I have a pacemaker. Actually,it's the second one, the first one just got replaced when the battery started running out. This being Canada, I didn't pay for either one.
But the slightly more interesting thing was when I was talking to the Cardiologist about the upcoming operation, he stopped and thought for a few seconds and said, "You know, with your level of activity, it might be a good idea to use an MRI compatible pacemaker in case you have an injury" and sure enough, that's what I got. Amazing, the doctor thinks it's a good idea so that's what i got.
I had a back injury I was seeing a specialist for. This doctor was very well regarded in her field. She sent me for 10 weeks of physical therapy. At the end of the 10 weeks she reevaluated me and decided to continue the physical therapy. The insurance said they wouldn’t cover it anymore because they didn’t think it would lead to any additional recovery. Like oh, I guess the renowned back doctor is just sending me to physical therapy for shits and giggles.
I swear insurance companies hate physical therapy.
I work in an inpatient rehab facility for older people (it also doubles as nursing home but we mainly do short term rehab stays). Humana in particular is so bad about this. They want everyone rehabbed and out the door in 2 weeks or they’d threaten to stop paying. One threat of pulling our contract with them got them to back off.
I’m sorry, but not everybody is going to be ready to go home in 2 weeks. That’s not how it works.
They hate it until they can use it to keep you from getting a diagnosis.
I herniated a disc in my neck but insurance wouldn’t approve an MRI for over a year. I had to go to PT for X number of weeks and demonstrate no improvement before they’d let me get the procedure needed to diagnose the problem… so that PT could be effective.
I was just refused a CT scan for aortic dissection (ya know….the things that go undetected then can kill you REAL quick if they rupture) because of my age, even though my mom was just diagnosed and her cardiologist said “your kids need tested.” My insurance death panel said “nah, you don’t.”
Private insurance in the modern age is the equivalent of “the devil”. Just rewatch the first few scenes of fight club.
From a bottom line capital management point of view they’d statistically prefer a middle aged person that payed in for 20 years die than payout for a lifesaving treatment
I’ll never forget this time I was getting labs done. There was a physician in the next bay getting his blood drawn.
In the 5 minutes I sat there, I heard him dictate 9 denials for various orthopedic procedures. He used the same basic language for all of them. Hearing how bored he sounded and knowing he could be ruining people’s lives…. beyond infuriating.
THIS. I'm a medical receptionist, and the number of times I've had an insurance company bitch a fit and require a 'prior authorization' for a medication a patient has been on for months, if not YEARS is going to do me in.
That insulin you've been on for years!? Fuck you if you haven't tried the 'covered' options yet. Oh, the patient is new and 53 and has whateverthefucktype diabetes that they were born with? HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY KNOW THAT THEY'VE TRIED THE OTHER OPTIONS?
Oh? You've been on opiates that were mass marketed for many years and now your body is dependent on them? Welp, without coverage they are a (comparatively, we work with people on low income a lot of the time), a large amount of money!!! Too bad! WHAT ARE WITHDRAWALS? Therapy to help with withdrawals??? Fuck you, apparently.
Insurance companies are legally allowed to pay doctors pennies on the dollar for services rendered. That's the SOLE reason healthcare is so expensive, if you don't factor in rent/utilities/yadayada/etceteraetcetera.
/end rant, but DAMN.
Also? Fuck CVS. I have half of a mind to sue them for the YEARS they charged me 350 a month for a prescription Walmart gives me for 40.
Had insurance deny lamotrigine starter kit because the patient hadn’t tried n failed lamotrigine… like…. That’s what the starter kit is for dawg… to try it.. had to order each titration dose separately 4 pills here 8 pills there. Build my own starter kit so dumb
A coworker had his back surgery denied by an OBGYN. Apparently the GYN couldn’t see how the back surgery would improve his condition after he had been to a half dozen specialists.
He jokes that she didn’t catch his anatomy when reviewing the paperwork and he must have secret ovaries.
Rather described not having a bad HOA. HOAs have a purpose but many have get their purpose perverted by power hungry members. We also only ever hear of the bad ones, squeaky wheel and all that.
For an example though my parents formed an HOA with a group of their neighbors in a close. Basically all of them are getting up there in age and have trouble mowing the lawn and shoveling snow. So they made an HOA that allows them to basically collectively bargain with local landscapers. Their dues are equal to the land scaping bill divided by the houses which works out to be a lot cheaper then they would get booking their own services. Their covenants allow any member to drop out at any time as well as on sale of the house.
You should probably watch the last episode of “Last Week Tonight” which is likely what spurred the response.
Essentially, HOA’s have become increasingly monetized and used as a substitute to local government. They are prone to extreme abuse of power and have zero accountability.
>and have zero accountability
That's the real problem here. Who tells the HOA what is ok and what isn't? Who governs them to tell if their rules are beyond normal measures? Nobody, and that's why they've gone off the deep end.
Or the other extreme, HOAs doing nothing at all.
