Vanilla Forums has been nominated for a second time in the CMS Critic "Critic's Choice" awards, and we need your vote! Read more here, and then do the thing (please).
Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
Debate and Discourse: AWESOME POST in "[Entitlements] and ethics", by Pony
Spoit
*twitch twitch*Registered User regular
*twitch twitch*Registered User regular
Spoit has reported a post.
Reason:
Forum: Debate and Discourse
Assigned Moderators: Elki, ElJeffe, Irond Will, jacobkosh
Posted by: Pony
Original Content:
Reason:
Post: [Entitlements] and ethicsNot so awesome for pony, but pony is awesome for being able to deal with it
Forum: Debate and Discourse
Assigned Moderators: Elki, ElJeffe, Irond Will, jacobkosh
Posted by: Pony
Original Content:
Atomic Ross wrote: »No, they're obligated to treat everybody. If can't pay and you have no insurance for whatever reason, the hospital has to eat the cost. This abuse of the ER is one of the reasons for the high health care costs in the US, although AR would know about that better than I. However, a lot of people in the ER are not exactly in life threatening situations, and that's not just a US thing.Seriously? But would ERs kick out illegals? Or do we patch the wounds then ask for papers?
Well, there's no hard-and-fast rule governing it, and it depends on if the hospital's status is "public funded," "private non-profit," and "private for-profit."
EMTALA is the only rule that all hospitals in the US have to follow, and it basically states that no care facility can refuse treatment to anyone in immediate risk to life or limb. Now, that classification only constitutes probably less than 1% of all patients, however many hospitals will treat uninsured patients regardless because of their financial structure, which may allow for losses to be offset by write-offs (like big private systems, like Baylor), or which might be partially or fully funded by county taxes (such as Parkland).
Still, neither of those options actually makes anything better, and it's one of the parts of the greater healthcare problem I take most issue with; hospitals really just want to make money, end of line. All this shit you hear about "patient satisfaction" and "top blabbity blah" means next to nothing and is only there to get your business. Most studies even show that county-funded and military hospitals (the poorest types of care systems) have as good if not better physical outcomes than all but the tiniest fraction of private-pay hospitals, but studies also show that people care more about how the hospital food tastes than if their care was successful at treating their illness.
@DevoutlyApathetic:
I think what I'm trying to ask in that particular case is, should there be a mechanism against child-farming? Doesn't "(combined family poverty) + 1" at some point become child abuse in and of itself?
I do think what I've bolded here is a related, but ultimately separate issue from the other issues you've raised.
Addressing your original issue: I live in Canada, where we have what the GOP fearfully calls socialized medicine.
I am a person of poor physical (and mental!) health who has grown up in poverty. I'm actually mentally disabled, and my meager minimum-wage income is supplemented by a government disability support check each month.
Now, as far as most people would measure, I'm one of the "virtuous poor". I work to the capacity my disability allows, I try to improve my life situation, I go to walk-in clinics instead of the ER unless it's actually an emergency (I don't have a family doctor, which is a big problem in this country), I don't defraud the disability support system and report all of my income fairly, etc.
But, I am not everyone. I wouldn't even hazard to say I am representative most of the people in the social safety-net. There are people who actively and knowingly defraud our social safety-nets, and there's many, many more who abuse it through irresponsibility and ignorance.
That's... unfortunate. However, alterations to the system to "buckle down" on fraud and abusive use of the system fucks me over. Me. Not some mythical person we can discuss as an archetype, me personally. Someone many of you have spoken to through the internet over the years and some of you have met personally.
I have been screwed over pretty bad by changes to these government systems (which I need in order to survive), changes designed exclusively not to target me, but to target fraudsters and wastoids who jerk the system around.
Invariably, the "virtuous poor" who don't jerk the system around and are good examples of how the system is supposed to work become the casualties of the war on fraud and abuse. We are the ones who get fucked over the most.
You know why? Because the fraudsters and abusers will find a way to do it anyway. If your social catch-net system is open enough to actually be useful to those who legitimately need it, it will always be vulnerable to the unscrupulous and self-centered who will abuse it. There's no way to "fix" that problem without ultimately fucking over the people who use it legitimately and need it, because the only way to make the system "secure" enough is to make it practically useless and inaccessible to everyone.
