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mr_bigmouth_502
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06 Sep 2014, 12:15 am

auntblabby wrote:
mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
You have no idea how much American influence we have here. Culturally, we're like the bastard child of the US and Britain, with the exception of Quebec which is really more like parts of Europe. I mean, we do have a good amount of unique, "Canadian" identity, but for the most part we're essentially America Jr.

but with the rough edges filed off.


Not all of them. Some, but not all. Our foreign policy is better, and we do have a better healthcare system, as well as better public education, and theoretically a higher standard of living, but we're nowhere close to perfect, nor are we as good as a lot of people from other countries say we are.



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06 Sep 2014, 12:25 am

the key word is "better." America does NOT want to be better, our defects are seen by too many as salient features.



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06 Sep 2014, 1:00 am

auntblabby wrote:
the key word is "better." America does NOT want to be better, our defects are seen by too many as salient features.

dumb jingo douchebags are the worst.

"if ye don't like 'murica you can git the fug out outta mah country and go to iraqistan!"
"don't let the door hit ya on the ass on the way out pansy coward!!"


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auntblabby
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06 Sep 2014, 1:08 am

embarrassing. :oops:



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06 Sep 2014, 1:18 am

having to live in the same country as them? yeah

they're part of making living here unbearable but they give you hell if you leave.


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auntblabby
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06 Sep 2014, 1:22 am

USA might've been better off if it had let the south go. it might have turned out more like Canada, eventually.



mr_bigmouth_502
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06 Sep 2014, 6:05 pm

Ironically, when I was in Georgia the people there were quite friendly, and they practically worshipped me and my parents when we told them we were Canadians. It wasn't until I met a man from Chicago on one of the flights home that I had met a "rude" American in person. If I had to live in the US, I would definitely choose rural Georgia over some place like Chicago or NYC.



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06 Sep 2014, 9:38 pm

It's weird how we use the metric system. You go to the grocery store and everything is sold in grams, kilograms, and liters, and distance is measured in kilometers. But when it comes to our own height and weight we still nearly always use pounds and feet. This used to confuse me as a kid, and once I thought meters were the same as feet and I told my brother I was around five meters tall and he laughed hysterically and told me meters are much longer than feet and I'd be a giant or something. I only recently learned that a quart is actually a quarter of a gallon while watching Canada's Worst Handyman on Discovery, and they had buckets of some kind of plaster mix that only had "American" instructions and the people on the show were asking "How many liters in a gallon? How many gallons in a liter?"



auntblabby
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06 Sep 2014, 9:42 pm

a big reason America did not follow the rest of the world to the metric promised land, was through the efforts of journalist bob greene and his "WE AIN'T METRIC" [WAM] movement back in the 70s.



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06 Sep 2014, 9:45 pm

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
Ironically, when I was in Georgia the people there were quite friendly, and they practically worshipped me and my parents when we told them we were Canadians. It wasn't until I met a man from Chicago on one of the flights home that I had met a "rude" American in person. If I had to live in the US, I would definitely choose rural Georgia over some place like Chicago or NYC.
That seems to be typical of rural vs. urban people just about anywhere in North America. There are a few rural areas in the US that I wouldn't want to be caught dead in, though....


auntblabby wrote:
and I was hoping the American virus would not touch Canada. :hmph:

I've been to Canada a time or two so the pandemic must have started sometime then.
:twisted:


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07 Sep 2014, 8:18 am

auntblabby wrote:
Nights_Like_These wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
where those people are coming from, is something akin to "let them die!" IOW they would literally let people suffer and die.


Yeah, I don't get it. lol Health Care is one of those things I'll never take for granted.

When I was 15 a friend of mine moved to the Houston area so I went there for 3 weeks the following summer to visit them. Luckily my mom bought me traveler's insurance because after swimming in their pool every night for a week I ended up with the worst ear infection in the history of ear infections. It was so swollen that I couldn't hear out of it and I was in so much pain that I couldn't sleep. So, I ended up having to use my insurance to go to the ER to get some antibiotics. Months later we ended up getting paper work in the mail just for our own records and I remember seeing the charges for the visit. 8O I can't really remember how much it was, but it was way more than I ever imagined, just to sit in the waiting room for an hour (there was an entire family in there with food poisoning, keeping the doctors busy lol), and then seeing a doctor for all of 3 minutes so he could give me a prescription.

I couldn't even tell you how much it costs when I go see my family doctor here.

a shattered elbow two years ago cost me $53k. the average ER visit is about $3k. average out of pocket doc's office visit is $500.


People complain about the bankers ripping them off, but these doctors absolutely scam people if they charge that much. So many trust the people in the white coats but I don't.



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07 Sep 2014, 11:36 am

trollcatman wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
Nights_Like_These wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
where those people are coming from, is something akin to "let them die!" IOW they would literally let people suffer and die.