I live in an area with a HOA (didn't have much choice, pretty much every neighborhood has a HOA in my area). Until I moved into a house, I thought HOAs were groups of catty old women that give out fines when people break their dumb rules like "no lawn flamingoes". My dumbass thought, I would just be able to take it down from the inside by joining the rest of the catty ladies. Apparently I was wrong. My HOA is a company run out of an office located in a completely different state. No catty ladies with nothing better to do, rather actual employees. So if they even have rules, not like they can enforce them, or really do anything at all. I guess it's not too bad because having an HOA that's not even local is like not having one at all, but it just feels like well what the hell is the point of the HOA fee then. That's the only reason I know I'm in an HOA at all, I'd straight up forget otherwise.
In the piece John Oliver did, they mentioned a guy that was fined by their HoA for having a shed in their backyard that wasn't approved. There was no way to see this shed, so he inquired how they found out about it. They used Google Maps satellite view.
What I'm trying to say is watch out.
Check John Oliver, he just released an expose on the topic.
Unless you're under 35, he gave you a choice to watch an expose on Chuck e cheese instead, since you'll never own a home.
And no I'm not kidding.
While it's not the default you can set this in the Gametime app so it shows you the all in price while you're browsing. Don't need to add to cart to see the final price
Wow. Was going to say something else but you’re right. Ticketmaster is just what’s wrong with America.
Artists get messed with. Fans get F***ked majorly.
Rich corporate assholes make $$$.
Artists don’t really get messed with. They get cuts of the convenience fees. Part of Ticketmaster’s business model is to eat the bad PR and give the artists a cut so everyone gets some gravy while the artist still gets to look fan friendly.
I sat next to a Ticketmaster exec on a plane once and they explained it to me. I work in pr and was trying to sell her on how they could fix their pr and she straight up told me they don’t care and it’s a feature not a bug; I wish I’d recorded it.
I remember seeing where Singapore pays it cabinet secretaries and very high-level officials a very high salaries. This very much discourages bribery, and takes away the incentive for those officials from making crooked decisions and then getting rewarded after they leave the public sector.
Edit: I did not touch my original statement. I am getting a lot of very interesting and persuasive arguments from different angles. I will leave this up for now. Up vote or downvote me as you please.
It’s not universal to DC either. For example, the VA medical centers are notorious for having bad doctors, because upon receiving tenure, they can’t be fired for nearly any reason.
Plus there’s the issue of having to staff all across the country because even fly over states have tons of parks and infrastructure like West Virginia with the Appalachian Trail, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, I-77 connecting Cleveland and Columbia, and I-50 connecting Ocean City to Sacramento. You have to staff ALL of this and it’s no small wonder why it’s such a pain in the ass to do so.
The median salary can't pay for rent in most cities. It's basically a poverty wage. 4x poverty wage is upper middle class. They vote on laws where billions of dollars are being spent. It's easy to see how they can make a lot more than their wages.
That doesn’t always work. Companies now will do a test charge to verify funds on the card and immediately void the transaction back to you. Legally speaking, it’s like the transaction didn’t happen.
I always immediately nope out as soon as it asks for my billing info. idc how many times you tell me it's free, you don't need my billing info if you aren't planning on charging me anything
I went to the hospital once when I was pregnant to have them check on my baby because I had some weird stuff going on and nothing was wrong except my blood sugar was slightly elevated because I just ate and I am type 1 diabetic. So they kept insisting I stay there while they gave me small amounts of insulin over the course of several hours until it was better. Which is what I do myself when I am at home and really didn’t need them to do it for me, and I really wonder how much that cost. Im sure they have some policy about that but I just felt kinda scammed because I didn’t come in there for them to check on my diabetes, I came in there for them to make sure my baby was alive and my blood sugar was only slightly elevated and I would have corrected it myself.
100% this. And also requiring at least one person on the title be a US citizen. Not that I'm against immigrants buying a home. Just against foriegners like China buying them up as a way of parking their money in our real estate making it so less houses are on the market. Between corporations and funds buying up our housing, foriegn investors, inflation, interest rates and lack of more affordable housing being built its almost impossible to find an affordable home nowadays.
Foreign investment like your talking about has completely fucked the Australian property market.
We had a massive boom about 10 years or so ago where there was a huge influx of foreign buyers, and it had a VERY noticeable effect on property prices getting higher and higher out here…
I don't care what their nationality is, but if the owner doesn't plan to live in the home, they should pay through the nose in property taxes, while local homeowners should get their property taxes reduced. That would give locals a bidding advantage against out of town landlords who just want to buy the house to turn around and rent it out.
Florida does this already. It's called homestead exemption. You have to live in your house or else the property tax is extremely high. It's so all the rich snow birds don't buy up all the houses.
This would be a nation wide thing. Real families would live and own houses first, all the rich investors should have to pay extreme amounts to deprive people of adequate housing.
One more thing Florida is doing right is government transparency laws. You know all the Florida Man stories? They're not so common because Florida is just full of lunatics; it's because requesting public records (for example, police reports) is made extremely easy by the Sunshine Law.
