart cast the first stone
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Nov 17, 2023 23:24
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Anyone who claims you can reasonably budget for healthcare costs on a personal level is insane or has never had to deal with a significant health problem, whether its an emergency or a chronic condition. You can budget for food, because we know about how much food we need to eat in the next month and what different kinds are good/tasty. You can budget for phone, gas etc. You can even budget for potential emergency spending like a car breakdown, because you often have options like public transportation, car pooling, or taxis if you can't afford to repair your car right away - even if those options aren't as good, you generally can use them (exceptions exist of course). Health problems will come in an insane variety of potential costs depending on what the issue is, and generally need to be treated soon or your quality of life will decline dramatically (and incur even worse costs down the road). You cannot possibly budget for this in any intelligent way other than getting lucky and not having a health problem.
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Nov 17, 2023 23:51
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Surprise surprise almost like Calgary police knew this was going to happen and did this for a defamation campaign https://x.com/JfP_YYC/status/1725621664833323190?s=20 apatheticman fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Nov 18, 2023 |
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Nov 18, 2023 00:33
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Slotducks posted:people have the loving gall to complain about hospital parking fees here without hesitation loving ghouls Freedom of movement is guaranteed in this country  But for real, I work in a hospital and fees are the only way to stop nearby students/residents/and shoppers from getting The Good Parking and making sick people walk six blocks.
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Nov 18, 2023 05:04
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hospitals should have unpaid but validated parking also valets, honestly. not joking
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Nov 18, 2023 07:29
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They do have valet parking - according to the medical staff at Sinai - if you are having a kid and about to literally pop it out, you can park in the round about and throw your keys at security while rushing in and they'll park the car for you. (Seriously told us). We have luxuries with our socialized medical care!
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Nov 18, 2023 08:02
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Kraftwerk posted:I eventually stopped going and just hold onto my spot in case I’ll ever need it for a serious issue. Just a mini PSA, if you’re fortunate enough to have a family doc make sure you check in with them periodically. My dad got kicked from his for not calling in ~3 years.
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Nov 18, 2023 08:37
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Yeah I broke my wrist when I misjudged how far I was from the curb when riding a bike. Bike went from 25 kph to 0 in about 1 foot and I continued forward very stylishly. One of the few times I've needed to make use of an ambulance etc. and it was quite quick to get it all sorted out. Where it all seems to fall down currently is chronic health issues, particularly anything to do with women's health. Your care is 50/50 at the whims of some fossilized man who will simply wonder why you're not pregnant and that anything you're feeling is "normal period pain". If you can get someone to take you seriously it usually goes pretty well but it's such a roll of the dice on if the doctor will be a shithead or not.
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Nov 18, 2023 15:33
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when i was 10 i had severe pain in my gut and vomiting, but it was the first day of school back after christmas break so my mom thought i was faking it so i wouldnt have to go back to school. school sent me home by lunch period because i threw up all over some girls in my class. begged to see a doctor but my mom and aunt insisted it was just a cold or flu maybe and id get better. a week later i was still bedridden an after 3 prior days of refusing to eat food they finally took me to our gp, 9 am sharp. 9:10 we were back in a cab rushing to sick kids hospital because it turns out my appendix had burst inside of me and i was septic. spent 2 months there, 2 weeks of it in icu, getting my guts slowly drained of all the crap that had exploded out. i remember vividly the doctor after they put the tubes in me in a long surgery came a day or two later to talk to me and my mom and point blank told us "if this had happened 5 years ago, we wouldnt have had the technology to save him, and if this had happened in america hed be dead" i missed so much school that my teacher came to visit and basically gave me a copy of the zoombinis game and said "if you can show me that you can beat this game ill give you passing grades". its funny to be able to unironically tell people that i only passed a school grade because i learned how to speedrun a game as a kid
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Nov 18, 2023 15:45
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“parking fees are good, actually”, I say as I bankrupt myself visiting my sick child in the ICU E: sorry forgot this wasn’t CSPAM but my point still stands. They should validate parking if you are visiting a hospital for legitimate reasons rather than allowing Precise Parklink to make millions off of misery.
