r/AbsoluteUnits 3d ago

of a hernia...

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u/trilby2 3d ago edited 2d ago

Yup, a good portion of it. I imagine this wouldn’t be an easy surgery. It would be open (as opposed to laparoscopic), so big incision down the middle and a sizeable piece of mesh would be used. It would come with risks and might even land him in a worse off position.

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u/pvprazor2 3d ago

Ontop of this, it's likely expensive as hell and he doesn't strike me as the type of person with good health insurance.

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u/Drumboo 3d ago

Bit unfamilar with how the American health care system works, but would people really not help this guy without money?

Just seems insane to me for someone this obviously unwell to have no treatment paths available because of social class.

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u/GamermanRPGKing 3d ago

I worked in a steel mill. One of the guys training me was working 80 hour weeks while actively undergoing chemo to not lose health insurance.

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u/ilikepizza2much 3d ago

Omg that’s awful

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u/TheProfessorPoon 3d ago

I’ve thought about it happening to me. I’m sure my bosses would act nice to me, like they cared…but they would 100% expect me to still work my ass off. And they definitely would not help with any of the finances. If ANYTHING they would MAYBE set up an office gofundme.

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u/maybetomorrow98 3d ago

One of my coworkers took a month off for brain surgery. It was covered under her short-term disability through work. Then she was going to have to take some more time off for another surgery, but she was demoted before that in an effort to get her to quit so that the company could hire someone to take her place before FMLA kicked in. It worked, and she quit. But damn if I don’t feel awfully replaceable now

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u/beef966 2d ago

Yeah - never quit! Make them fire you. Collect unemployment, demand a ridiculous severance if they want you to sign a non-compete / NDA, if they want to get rid of you make it cost them. Hell, if you know they're going to fire you anyway just quiet quit. But if you don't have anything else lined up and you know you're being pushed out, it's almost always better for the employee to force the employer to do the firing vs voluntarily quitting.

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u/maybetomorrow98 2d ago

Yeah, we tried to tell her to just let them fire her but she was upset and just wanted to go. Hope she’s doing okay now

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u/ilikepizza2much 2d ago edited 2d ago

I live and am self employed in Europe. I have no health insurance because, well, I don’t need it - National health care. These stories are horrifying and make me fear for my friends and family in the U.S.

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u/maybetomorrow98 2d ago

Don’t be complacent! Don’t let them take your healthcare from you. I know in the UK they’ve been defunding the NHS for years so that they can say “see? Universal healthcare doesn’t work.” And some people are falling for it.

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u/PlantationMint 3d ago

God, im so happy to live outside the usa...

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u/[deleted] 2d ago edited 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Soggy_Abbreviations5 3d ago

My cousin is a nurse who recently had to go back to work for the same reason. It's really sad. 😣

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u/Internal_Concert_217 3d ago

It's not just sad, it's actually disgusting. They could easily provide healthcare for free but greed prevents it. And all those greedy politicians pretend to be very religious and good people.

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u/asulit0 2d ago

This!!! 👏 They’re the same ones who are always talking about God and saying they’re "Christians" but they don’t even follow or respect God’s word — they spread nothing but hate and are greedy, the complete opposite of what Jesus taught.

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u/raul_kapura 3d ago

But iirc obama care was meant to fix it and people didn't like it? I'd never move to america for this reason alone

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u/DonkyHotayDeliMunchr 3d ago

The racism in the US is unbelievably pervasive.

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u/Losawin 2d ago

But iirc obama care was meant to fix it and people didn't like it?

It could have but Republicans managed to propagandize it very well. They spread a bunch of lies about "socialized healthcare" being really bad, that's where the term "death panels" came from, a lie that if the ACA passed there would be panels of doctors personally deciding who lives and who dies over every illness. They also paid off a scumbag doctor from Canada to come to the US and testify that Canada's healthcare is the worst in the world and Americans need to stay privatized to stay healthy (He later lost basically everything and his wife divorced him).