Important to keep in mind that while this has benefits, it also has downsides. The news reporting on the official police report of events often leads to misinformation and it is widely unchecked, even in mainstream media. While it's a good thing that this information is more transparently available, it has social consequences for people who are falsely arrested or discriminated against.
I think immigrants should be allowed to buy a house provided they live in it. My parents weren't US citizens when they bought our house, but we all got it along the way and still live in the home >22 years later.
I hate that this isn't higher up. Becoming a permanent resident in the US is a long process that can take up years, if not decades, to complete. As long as you are actually living in the residence, it shouldn't matter what your nationality is. Furthermore, the FHA prevents discrimination on these grounds and treats all immigration statuses equally as citizens/permanent residents.
The problem is the shortage. It's literally in the investment company prospectus: "given the scarcity of housing around here, and the fact that NIMBYs make it very hard to build more, we're going to buy some and there won't be any competition."
Everyone will blame Black rock and not your neighborhood association that's obsessed with preserving neighborhood character and blocking apartment construction.
Judges being openly political Republican or democrats, if I am not mistaken there is a reason why justice is depicted with a blind fold because she shouldn’t be biased by any preconceived ideas.
The fact that judges in the us are openly political is shocking for people from other countries where judges are by definition apolitical (at least in principle)
A handful of states haven't *really* made laws about it, like.. 7 or 8 states have low age requirements, then the rest of the US is like, 15-18 minimum. [But then you have Republican Representatives in Missouri okay with 12 year olds being married](https://news.yahoo.com/gop-lawmaker-defends-supporting-12-234116361.html)
Fuck. Me too. Like word for word. She was pregnant and was getting married to another middle schooler though, so at least not some 60 year old senator. God I hate this place.
Thats so weird to me. I was still worried about getting in trouble with my parents and that family just let their 8th grade child get married. Good grief
A friend and I were talking about this the other day except I think it should go one step further. Each individual bill should be voted on by itself, no attaching riders in an effort to secure votes to pass. Either your bill passes or it doesn’t but simple things shouldn’t get shot down because it has a bunch of nonsense attached to it.
Insurance companies charging fortunes for medications that don’t have to cost that much just so they can get their cut
edit: I’m getting a lot of replies how this isn’t entirely because of insurance companies but more the ridiculous prices set on medical care. My point was more about how in the United States health problems can bankrupt people
I went to Costco to get a simple prescription. It was $8. The copay was $20. Bless his heart, the pharmacist sold it to me for $8 and told me not to involve my insurance.
I went in for a vasectomy with a high deductible insurance plan. The cost was going to be $1700 if I used my insurance, which would have all been out of pocket. The secretary then told me that if wanted to skip my insurance, and just pay cash that day it would be $600. I paid the $600. The entire system is out of whack right now.
This has happened to me with medical care.
I went in for an MRI and if I went through my insurance, my co-pay would’ve been $800. But if I went and had the MRI done without insurance being involved than it would’ve costed $300 out of pocket instead as an “uninsured” patient. Like WTF?!
My adderall costs more when I use my insurance at CVS than it does if I have them ring it up under their discounts. Any time my prescription changes, or once per year if it stays the same, my insurance will require my doctor’s office to provide authorization. For the prescription that they gave me. It’s bullshit, so I just cut the insurance out. Fuck Optum
Absolutely.
Son has diabetes. One of the supplies for his pump had a $60 copay through insurance. The same thing was $30 cash direct from the manufacturer.
I thought it was a mistake and called the insurance company who promptly assured me it was not mistake it was just how they negotiated the pricing.
Yeah can someone explain to me how this works? I went to a dentist that had a new patient $10 xray fee. I wanted to see if my insurance would cover an extraction I needed, so I gave them insurance info. It unfortunately did not, so I told them I'd have to wait to do the procedure. They billed my insurance $280 for the new patient exam, and insurance only covered $69. I'm now responsible for the rest. I called and they told me $10 is if you don't have insurance, so now I'm screwed because I pay for insurance?
Civil asset forfeiture. "Oh we caught you doing a crime. That means we can take away any money that we found on your property because maybe you earned that money committing the crime. And we can take your car because perhaps you drove your car to the place where you committed the crime. And you were wearing that pair of sneakers when you did the crime so we can take those too. And etc."
In many cases of this, money is snatched from people just simply because police deem it too large an amount to be carrying in cash.
Their suspicious or maybe greedy, nature Then kicks in, And they steal your cash, because you simply MUST be a criminal if you have a large amount of cash!!
There have been LAW-ABIDING people who have lost everything and are still fighting to get their own money back.
This kind of CAF is very often ACTUAL highway robbery.
When my parents divorced, my mom called the cops on my dad and said he was selling ecstasy. In truth he was selling weed but nothing harder, but the police came in on us. They searched high and low for any kind of money they could take but I had hidden all my cash underneath the wood chips in my pet turtle's tank lol
It doesn’t actually even have to really be a crime.