This is especially true when you consider that those who need the system most (the poor, the disabled, and the severely uneducated) are the least adept at actually navigating, understanding, and appropriately utilizing the bureaucracy and complex systems that they require in order to continue to be alive.
Let me tell you a little story. This is not a story that I pulled from some website, or something I heard from a friend of a friend. This is about me, personally, speaking from something I personally experienced.
I had a stroke two years ago. This is pretty well-known to most people who talk to me, since it was sort of a big deal when it happened and it's struck me with some pretty awful mental and physical disabilities. It's not visibly noticeable most of the time (especially on the internet) but it's a shitty set of problems to deal with.
When I had the stroke, I got a pretty good standard of care from the Canadian healthcare system. I was promptly taken into the emergency room, given priority status for treatment, and admitted to the stroke recovery ward when the immediate danger was passed. From there, I was given treatment sufficient to ascertain it was safe for me to be released into the care of my family and I could attend outpatient physio/cognitive/speech therapy services.
Now, the problem was: I couldn't work. I was not able to return to my old job, in fact while I was undergoing recovery and therapy it was impossible for me to work any job, a recovery process that took nearly a year.
In that time, I needed to pay rent and eat food. My family could not afford to financially support me any more than they already were. Because my stroke had left me with brain damage, it was suggested by doctors that I apply for the provincial disability support program, which would give me money at least sufficient enough to allow me to survive.
Now, applying for that disability support is a lengthy, complex process that fortunately I had the help of my family to get through (I would not have been capable of doing it on my own). It involved visiting multiple doctors and having them fill out forms validating my disabled status and supporting my claim for disability support.
Even when the process of applying is completed, because the disability support program has to sift through a massive amount of applications and claims, and then validate each and every one individually with a thorough process to ensure nobody is defrauding the system, the wait time to even have a decision rendered on your claim is 3-4 months.
Additionally, in the majority of disability claims, the government intentionally rejects the first claim, forcing the applicant to go through a second, lengthy appeal process. Why? Because the government believes that the majority of fraudsters and abusers will give up after the initial rejection, or that their falsified claims/documents/bullshit they feed their doctors will not hold muster to a second review via the appeal process. The appeal process, once completed, still takes another 2-3 months to have a decision rendered on it.
So, 3-4 months to have your application decided on, and then possibly another 2-3 months to have your appeal decided on if the government rejects your first application even though they figure you are probably legit, they play on the "safe side" of rejecting more than 75% of initial applications.
This is completely putting aside that the process of filling out those applications/appeals requires visits to doctors and specialists in order to have them validate that you are disabled on government documents. This requires getting an appointment to see those specialists, which in and of itself can take over a month or two to happen.
I found all this out while going through the disability support application process, and realized that while the odds of me ultimately acquiring the disability support I was entitled to were very high, the odds of it taking almost a year were also very high.
In that time, I still needed to eat and pay rent. So, I had to go to Employment Insurance first. For those of you who live in countries that don't have it, EI is a system distinct from welfare where people who have been working but are between jobs can get temporary assistance until they get back on their feet. Now, as someone who prior to this had paid into EI since I was 15 years old, I figured it'd be pretty easy for me to get EI support to pay my rent and food until disability support could take over.
I mean, after all, I have a pretty legitimate reason for not being employed and it's a temporary situation until disability support kicks in, right?
Yeah, uh,
Nope.
EI determined that because I had lost my job due to an injury/illness that I had declared made me unfit to work for an indeterminate amount of time and was in the process of applying for disability support, EI told me I did not qualify.
Why? Because apparently a fairly standard abuse of the EI system prior to "closing this loophole" was for people to fake an injury or illness, begin the lengthy disability support application/appeal process, and the whole time do fuck all, don't work, and sit at home collecting EI. When they eventually would go through their second and third appeal through the disability support system only to be finally rejected(which could take years), EI would cut the person off, but they'd have already ridden that horse till it was dead anyway.
So, because EI was trying to "close loopholes" and "prevent abuses of the system", I got told to basically go fuck off and die. I paid for ten years into a government safety-net system that, when I needed it, wasn't there for me.
