TheBananaKing

TheBananaKing t1_je81wsg wrote

It's not health insurance. It's healthcare.

I'm Australian. If I get sick, I can go to a GP and pay nothing for the consultation, then go to the pharmacist and pick up my prescription for a few bucks.

If I have a medical emergency, I can go to an ER and pay nothing for the consultation, medication, procedures, stay, even surgery and rehab.

If a woman gets pregnant, it's all paid for: prenatal care, birthing, hospital stay, lactation consultant, the works.

There are some out of pocket costs scattered through the system. You pay for ambulance trips for some reason, you pay for dentists (though there are some hospital-run clinics for low-income people, bit of a waitlist for these though), you pay for some scans and MRIs from external provider, you have some out of pocket costs from private specialist consults (generally on the order of a few hundred dollars), and a proportion of GPs are starting to charge out-of-pocket costs, because a decade of conservative governments have done their level best to starve the system out of existence.

And all of this is funded by a 1.5% income tax levy, which is waived for disadvantaged or low-income people.

It's not insurance, becasue there's no business front-ending it and trying to screw you out of payment. You don't have to submit a claim and hope it's accepted. The medical provider simply bills the government for service. An insurance model is designed around contingencies you assume never happen. The healthcare model assumes that there's an ongoing need, and simply pays for it straight up.

There's no insane million-dollar bills being issued, because hospitals know they're getting paid and don't have to high-ball in the hope of getting some of it. Nobody goes bankrupt or loses their home because they get sick. Nobody is strong-armed into staying at a shitty job in horrible conditions by the threat of losing access to healthcare.

It just works - better and cheaper for everyone.

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TheBananaKing t1_jaaljwi wrote

I strongly recomend you watch Contrapoints on the topic - she goes into a wealth of detail.

When the fuss first blew up a few years back, I assumed it was just your standard thoughtlessly-insensitive old person with outdated ideas but no particular malice.

I was wrong. Holy hell.

JK doubled down again and again and again on her hatred for trans people, to a jaw-dropping degree. She is raving batshit insane on the topic.

And once you've watched through that, check out the Shaun video on her ethics and political stance. Again, it goes into detail, and it's not pretty.

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TheBananaKing t1_j6i271v wrote

Yep, they can happen for any reason or no reason. They can be made a whole lot more likely (or almost unavoidable) by sexual thoughts or actions, but the thing has a mind of its own.

I mean, do your nipples randomly get hard throughout the day? Same kind of deal. You can generally make it happen, but sometimes it just does anyway, often when you least want it to.

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TheBananaKing t1_ixz4qwn wrote

It powers up your lock-on a bit, and gives you a place to stand; a very small umbrella against the soft rain of post-it notes.

It's not a fix, it just makes it a little easier.

You still need a lot of discipline, otherwise you'll just spend your first hour at work hitting the character limit on reddit posts.

I'm pretty sensitive to the stuff, and do fine on a very low dose - I never noticed any loss of efficacy or need to increase the dosage. Other people who take a fair bit more, I imagine there's a higher risk of dosage-creep.

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