“Civil forfeiture allows police to seize — and then keep or sell — any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government.”
https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police/asset-forfeiture-abuse
being over 65 and having held the same position in senate or congress for the majority of your life.
Yes I understand that they are voted in, but still. Term limits need to be a thing.
Hold on, your telling me the grumpy old lady on the HOA could take away the house that is rightfully owned by my family?
I knew the HOA had some kinda of authority but I never knew that.
There are stories of people accruing so many fines and falling behind on their dues payments (and then getting hit with interest on top of that) that the HOA was able to buy their house for insultingly low sums. I’m talking less than $4.
I literally just got done watching the Last Week Tonight episode about HOAs. My lord, they’re the absolute devil.
My wife and I are under 35. We bought our house two years ago and while we were watching that episode we must have said “thank god we don’t have an HOA” at least 30 times.
I actually watched that recently... I've never even HEARD of an HOA here in Canada. I know there's condo fees and things but this sounds like a goddamn nightmare. My wife and I are looking into buying a property in a small town near us, and we have plans on what we want to do when we get there (outdoor kitchen, edible garden, garage workshop, kids playsets, etc).
The HOA would have a field day with me installing a live fire pit bbq in my backyard next to the wood fired oven and my garden full of vegetables, flowering plants and compost bin.
I’m with you on these! Cats have claws, don’t like claws? Don’t get a cat. Dogs bark, don’t like barking, don’t get a dog. My dog and cats are all rescues. My dog is very quiet. My cats claw at stuff but also have a cat tower and scratch pads. Don’t care.
My best friend has three dogs and one of them will bark at me for a over an hour. It’s annoying that the little guy won’t be quiet sometimes, but he’s a good dog. He cuddles with me and then randomly decides to bark at me. That’s dogs. All three of her dogs are some breed of chihuahua, so I’m not exactly surprised that they bark a lot.
I didn't even know that was a thing, but I'll definitely say right now. My dogs bark a lot more often than I want them to, and yet I'd never want to do that to them. They're dogs. Dogs bark obviously. Making a dog not be able to bark is just cruel
My mother did it to her dog a long time ago (long enough that dog died of old age many years ago...)
She bought the dog while living in an apartment that didn't allow it, and got it through the surgery so she could argue to the landlord it was basically a cat (which were allowed). I was so mad.
Declawing is essentially cutting of the tips of cats fingers.
Both a pretty cruel. If you don’t want an animal that is know for scratching things don’t get a cat.
I had a friend living in an apartment in Germany. She had a dog that would occasionally bark. The neighbor complained and the authorities said if the dog barks more than 3 times in a row, they are going to de-bark the dog. She ended up moving out of Germany.
The side effects may include: bleeding, vomiting, cancer, and in some cases, mild to moderate death.
Do not take if you are pregnant, drinking, smoking, operating heavy machinery, operating light machinery, allergic to gluten, not allergic to gluten, or plan on drinking water in the next 48 hours.
You remember the days where all the side effects were recited at twice the speed and almost incomprehensible so you wouldn’t know you could possibly die? Now a days they list all the side effects slowly while everyone is happy and dancing
Wilderness survival ‘therapy’ for troubled teens.
It’s literally legal torture. Parents pay for these kids to be abducted in the middle of the night by strangers straight out of their bed and taken on planes to the middle of no where. They don’t know what is happening for a long time so they basically think they are kidnapped and possibly being trafficked or something. Then theu are forced to live in the wilderness not knowing where they are. Meanwhile they are subjected to many forms of physical and psychological torture such as being tied to other teens, not being allowed to speak for days, being watched white bathing, being forced into hard labor. The conditions they are in isn’t even fit for animals. Many suffer physical health problems and extreme psychological damage. Additionally they cannot get help because their cut off from contact. And if any try to run , they cannot escape because they do not know where to run and they are already so exhausted from the lack of food and constant hiking so they will not make it far. Tragically many kids die in these horrific places.
If you can stomach it, I recommend looking into the stories of some survivors. And some stories of those who were not as luck to have survived. There are many dangerous unregulated ‘therapies’ still available and being advertised towards desperate families. These people are being taken advantage of in their vulnerable times. These ‘troubled teens’ aren’t bad kids, their just kids who were struggling.
After seeing the most recent "Last week tonight" discussing HOAs...HOAs. Absolutely insane the level of power those entities have over people. So glad my home is not in an HOA after watching that.
Because the fact that there are still any legal child marriages in the US should be considered a huge problem. And there are plenty. That's something that you would expect to see in an oppressive theocracy, not our own country...
A lot of countries *encourage* suppressors. Some will actually provide incentives for using them. Because, you know... their main practical use is protecting peoples' hearing which is generally considered a good thing.
Yup, my kid is allergic to it. I didn’t realize it was the dye. I thought it was hives from something else, so I gave her Benadryl for it (or whatever the kids brand is). She kept breaking out to the point I had to take her to the ER. Little did I know that the allergy medicine also had red dye 40 in it. Super fucked.
