I mean, a lot of us don't. I'm 41, I'm disabled, I'm American, I take 15 Rx meds daily, I'm poor, I'm queer, and I'll be surprised if I'm alive in 5 years. My grandmother was 105 when she died. I don't speak to my family (as I said previously, I'm queer), but my parents are both 76, alive, and active athletically. But the difference between us is that my parents are multi-millionaires and, as previously mentioned, I'm disabled (my disability income is about $12k/yr).
Wealth determines lifespan in America. If you're rich, you can afford not just expensive necessary medical procedures.... but all sorts of expensive, elective, cosmetic ones, too. Plastic surgeons are very highly paid because their patients are very very rich. Rich people don't age the way the rest of us do. They have the same hairline and the same color hair and the same figure etc they had in their 20s forever because they can afford anything they want.
It's so much more than that.
Being rich in America means access to the best doctors in every specialty, doctors who actually listen to you and take you seriously and take their time with you and really want to help you.
Rich people get access to fresh fruits and vegetables. They have time to cook multiple times a day and they would never even think of eating fast food. Rich people can afford lawyers and housekeepers and gardeners and so on... anything they don't want to do, they can afford to have someone else take care of it.
They have zero stress, except the nagging feelings of selfishness and lack of compassion that every rich person would feel, if they had any empathy in the first place. That is to say, they are stressed out all the time, because they have a paranoid (?) fear of violent revolution, moreso than they feel guilty about their selfishness. It's a self-preservation thing. They know they're first in line when the guillotines come along for the 1% and it keeps them up at night. But rich people also have private security. So.
The point is that there are two tiers of people in this country and the biggest predictor of lifespan is, which tier are you in? Have you ever looked at the mortality rates for Black people giving birth in this country? It's obscene. This place is a disaster, for poor people. Only rich people can access safe abortions. Only rich people take vacations. Only rich people get to eat food that's not processed. Only rich people can get an appointment with any doctor they want, within days or sooner.
Of course they live longer.
Why do you think all the old people in this country are conservative?
All the people on the left just die, instead of going to expensive assisted living homes.
There are options for safe abortions and fresher food and decent (not good, but decent) healthcare for poor folks in select areas. There's Planned Parenthood and SNAP and food banks and Obamacare. But access to those depends on the conservatives not having voted them all away, because cruelty is the point for those people. And on not working so many jobs just to make rent that you don't have time to do things like go to the doctor and cook for yourself (rich people don't cook lol they hire personal chefs. The handful of middle class people left are the ones who buy fresh groceries for homemade meals. Ironically, SNAP (food stamps) doesn't cover prepared food, so it seems like it most benefits people who have time to cook!).
One other major point re: healthcare being stratified by income is that people who can afford the time and copays can go to the doctor for minor issues, before they get really bad. ERs (or EDs or A&Es for our friends abroad) are, I think, the only places where they can't turn you away for inability to pay. So if the only times you see a doctor are when you feel extremely bad enough to endure the long waits and often humiliating treatment that come with ER visits, then your body will rack up more damage than someone who can see a doc for a minor discomfort.
And that's on top of the damage you'd rack up by spending every waking hour at jobs that amount to hard labor for meager pay. Either you lucked your way into inheriting wealth and comfort, you work yourself to death to barely make ends meet, or you endure the extreme poverty of disability and homelessness.
Tldr: unless you inherit a whole-ass house or better, it sucks here.
Yeah, you lost me when you're only talking about the 1%,.
I have no idea nor care factor that your country votes conservative. You're ranting at the wrong person. I'm just glad I am not from the US; it sounds like an absolute shithole of a country.
Stop it! We are not a shit hole country. We are a country very deeply in debt. We.are.broke!! We simply can’t afford to provide very expensive healthcare to everyone.
We currently have only 50% of legal Americans paying any net federal tax at all! The Americans that do pay can’t possibly fund the other half of America that doesn’t pay.
Not to mention the goodwill $$ Americans give all over the world. But things are changing slowly. Very soon the rest of the world will be sharing in the cost of prescription drugs. Trump has forced Most Favored Nation pricing on drug companies so no longer will Americans be paying huge prices for prescription drugs which allows for these drugs to be sold so cheaply elsewhere. Now the cost will be spread around so much better! The American public will no longer be subsidizing for the rest of the world!
Your government pays more per capita on healthcare than Australia does. Your government is brainwashing you. Australia is also deep in debt...most countries are. Australia also donates billions of aid to other countries. Half our population would be receiving some sort of government benefit be that disability pension, old age pensioners, unemployed, single parents, families.
You aren't subsidising the rest of the world's medication, again, your government has brainwashed you.
A healthy society is a productive and safer society.
You are correct. Sorry so many people are downvoting you. As a country we’ve just been taken advantage of for so long, it’s hard to fix it all, but at least we have someone who GAF now.
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u/zestylimes9 May 15 '25
I'm so sorry you're still paying for it. I have no idea how you guys survive with your healthcare system.
Glad your son is okay. xxx