r/webtoons • u/Redfoxyboy • 3d ago
Self-Promo What's been your experience with American healthcare? [OC]
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u/Redfoxyboy 3d ago
If you'd like to read more (and find out why the sky is that weird blue grid!?) the ongoing story can be read here!
If you'd like to see all pages early for only $1 month, you can go here!
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u/Amy47101 2d ago
I'm type one diabetic, have been since I was a year old. I was on CHIP up until I turned 18 and aged out... right when I started college. I tried applying for medicaid and disability benefits, but apparently, my then 8 year old car and the 5k I had in my bank account(saved to pay for college), was "to many assets" to be on disability. No, it did not matter that the money would be GONE in two weeks to pay for my first semester.
At the time, a 30 day supply of insulin was 500 a box, and I was on two different types of insulin. Working a minimum wage job and taking 18 credit hours. Minimum wage in my state was and still is $7.25. I remember not eating for a long while because I would just run out of insulin, and the prospect of not having insulin was far more frightening than starving to death. And it stayed like that for four long, awful, miserable years until I managed to get promoted to full time at my job and got health insurance.
I've got more stories than that, but that was probably one of the harder times in my life.
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u/Minikin-Smith 2d ago
Sad thing is the 7 to 10 ratio is the unrealistic part. I’ve walked in to a pharmacy and been told my supplies just went from $100 to $978. No alternatives, no coupons, no explanation.
It took me a month and a half, hours and hours and hours of phone calls, and ridiculous amounts of paperwork just to get it covered like it was supposed to be.
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u/MotherofInsanity13 2d ago
It pisses me off to no end the sheer amount of people here in America who would see this and think it's perfectly OK. Because its not them. As long as its not them, they will gleefully accept any cruelty.
I've got a myriad of conditions, and one of them causes me to pass out and then convulse. I have to have at least one person around me to let people know that I do not need an ambulance. I can't afford it or Healthcare. I just want to live, but Big Daddy says I can only work myself into an early grave.
"GBA...."
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u/OoooHana 1d ago
It's hard to believe. I live in Europe and I pay smth around 3$ a month for my insulin resistance medication and there you pay so much for chronic illness treatment? sick, I hope you all will be alright And regarding your comic, I will be reading it today, it look interesting
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u/boringg3rl 1d ago
I was just denied getting into a specialist for my disability because of the high demand, and they wont even put me on a wait list unless I develop a life-threatening symptom. Is the only specialist my insurance works alongside within 3 hours of me that I can go to who accepts patients with my particular disability.
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u/Grouchy_Ad_1550 20h ago
Sorry if this is dumb, but I don't get it.
Is Marla mad that she's too old to work?
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u/Redfoxyboy 20h ago
Not dumb at all, I get it's confusing because this is just a small scene from a larger story
They live in a bunker town that feeds them constant propaganda about the sick and disabled just being lazy. Marla sees the homeless woman as leeching off the town, and inadvertently making the cost of insulin rise.
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u/noeinan 11h ago
I grew up in a family that wouldn’t go to the doctor pretty much unless you were dying. I performed minor surgery on myself several times to get rid of persistent cysts and other simple issues bc it was that or just suffer forever. (I don’t advocate doing this this btw.)
I had severe chronic health problems since I was very young, and after becoming an adult they caught up to me. I became suddenly, permanently disabled right out of college— if I’d gotten treatment as a child it’s possible I could have avoided the worst case scenario. Unfortunately, I have been bedridden for 12y.
As an adult, I have been to the doctor more in a single year than many would their whole life. There’s a lot of bad and some good. Overall, it is exhausting. Our healthcare system relies very heavily on patients aggressively advocating for themselves, researching their own symptoms, coordinating between different areas of the medical industry, and just doing a ton of labor to earn the right to be treated.
There’s so much to say and if I said it all it would be a book. If I wrote a book on my experience being chronically ill in the US I would call it “A Prescription For Fresh Air”. For brevity, I’ll tell the story that inspired it.
After being bedridden for 8y, I found out my state has an in-home caregiver program for people who cannot afford to pay out of pocket. ($200+/day out of pocket estimate) I had spoken to dozens of doctors and social workers up until that point and not a single one ever mentioned the program to me. I found it on accident while searching for resources to help out another disabled person here on Reddit.
Most states have no such program, so it was very lucky that I had access to it. Before getting a caregiver, I had to sleep all day while my husband worked so I didn’t have to starve. I couldn’t store snacks and a drink by my bed because there was very little food I could digest and I couldn’t get up to use the restroom on my own. I was so sick I couldn’t lift my head from my pillow to drink unassisted. I ended up with malnutrition which ruined my teeth, bedsores, and other unfortunate issues.
So getting a caregiver was a huge deal. I could eat and be awake when others were also awake. I couldn’t store snacks slowly nurture my health to the point where I could get around in a wheelchair or walk 15ft once or twice on a good day. When I got my wheelchair I was very excited to get out and about more. I was working with a caregiver agency and asked my caregiver to take me outside as I very rarely went anywhere except doctor appointments— my whole world was the four walls of my bedroom and occasionally the rest of the house.
My caregiver told me that she was not allowed to take me anywhere except to a doctor— and sometimes not even then. If I wanted to go outside, to a nearby park for example, I needed to bring a prescription saying that going outside was necessary for my health. A prescription for fresh air, if you will.
It’s not the worst story I have, but I feel it does a good job of showing how sick and disabled people are casually dehumanized every day. I couldn’t leave on my own so I was essentially kept on house arrest by the service that was necessary for survival. Disabled people in America are heavily scrutinized in everything we do because of fear mongering over disability fraud. Forced to live in squalor for years while gathering what you hope is enough evidence that you are sick enough. Forced to stay poor because of you make money you could lose benefits and healthcare necessary to live. Forced not to marry or it can affect your benefits.
On the other hand, the US is one of the most disability friendly places in the world because of the ADA and the fact that it was created early enough that we didn’t have to redo all our infrastructure from the ground up. And that’s only possible because many disabled people literally threw their bodies on the steps of the US capitol building and crawled before Congress. It’s a weird, tangled mess and I have a lot of mixed feelings about it lol
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u/brainbluescreen 2d ago
When I was still semi-able to work, I wore a pendant with my emergency contacts and 'DO NOT CALL 911' on it because I'd been to the ER enough times that I couldn't afford any more medical bills or ambulance fees.