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Nov 18, 2023 17:42
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The one time I got a parking ticket at the hospital, I called the company to explain that I was in extreme pain and needed to go to the ER, and they waived the fee. But yes, it is not inconceivable that there could be some mechanism to determine legitimate parking from illegitimate. E: I would never probe you for making a post like that.
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Nov 18, 2023 17:50
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ZShakespeare posted:The one time I got a parking ticket at the hospital, I called the company to explain that I was in extreme pain and needed to go to the ER, and they waived the fee. But yes, it is not inconceivable that there could be some mechanism to determine legitimate parking from illegitimate.  That was nice of them, I’m glad they were sympathetic. Ideally you wouldn’t have to appeal to human sensibilities to get equitable access to healthcare is I guess what I’m saying. Unfortunately I speak from experience when I say it gets pretty expensive.
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Nov 18, 2023 18:01
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Cars can have a temporary exemption for taking people to hospitals but after that? Straight to the junkyard.
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Nov 18, 2023 18:07
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I had a family member hospitalized once and, due to the nature of my work being able to be done completely remote, I am the default "Go and render familial health care services" person. Anyways the parking fees for all the hospital visits was not cheap. Fortunately at the time I had been in a position to be willing to afford such an expense.
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Nov 18, 2023 18:08
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Precambrian Video Games posted:Cars can have a temporary exemption for taking people to hospitals but after that? Straight to the junkyard. The problem with engineering a car centric transportation network is people need to use said network to do necessary stuff I guess
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Nov 18, 2023 18:49
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What really gets my goat is when they build these really dense urban developments (I’m looking at you river district), don’t make enough parking and don’t make any transit going to them. I am spoiled for options but none of them are good.
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Nov 18, 2023 19:43
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ZShakespeare posted:What really gets my goat is when they build these really dense urban developments (I’m looking at you river district), don’t make enough parking and don’t make any transit going to them. I am spoiled for options but none of them are good. That seems to be a popular strategy in Southern Ontario right now (building housing and worrying about transit later, possibly never). There are a few condo towers going up near my place right now and there are no plans to increase transit service, despite trains being over capacity. Our trains run ~80km/h with many passengers standing, despite them being designed for sitting room only. The plan is just to develop land, not provide services.
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Nov 18, 2023 21:35
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a primate posted:That seems to be a popular strategy in Southern Ontario right now (building housing and worrying about transit later, possibly never). like healthcare we should privatize public transit and the free market will naturally come up with an efficient and effective solution.
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Nov 18, 2023 22:20
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Slotducks posted:like healthcare we should privatize public transit and the free market will naturally come up with an efficient and effective solution. the free market not building more transit just means there’s no demand, simple as
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Nov 18, 2023 22:24
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Slotducks posted:like healthcare we should privatize public transit and the free market will naturally come up with an efficient and effective solution. About that... It turns out the actual thing the ride hail apps did was directly counter to what they claimed when it came to reducing congestion and emissions, and also driver pay. Who could have foreseen this? No one, probably.
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Nov 18, 2023 22:29
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Paper Lion posted:when i was 10 i had severe pain in my gut and vomiting, but it was the first day of school back after christmas break so my mom thought i was faking it so i wouldnt have to go back to school. school sent me home by lunch period because i threw up all over some girls in my class. begged to see a doctor but my mom and aunt insisted it was just a cold or flu maybe and id get better. a week later i was still bedridden an after 3 prior days of refusing to eat food they finally took me to our gp, 9 am sharp. 9:10 we were back in a cab rushing to sick kids hospital because it turns out my appendix had burst inside of me and i was septic. spent 2 months there, 2 weeks of it in icu, getting my guts slowly drained of all the crap that had exploded out. i remember vividly the doctor after they put the tubes in me in a long surgery came a day or two later to talk to me and my mom and point blank told us "if this had happened 5 years ago, we wouldnt have had the technology to save him, and if this had happened in america hed be dead" lol same
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Nov 18, 2023 23:35
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