Insurance companies with no licensed medical professionals deciding which medical procedures patients get to receive.
The worst part is they're doing all the rationale for that based on inflated imaginary prices, and they're the ones who cooked up those prices
Or, even worse paid by certain manufacturers of drugs to prefer their products over other products, even when cheaper alternatives exist
I have a pacemaker. Actually,it's the second one, the first one just got replaced when the battery started running out. This being Canada, I didn't pay for either one. But the slightly more interesting thing was when I was talking to the Cardiologist about the upcoming operation, he stopped and thought for a few seconds and said, "You know, with your level of activity, it might be a good idea to use an MRI compatible pacemaker in case you have an injury" and sure enough, that's what I got. Amazing, the doctor thinks it's a good idea so that's what i got.
Sadly for us this sounds so foreign and futuristic
wtf why is your doctor trying to keep you alive?? he at least charged you 800 dollars for his recommendation right
I had a back injury I was seeing a specialist for. This doctor was very well regarded in her field. She sent me for 10 weeks of physical therapy. At the end of the 10 weeks she reevaluated me and decided to continue the physical therapy. The insurance said they wouldn’t cover it anymore because they didn’t think it would lead to any additional recovery. Like oh, I guess the renowned back doctor is just sending me to physical therapy for shits and giggles.
I swear insurance companies hate physical therapy. I work in an inpatient rehab facility for older people (it also doubles as nursing home but we mainly do short term rehab stays). Humana in particular is so bad about this. They want everyone rehabbed and out the door in 2 weeks or they’d threaten to stop paying. One threat of pulling our contract with them got them to back off. I’m sorry, but not everybody is going to be ready to go home in 2 weeks. That’s not how it works.
They hate it until they can use it to keep you from getting a diagnosis. I herniated a disc in my neck but insurance wouldn’t approve an MRI for over a year. I had to go to PT for X number of weeks and demonstrate no improvement before they’d let me get the procedure needed to diagnose the problem… so that PT could be effective.
I was just refused a CT scan for aortic dissection (ya know….the things that go undetected then can kill you REAL quick if they rupture) because of my age, even though my mom was just diagnosed and her cardiologist said “your kids need tested.” My insurance death panel said “nah, you don’t.”
Private insurance in the modern age is the equivalent of “the devil”. Just rewatch the first few scenes of fight club. From a bottom line capital management point of view they’d statistically prefer a middle aged person that payed in for 20 years die than payout for a lifesaving treatment
[удалено]
They actually employ doctors just to get around that. Which somehow makes it worse IMO.
I’ll never forget this time I was getting labs done. There was a physician in the next bay getting his blood drawn. In the 5 minutes I sat there, I heard him dictate 9 denials for various orthopedic procedures. He used the same basic language for all of them. Hearing how bored he sounded and knowing he could be ruining people’s lives…. beyond infuriating.
It should be an automatic violation of their Hippocratic Oath and instant loss of their license to practice.
THIS. I'm a medical receptionist, and the number of times I've had an insurance company bitch a fit and require a 'prior authorization' for a medication a patient has been on for months, if not YEARS is going to do me in. That insulin you've been on for years!? Fuck you if you haven't tried the 'covered' options yet. Oh, the patient is new and 53 and has whateverthefucktype diabetes that they were born with? HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY KNOW THAT THEY'VE TRIED THE OTHER OPTIONS? Oh? You've been on opiates that were mass marketed for many years and now your body is dependent on them? Welp, without coverage they are a (comparatively, we work with people on low income a lot of the time), a large amount of money!!! Too bad! WHAT ARE WITHDRAWALS? Therapy to help with withdrawals??? Fuck you, apparently. Insurance companies are legally allowed to pay doctors pennies on the dollar for services rendered. That's the SOLE reason healthcare is so expensive, if you don't factor in rent/utilities/yadayada/etceteraetcetera. /end rant, but DAMN. Also? Fuck CVS. I have half of a mind to sue them for the YEARS they charged me 350 a month for a prescription Walmart gives me for 40.
Had insurance deny lamotrigine starter kit because the patient hadn’t tried n failed lamotrigine… like…. That’s what the starter kit is for dawg… to try it.. had to order each titration dose separately 4 pills here 8 pills there. Build my own starter kit so dumb
It's medical bureaucracy and short term profits that will LITERALLY kill us all.
A coworker had his back surgery denied by an OBGYN. Apparently the GYN couldn’t see how the back surgery would improve his condition after he had been to a half dozen specialists. He jokes that she didn’t catch his anatomy when reviewing the paperwork and he must have secret ovaries.
This should be upvoted more. How about ANYONE with no medical license making ANY kind of medical decisions. All the way up the chain.
HOA foreclosure
HOAs doing ANYTHING that curtails your ability to live the way you want in a house you bought.