From there, I went to welfare. Now, the welfare system in my province underwent an "overhaul" a few years prior in order to "prevent fraud". What it meant is that getting welfare was made more labyrinthine, difficult, and demeaning than before in order to basically discourage people from using it. It's become more difficult to get, more difficult to keep, and had its funding for its operations viciously slashed by a Conservative provincial government overly concerned with "welfare moms" exploiting it.
However, "I need welfare until disability support kicks in" was fortunately still considered a valid use of the system, and I was able to get welfare before my next rent was due. This was also with the understanding that if disability support gave me any "back-pay" to the date of my becoming disabled (which they typically do) I would have to pay welfare back for the time they supported me while I waited.
So it wasn't even a real welfare system, it was basically just an interest-free loan that I'd be convicted of fraud if I didn't pay off as soon as I could.
Because welfare is primarily concerned with supporting children (and, only incidentally, their parents), single-parents and other people with children on welfare get a pretty decent slice of pie to survive off of. It's not much, but often it's enough, especially if it's just an in-between jobs type thing. My mom had to go on welfare when we were kids, it was hard but survivable.
However, because of "closing loopholes" and "preventing abuses", single men with no children get buttfucked by welfare. Welfare basically looked at my costs of rent, living expenses, bills, etc. (which I had to submit to them) and came to the conclusion I qualified for $560 a month.
My rent at the time was $485 a month, so welfare thought it was reasonable that I could pay my bills and eat off of $75 a month.
Why? "Because you don't have children, and you could utilize the foodbank and other private charities in order to assist yourself, and you have familial support". The welfare agent literally told me to go beg for food from my family and whatever charity would help me. Oh, and my family wasn't allowed to give me any money, because I'd have to report that as income and my "living costs would be adjusted accordingly" (ie, they'd give me less money).
I had to live like this for five months until I was approved for disability support. I'm doing okay now, but jesus fuck those were some grim fucking times.
This is what happens when you emphasize "preventing fraud/abuse" and "closing loopholes" in your social safety-net over actually helping people who need it. The more you try to crack down on the people abusing it, the more you are going to fuck over the people who need it. Period.
Spoit on
Posts
"I file for welfare support."
*sound of dice rolling*
"Critical success! You've been elected Prime Minister."
This is also the first time I have ever seen him use punctuation.
Given a thread with "Pony" and "ethics" in the title, I was sure this would be a tale of debauchery where valuable lessons are learned (or not). I was mistaken, but still awesome nonetheless. Five stars.
First of all, go fuck yourself you amoral, heartless monsters. But in addition to that, it's worth noting that I actually didn't go through that whole period with my chin held high and just trying to keep moving on.
Actually, I tried to kill myself. On two separate occasions, months apart. I survived due to apparently my own incompetence at suicide, and my inability to overdose on drugs properly. I could've probably tried a more definitive form of suicide, like throwing myself off something really high or slitting my wrists, buuuut apparently I'm also a giant pussy about that and tried to take the easiest and most painless route possible out of town.
(I also have begun to suspect that much like Tithonus of Greek mythology, I am immortal but without any sort of immunities or special qualities, simply that I am not allowed to die because I have so much left to endure and suffer)
At any rate, I ended up having to spend a good little bit in a psychiatric ward (and later, psychiatric hospital) on a few occasions. Not just when I tried to kill myself either, but times when I got really depressed by my horrible situation and thought there was a fair chance I was gonna try again.
There was also two separate instances where, while depressed, I wasn't really suicidal but said I was because I wanted the food and to wear clean clothes. That's right, I was so desperate to eat something other than food bank scraps I was faking my way into a psychiatric hospital in order to eat salisbury steak and powdered mashed potatos.
On the upside, over four months I managed to drop about fifty pounds! So, there's that I guess.
But seriously, what people should take from this is that if you're saying the free market will solve everything or that more effort should be made to fight people defrauding social safety-nets?
You are saying I should've starved to death, so fuck you for that.
Also, I'm actually still on disability support, because I'm still disabled. I'm working now, but it's basically a part-time job for minimum wage so I don't really make enough in and of itself to live off of.
Fortunately, because the disability support system in my province is actually pretty reasonable (once you actually get on it!) I'm able to work and still get the benefits of disability support (like drug coverage, which I need desperately) and still collect a bit of money from them, reduced fairly to account for the income I make from my job.