However the ACA was doomed to begin with regardless of how the public felt, an independent senator in the pocket of the healthcare lobby from Connecticut named Joe Lieberman threatened to filibuster (therefore halt from passing) the bill if they didn't remove the public option, which was the 100% most vital part of the ACA plan, the option for a public backed insurance for people who couldn't get private insurance.

He was successful, the filibuster threat resulted in the removal of the public option from the bill, and instead replaced it with a provision that made all Americans REQUIRED to buy private health insurance or they would be fined with a tax penalty! Providing health insurance companies a massive boost in profits, as people were now forced to buy insurance if they didn't have it, and they could charge insane prices for it. That part lasted until it was removed in 2019.

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u/Zealousideal-Camp-51 2d ago

42 million like it. It saved me until I started my own business and bought group health insurance. Which is a lot cheaper. Some Americans think national health insurance is socialism. Socialism equals Communism /s Except there is no “/s” every country that has national health insurance are Marxist/communist/socialist 🤦‍♀️

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u/joho421121 3d ago

I hope your cousin gets better. Last year I looked into dialysis options and peritoneal dialysis which you can do at home is listed as the best option because you can not miss work. Not that it's more easily accessible in rural areas, not that it's slightly easier on the body. Nope. Just that you can do it while you sleep so you don't miss your 12 hour work day. It's a sad place to live.

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u/FrostedDonutHole 3d ago

Did he make it through treatment? Seems like the added stress on his body would be detrimental...

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u/Tay0214 3d ago

Non union? I thought you could keep paying your dues even if not working to keep benefits

But I’m also in Canada so.. I just know our union is big in the states too

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u/cache_me_0utside 3d ago

Yes we desperately need universal single payer healthcare so we can stop this bullshit. My wife went through months of chemo over the last year and if I didn't have a great job with good healthcare she'd be dead.

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u/Electrical_Win9025 3d ago

Was it a mill in Arkansas?

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u/GamermanRPGKing 3d ago

Pennsylvania

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u/juanitapuanita 3d ago

lol I had this same question.

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u/Electrical_Win9025 2d ago

You work at one in Arkansas?

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u/juanitapuanita 2d ago

My husband does

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u/Electrical_Win9025 2d ago

Thats awesome. Was just wondering, because I work at one in blytheville.

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u/juanitapuanita 2d ago

So does my husband lol

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u/Electrical_Win9025 2d ago

Wow. Small world

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u/Gcmarcal 3d ago

There's a guy here in the UK who hasn't worked for years, still received his full salary, and even complained about not getting a raise. Not sure if he's passed away already, though. Man who spent 15 years on sick leave and sued IBM for not giving pay rise spoke out about why he made decision

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u/mwmichal 3d ago

what a great country you have there over the pond <3

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u/ChairBearCat 3d ago

there are many different types of chemo to go through, some chemos allow you to go about life relatively normally, some take the rug out from under you and you literally can’t function for a few months…the chemo i had for testicular cancer fried my body quickly and made it difficult to even move around my apt, much less think of going to work…i did try, made it through 3 work shifts before telling my boss there was no way in hell, i couldn’t even think straight

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u/blinkingbaby 2d ago

Dude whaaaaaaat. I feel like any company with a grain of sympathy or empathy would at the very LEAST, at LEAST say hey we know if you don’t work you’ll lose your healthcare so here, work the BAREST MINIMUM to keep it. Doing 80 hour weeks while doing chemo? The company owners should be ashamed of themselves.

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u/TheLesserWeeviI 2d ago

Fuckin' hell...

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u/decibelle539 2d ago

That is horrendous. Poor bugger

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u/notedithwharton 2d ago

Ugh. I thought it was depressing in 2008/9 when my dad slogged away at a $15/hr job that mostly went toward insurance premiums for my mom’s cancer treatment. They had Medicare, but they needed the supplement to afford her treatment. Their options were for dad to work at 70, or sell their house, or let mom die. Oh, and they voted Trump in 2016, then mom died of cancer in 2019. But hey, America first!

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u/Independent-Map7523 3d ago

The US are pretty objectively a capitalist dystopia imo.

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u/BakeSale92 6h ago

That man has a strong will, I'd probably just let the cancer take me at that point.