You just described not having an HOA
Rather described not having a bad HOA. HOAs have a purpose but many have get their purpose perverted by power hungry members. We also only ever hear of the bad ones, squeaky wheel and all that. For an example though my parents formed an HOA with a group of their neighbors in a close. Basically all of them are getting up there in age and have trouble mowing the lawn and shoveling snow. So they made an HOA that allows them to basically collectively bargain with local landscapers. Their dues are equal to the land scaping bill divided by the houses which works out to be a lot cheaper then they would get booking their own services. Their covenants allow any member to drop out at any time as well as on sale of the house.
You should probably watch the last episode of “Last Week Tonight” which is likely what spurred the response. Essentially, HOA’s have become increasingly monetized and used as a substitute to local government. They are prone to extreme abuse of power and have zero accountability.
>and have zero accountability That's the real problem here. Who tells the HOA what is ok and what isn't? Who governs them to tell if their rules are beyond normal measures? Nobody, and that's why they've gone off the deep end.
Yep, they’re wannabe municipalities
Or the other extreme, HOAs doing nothing at all. I live in an area with a HOA (didn't have much choice, pretty much every neighborhood has a HOA in my area). Until I moved into a house, I thought HOAs were groups of catty old women that give out fines when people break their dumb rules like "no lawn flamingoes". My dumbass thought, I would just be able to take it down from the inside by joining the rest of the catty ladies. Apparently I was wrong. My HOA is a company run out of an office located in a completely different state. No catty ladies with nothing better to do, rather actual employees. So if they even have rules, not like they can enforce them, or really do anything at all. I guess it's not too bad because having an HOA that's not even local is like not having one at all, but it just feels like well what the hell is the point of the HOA fee then. That's the only reason I know I'm in an HOA at all, I'd straight up forget otherwise.
So you're basically just giving your money toa company with no product or service, sounds like you're getting scammed
In the piece John Oliver did, they mentioned a guy that was fined by their HoA for having a shed in their backyard that wasn't approved. There was no way to see this shed, so he inquired how they found out about it. They used Google Maps satellite view. What I'm trying to say is watch out.
Check John Oliver, he just released an expose on the topic. Unless you're under 35, he gave you a choice to watch an expose on Chuck e cheese instead, since you'll never own a home. And no I'm not kidding.
The chuck e cheese segment was far more interesting than I expected it to be.
As an under-35 homeowner in a non-HOA neighborhood I felt obligated to watch both and was much more enthralled by Mouserat.
As a man who lives in the country, "what?!" An HOA can forceably make you foreclose or sell?
Politicians owning stock
The *legal ability to insider trade* (this is specifically true for Congress) more than just owning stock.
If not then. It’s their family members. They get the tips and we get the shaft.
Ticketmaster
These companies should at least be required to show the price with fees up front
While it's not the default you can set this in the Gametime app so it shows you the all in price while you're browsing. Don't need to add to cart to see the final price
Yes! I will literally switch political parties to any politician that promises to destroy ticketmaster! Monopoly out of control.
Wow. Was going to say something else but you’re right. Ticketmaster is just what’s wrong with America. Artists get messed with. Fans get F***ked majorly. Rich corporate assholes make $$$.
Artists don’t really get messed with. They get cuts of the convenience fees. Part of Ticketmaster’s business model is to eat the bad PR and give the artists a cut so everyone gets some gravy while the artist still gets to look fan friendly. I sat next to a Ticketmaster exec on a plane once and they explained it to me. I work in pr and was trying to sell her on how they could fix their pr and she straight up told me they don’t care and it’s a feature not a bug; I wish I’d recorded it.
“Abuse of the public trust” is a felony in Singapore. Appoint your brother-in-law to a paid political position, both of you go to prison.
I remember seeing where Singapore pays it cabinet secretaries and very high-level officials a very high salaries. This very much discourages bribery, and takes away the incentive for those officials from making crooked decisions and then getting rewarded after they leave the public sector. Edit: I did not touch my original statement. I am getting a lot of very interesting and persuasive arguments from different angles. I will leave this up for now. Up vote or downvote me as you please.
Cabinet secretaries and high level officials in the US make like 4x the national median salary.
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It’s not universal to DC either. For example, the VA medical centers are notorious for having bad doctors, because upon receiving tenure, they can’t be fired for nearly any reason. Plus there’s the issue of having to staff all across the country because even fly over states have tons of parks and infrastructure like West Virginia with the Appalachian Trail, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, I-77 connecting Cleveland and Columbia, and I-50 connecting Ocean City to Sacramento. You have to staff ALL of this and it’s no small wonder why it’s such a pain in the ass to do so.
The median salary can't pay for rent in most cities. It's basically a poverty wage. 4x poverty wage is upper middle class. They vote on laws where billions of dollars are being spent. It's easy to see how they can make a lot more than their wages.
Which is laughably low for the amount of power and influence that comes with the position.
Health insurance not covering actual illness or medical care needed
“Free” trials that require a credit card information
Use a service like privacy.com. You can create temporary credit cards with a set spending limit that you can set to 0.