So in the end, despite Conservatives fucking the system around in order to try to make me die, I survived anyway thanks to the social safety-nets (eventually) being there for me, and still being here for me now when I need them.
Maybe one day, I'll make enough money I won't need disability support at all. That'd be nice.
In the meantime, if you find yourself bitching about "them damn Liberals raising my taxes!", especially if you're Canadian?
Remember that helps keep me alive, okay?
Just, y'know, FYI.
Need all the lime for this.
It is sad to hear how similarly Canada's equivalent services operate but it sure as fuck resonates. Fortunately Pony is blastproof or at least undead and didn't let a bureaucratic acidic quagmire keep him down
Skeith you're so much different from regular Keith
Steam | 3DS: 3497-0691-2891
- @Ludious
PA Lets Play Archive - Twitter - Blog (6/15/14)
I'd help you out
and other people know you better
they might help you out
and people who've met you in person
there's a chance they'd help you out
I... I don't think you ever told me about this.
Amazon wish list | My dumb deviantArt page | Steam Wishlist | My mom's book on understanding dementia, for those close to it's sufferers.
Ontario.
Yeah it was too difficult to talk about at the time. Remember the time in March 09 when we were supposed to get together for D&D and shit and nobody could reach me and you tried to swing by my house to pick me up and nobody answered, and nobody could raise me on my phone for three days or anything?
Yeah that's because I'd swallowed a bunch of pills and was spending a few days in the nut-house. Pretty sure at the time I just told you I had the flu or something.
I'm sorry about not telling you about all this before. It's actually only been in the past couple months that I've been removed enough from that situation to finally be comfortable talking about it openly, and one of the sad realities of suicidal people is when they are actually suicidal, the people closest to them (best friends, family, significant others, etc.) are the last people they let know anything is wrong.
I also concealed from you just how badly I was starving, and how much it meant to me those times you'd take me over to your place and make me dinner, or give me bags of extra pasta or whatever. Or the times you'd drive me to my doctor's appointments when there was no other way to for me to reach them, or even just hang out with me when I was depressed and hopeless. That meant a lot to me, dude, you were doing a shit-ton better job of supporting me and being there for me than my girlfriend at the time ever was. I don't know if there will ever be a way for me to show you how thankful I am for what you did for me in those times.
Well, the thing is about those times is I was so full of this weird mix of pride of how awesome a self-image I portray about myself and shame over how bad I was doing that I basically let on to no-one just how bad it really was. I was actually posting on the forums during those times, using pilfered wireless internet from a neighbor, and I was laughing and playing TF2 and pretending like nothing was wrong. Sometimes I'd say things like "gosh, I'm hungry, I haven't eaten in three days" and people would be like D: and I'd be like "uh, haha, don't worry about it guys it's cool, no big" and then I'd brush it off and joke about it. There's a part of me that wanted to ask for help but it kept getting squelched by the rest of me that was too proud/ashamed to ask.
My family and friends did do a pretty good job at the time of helping me out. Caulk Bite 6 over there, for example, did a whole lot for me in those times and he didn't even really know how bad it was because I didn't let on.
We love you, buddy. And without speaking for anyone else, I know I sure as hell do.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/bryarray/
You know, hearing shit like that pisses me off a little bit. It does make me angry to see people openly exploiting social safety-net systems, I'm not going to lie.
I accept that so long as the system remains useful to people who need it (me, for example) it is inevitable that there will be a pretty sizable chunk of shitty people who will abuse it. Does that make me mad? Of course it makes me mad, in the same way that the Westboro Baptist Church abusing freedom of expression protections in order to protest the funerals of soldiers and shit. But, that's the price to pay if you want a system that is there for you when you need it and protects all of the people, not just the people who can afford to pay for protection.
But you know what makes me way more angry than any trashy welfare queens or whatever? Libertarians and anarcho-capitalists and Objectivists and other "fuck the poor and helpless, I want my money" type assholes. I hate these people, and if any of you reading this are one of those people? I hate you, you personally, because you think that I should die just so you can have $50 less taken off each paycheck.