Yeah, I don't get it. lol Health Care is one of those things I'll never take for granted.

When I was 15 a friend of mine moved to the Houston area so I went there for 3 weeks the following summer to visit them. Luckily my mom bought me traveler's insurance because after swimming in their pool every night for a week I ended up with the worst ear infection in the history of ear infections. It was so swollen that I couldn't hear out of it and I was in so much pain that I couldn't sleep. So, I ended up having to use my insurance to go to the ER to get some antibiotics. Months later we ended up getting paper work in the mail just for our own records and I remember seeing the charges for the visit. 8O I can't really remember how much it was, but it was way more than I ever imagined, just to sit in the waiting room for an hour (there was an entire family in there with food poisoning, keeping the doctors busy lol), and then seeing a doctor for all of 3 minutes so he could give me a prescription.

I couldn't even tell you how much it costs when I go see my family doctor here.

a shattered elbow two years ago cost me $53k. the average ER visit is about $3k. average out of pocket doc's office visit is $500.


People complain about the bankers ripping them off, but these doctors absolutely scam people if they charge that much. So many trust the people in the white coats but I don't.


The question shouldn't be why are so many Americans unable to afford healthcare but why is healthcare so goddamned expensive in the first place?
Just about anything having to do with the practice of medicine is corrupt as hell but few ever question it.


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mr_bigmouth_502
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07 Sep 2014, 4:02 pm

The medical industry is f****d up. A lot of doctors, particularly specialists, who could operate in Canada flock to the US because there's more money to be made there, but because of the way the system is set up there, many people who need healthcare can't afford it. There are good doctors here, but there are also a lot that are just shills for the drug companies, much like in the US. The main difference between our healthcare system and the one in the US is that people can actually afford things here, but it's just as corrupt of an industry on either side of the border.

A common misconception is that our healthcare is totally free. The fact is, it's not. It's free to go to the hospital and get them to work on your broken leg, or to go to the clinic for a checkup, but you still have to pay for things like prescriptions and private hospital rooms. IIRC certain specialized procedures can cost money as well. We have a publicly-subsidized private healthcare system, not a true "public" system.



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07 Sep 2014, 6:34 pm

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
The medical industry is f****d up. A lot of doctors, particularly specialists, who could operate in Canada flock to the US because there's more money to be made there, but because of the way the system is set up there, many people who need healthcare can't afford it. There are good doctors here, but there are also a lot that are just shills for the drug companies, much like in the US. The main difference between our healthcare system and the one in the US is that people can actually afford things here, but it's just as corrupt of an industry on either side of the border.

A common misconception is that our healthcare is totally free. The fact is, it's not. It's free to go to the hospital and get them to work on your broken leg, or to go to the clinic for a checkup, but you still have to pay for things like prescriptions and private hospital rooms. IIRC certain specialized procedures can cost money as well. We have a publicly-subsidized private healthcare system, not a true "public" system.

until recently it still was oodles better for working class people than the pre-ACA American system which was just a big fat [other than bankruptcy-inducing] nothing.



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07 Sep 2014, 9:12 pm

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
The medical industry is f****d up. A lot of doctors, particularly specialists, who could operate in Canada flock to the US because there's more money to be made there, but because of the way the system is set up there, many people who need healthcare can't afford it. There are good doctors here, but there are also a lot that are just shills for the drug companies, much like in the US. The main difference between our healthcare system and the one in the US is that people can actually afford things here, but it's just as corrupt of an industry on either side of the border.

Why it's so expensive here in the US is what we should be attacking. That and the general arrogance that seems to have saturated the entire industry. I've heard people say that they have been billed for services and/or goods that they did not receive but the billing entity stubbornly refused to remove those charges from the bill. I got the feeling those were not isolated cases.

Quote:
A common misconception is that our healthcare is totally free. The fact is, it's not. It's free to go to the hospital and get them to work on your broken leg, or to go to the clinic for a checkup, but you still have to pay for things like prescriptions and private hospital rooms. IIRC certain specialized procedures can cost money as well. We have a publicly-subsidized private healthcare system, not a true "public" system.

TNSTAAFL (Theres No Such Thing As S Free Lunch)
The best time for the US to have gone to a true public healthcare system would have probably been during the Great Depression or WWII/Post-WWII era. It's become too industrialised in the decades since to do anything like that with aside from ersatz feel-good programs like ACA.


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mr_bigmouth_502
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07 Sep 2014, 11:22 pm

Doctors seem to love their fat paychecks. I understand that medical school is tough, and that saving people's lives is a lot of hard work, but people are being gouged unnecessarily. There's no justification for it either, what with the number of people who can't even get treatment in the first place due to financial reasons. One would think that these doctors could treat more people and make about the same amount of money just by lowering their prices.