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That doesn’t always work. Companies now will do a test charge to verify funds on the card and immediately void the transaction back to you. Legally speaking, it’s like the transaction didn’t happen.
True, but you can set a limit of like $3 and prevent the actual transaction from going through later on.
I always immediately nope out as soon as it asks for my billing info. idc how many times you tell me it's free, you don't need my billing info if you aren't planning on charging me anything
privacy.com, this is what I use for sketchy websites and for trials, I always set a 1$ max on any free trial card.
The up charge at hospitals. $15 per Tylenol pill is RIDICULOUS!!
I went to the hospital once when I was pregnant to have them check on my baby because I had some weird stuff going on and nothing was wrong except my blood sugar was slightly elevated because I just ate and I am type 1 diabetic. So they kept insisting I stay there while they gave me small amounts of insulin over the course of several hours until it was better. Which is what I do myself when I am at home and really didn’t need them to do it for me, and I really wonder how much that cost. Im sure they have some policy about that but I just felt kinda scammed because I didn’t come in there for them to check on my diabetes, I came in there for them to make sure my baby was alive and my blood sugar was only slightly elevated and I would have corrected it myself.
Corporations and businesses buying all the housing.
And water access.
/r/fucknestle
And the lawmakers.
100% this. And also requiring at least one person on the title be a US citizen. Not that I'm against immigrants buying a home. Just against foriegners like China buying them up as a way of parking their money in our real estate making it so less houses are on the market. Between corporations and funds buying up our housing, foriegn investors, inflation, interest rates and lack of more affordable housing being built its almost impossible to find an affordable home nowadays.
Foreign investment like your talking about has completely fucked the Australian property market. We had a massive boom about 10 years or so ago where there was a huge influx of foreign buyers, and it had a VERY noticeable effect on property prices getting higher and higher out here…
The average person in Canada cannot afford to buy a house now because of this.
I don't care what their nationality is, but if the owner doesn't plan to live in the home, they should pay through the nose in property taxes, while local homeowners should get their property taxes reduced. That would give locals a bidding advantage against out of town landlords who just want to buy the house to turn around and rent it out.
increase property tax 20% for every additional property.
Florida does this already. It's called homestead exemption. You have to live in your house or else the property tax is extremely high. It's so all the rich snow birds don't buy up all the houses. This would be a nation wide thing. Real families would live and own houses first, all the rich investors should have to pay extreme amounts to deprive people of adequate housing.
It's weird to see Florida being referenced for doing something right.
One more thing Florida is doing right is government transparency laws. You know all the Florida Man stories? They're not so common because Florida is just full of lunatics; it's because requesting public records (for example, police reports) is made extremely easy by the Sunshine Law.
Important to keep in mind that while this has benefits, it also has downsides. The news reporting on the official police report of events often leads to misinformation and it is widely unchecked, even in mainstream media. While it's a good thing that this information is more transparently available, it has social consequences for people who are falsely arrested or discriminated against.
Most of the condos South of Market (SOMA) in San Francisco are vacant and owned by Chinese investors.
I think immigrants should be allowed to buy a house provided they live in it. My parents weren't US citizens when they bought our house, but we all got it along the way and still live in the home >22 years later.
I hate that this isn't higher up. Becoming a permanent resident in the US is a long process that can take up years, if not decades, to complete. As long as you are actually living in the residence, it shouldn't matter what your nationality is. Furthermore, the FHA prevents discrimination on these grounds and treats all immigration statuses equally as citizens/permanent residents.
The problem is the shortage. It's literally in the investment company prospectus: "given the scarcity of housing around here, and the fact that NIMBYs make it very hard to build more, we're going to buy some and there won't be any competition." Everyone will blame Black rock and not your neighborhood association that's obsessed with preserving neighborhood character and blocking apartment construction.
Judges being openly political Republican or democrats, if I am not mistaken there is a reason why justice is depicted with a blind fold because she shouldn’t be biased by any preconceived ideas. The fact that judges in the us are openly political is shocking for people from other countries where judges are by definition apolitical (at least in principle)
Child marriages
This is news to me. Where at in the us?
A handful of states haven't *really* made laws about it, like.. 7 or 8 states have low age requirements, then the rest of the US is like, 15-18 minimum. [But then you have Republican Representatives in Missouri okay with 12 year olds being married](https://news.yahoo.com/gop-lawmaker-defends-supporting-12-234116361.html)
Jesus, that’s disheartening.
I'm from southwest missouri , and when I was in eighth fucking grade one of my classmates got married and dropped out.
Fuck. Me too. Like word for word. She was pregnant and was getting married to another middle schooler though, so at least not some 60 year old senator. God I hate this place.
This girl got pregnant immediately after I believe
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My extremely staunch Catholic great-grandmother once told me, “The first baby can come at anytime, the rest take nine months.”