Let me tell you another thing I observe about these sorts of people. The anarcho-capitalists and all that, the people who are just like "fuck regulations and social safety-nets and the poor and the disabled and all of those people, fuck 'em! Darwinism, man!"?
These people saying these kinds of things the most vocally are usually the least equipped, mentally and physically, to deal with the inevitable realities their beliefs and policies would result in, if implemented the way they wanted.
I sit there and watch as some Daddy's Money college student shit-heel talks about Ayn Rand and the right to property and shit and he has no fucking clue what kind of world he'd create.
Because this is the truth: Yes, I'm mentally disabled. This creates a great deal of difficulty for me in terms of trying to hold down a regular job, live within normal society, bank properly, etc.
You know what it doesn't really diminish too much in me? My physical or instinctive faculties. I'm not blind or crippled or unable to lift 10 pounds. I'm actually quite physically fit, and a lifetime of poverty, hard living, crime, and violence has instilled in me a very particular set of skills.
Skills that would quickly turn me from "society's helpless" into an apex predator if the policies of a bunch of Rand Paul shit-wads forced my hand. I don't want to live like an animal, I don't want to break into people's houses, steal their money and food, kill and injure people who stand in my way, all of that shit. I don't want to become part of a barbarian horde that would include all the homeless, disabled, and generally poor that these people would cast out into the cold night.
People who are in those situations haven't turned on you en masse, in your luxury sedan and suburban houses, because there's still some semblance of support for them, some shred of decency in them as human beings. You tell them, as a lot, to go fuck off and die in the gutter?
A lot of them will.
A lot of them won't, however, and that won't go well for anyone.
So don't treat people like animals, because if you do? They'll behave like animals, and what deadly animals they will be.
He's like a Super Mario game.
Well, that's one theory anyway.
Amazon wish list | My dumb deviantArt page | Steam Wishlist | My mom's book on understanding dementia, for those close to it's sufferers.
You have a way of speaking that makes it easy for the layman to understand seemingly complex things, especially whenever you talk about credit cards.
Hell I'd buy it.
STEAM
I wish reporting things for awesome that were written in a reported for awesome thread weren't taboo. 'cause this was phenomenal.
Also
Edit: OHSHI...totp
This right here is where I started tearing up. I work at a non-profit designed to help people like you get the system benefits they're supposed to get. We have a food pantry and can sometimes help with rent and utilities (my job is utility specialist). Every day I see people who have legitimate needs that go unanswered because people are afraid that someone undeserving will get them.
Thanks for your story, Pony.
Unless you had someone edit this for you, terrible posting can no longer be attributed to mental disability. Yours was more eloquent and informative than most posts, even on this forum where I consider most posters above the norm. Had you not told us, I don't think we'd have ever known. I honestly hope things turn around for you soon.
And one more thing, don't suicide. Dun do it.
(Spoiler full of anti-suicide propaganda. If you heard it all before, skip it.
Pretty sure every faith on the planet says that killing yourself simply to escape life equates to the worst possible punishment from the powers that be, so there's that too.
Your friends and family are called those things for a reason. They'd do the things for you that they know you'd do for them, were the positions reversed. They're there to lean on when you're down, so take their shoulder from time to time.
GL Pony. Thanks again for sharing with and enlightening us. You should forward your story to your local paper or w/e you Canadians read up there. Penguins?
BRAWL: 1160-9686-9416
I'm glad that my mom works for the Ministry of Finance as a CGA accountant and is among those directly responsible for making people pay their taxes and audits the fuck out of rich bastards who try to fraud the system and evade taxes that pay for services, as screwy as they are, that make up our safety net. I'm told that there are a lot of rich people who launder money and avoid taxes, sadly.
For sure man. And if you ever get in shit again just remember we care about you on this forum too.
Keep on trucking Pony.
That is adorable, somehow.
- @Ludious
PA Lets Play Archive - Twitter - Blog (6/15/14)
And then it'll be like when everyone found out that Man vs Wild's episodes were wildly embellished except at least they were still interesting
Steam | 3DS: 3497-0691-2891
Shit like this is exactly why I reformed my thoughts on libertarianism.
He would conquer that rugged Algonquin landscape
*insert that one panel from Preacher with the Spetsnaz guy eating that other guy's hand while he's under a local anesthetic here*
He can conquer me anytime!