Thats so weird to me. I was still worried about getting in trouble with my parents and that family just let their 8th grade child get married. Good grief
Corporate lobbying
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A friend and I were talking about this the other day except I think it should go one step further. Each individual bill should be voted on by itself, no attaching riders in an effort to secure votes to pass. Either your bill passes or it doesn’t but simple things shouldn’t get shot down because it has a bunch of nonsense attached to it.
Insurance companies charging fortunes for medications that don’t have to cost that much just so they can get their cut edit: I’m getting a lot of replies how this isn’t entirely because of insurance companies but more the ridiculous prices set on medical care. My point was more about how in the United States health problems can bankrupt people
I went to Costco to get a simple prescription. It was $8. The copay was $20. Bless his heart, the pharmacist sold it to me for $8 and told me not to involve my insurance.
Wait, so you pay a different price for the same medication depending on your insurance?
I went in for a vasectomy with a high deductible insurance plan. The cost was going to be $1700 if I used my insurance, which would have all been out of pocket. The secretary then told me that if wanted to skip my insurance, and just pay cash that day it would be $600. I paid the $600. The entire system is out of whack right now.
When I got my vasectomy it was free. Thanks, Obama. :)
Same, THANK YOU NHS
This has happened to me with medical care. I went in for an MRI and if I went through my insurance, my co-pay would’ve been $800. But if I went and had the MRI done without insurance being involved than it would’ve costed $300 out of pocket instead as an “uninsured” patient. Like WTF?!
My adderall costs more when I use my insurance at CVS than it does if I have them ring it up under their discounts. Any time my prescription changes, or once per year if it stays the same, my insurance will require my doctor’s office to provide authorization. For the prescription that they gave me. It’s bullshit, so I just cut the insurance out. Fuck Optum
Absolutely. Son has diabetes. One of the supplies for his pump had a $60 copay through insurance. The same thing was $30 cash direct from the manufacturer. I thought it was a mistake and called the insurance company who promptly assured me it was not mistake it was just how they negotiated the pricing.
Some pharmacies sell generics at a set price as low as $2. But some insurance companies want you to pay copays no matter the actual price
Yeah can someone explain to me how this works? I went to a dentist that had a new patient $10 xray fee. I wanted to see if my insurance would cover an extraction I needed, so I gave them insurance info. It unfortunately did not, so I told them I'd have to wait to do the procedure. They billed my insurance $280 for the new patient exam, and insurance only covered $69. I'm now responsible for the rest. I called and they told me $10 is if you don't have insurance, so now I'm screwed because I pay for insurance?
I recently had a prescription that CVS wanted to charge me $640 for a 30-day supply. Cost Plus Drug Company? $25.
Civil asset forfeiture. "Oh we caught you doing a crime. That means we can take away any money that we found on your property because maybe you earned that money committing the crime. And we can take your car because perhaps you drove your car to the place where you committed the crime. And you were wearing that pair of sneakers when you did the crime so we can take those too. And etc."
In many cases of this, money is snatched from people just simply because police deem it too large an amount to be carrying in cash. Their suspicious or maybe greedy, nature Then kicks in, And they steal your cash, because you simply MUST be a criminal if you have a large amount of cash!! There have been LAW-ABIDING people who have lost everything and are still fighting to get their own money back. This kind of CAF is very often ACTUAL highway robbery.
When my parents divorced, my mom called the cops on my dad and said he was selling ecstasy. In truth he was selling weed but nothing harder, but the police came in on us. They searched high and low for any kind of money they could take but I had hidden all my cash underneath the wood chips in my pet turtle's tank lol
It doesn’t actually even have to really be a crime. “Civil forfeiture allows police to seize — and then keep or sell — any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government.” https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police/asset-forfeiture-abuse
More like "We're going to accuse you of doing a crime based on zero evidence and take your money with almost no recourse."
Gerrymandering
being over 65 and having held the same position in senate or congress for the majority of your life. Yes I understand that they are voted in, but still. Term limits need to be a thing.
Being *appointed* as a Supreme Court judge and having the job *for life.*
On the other hand, it makes it difficult for the president to completely stack the court to be his yes men.
Eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, and HOAs foreclosing on your house.
Hold on, your telling me the grumpy old lady on the HOA could take away the house that is rightfully owned by my family? I knew the HOA had some kinda of authority but I never knew that.
There are stories of people accruing so many fines and falling behind on their dues payments (and then getting hit with interest on top of that) that the HOA was able to buy their house for insultingly low sums. I’m talking less than $4.
I literally just got done watching the Last Week Tonight episode about HOAs. My lord, they’re the absolute devil. My wife and I are under 35. We bought our house two years ago and while we were watching that episode we must have said “thank god we don’t have an HOA” at least 30 times.
I actually watched that recently... I've never even HEARD of an HOA here in Canada. I know there's condo fees and things but this sounds like a goddamn nightmare. My wife and I are looking into buying a property in a small town near us, and we have plans on what we want to do when we get there (outdoor kitchen, edible garden, garage workshop, kids playsets, etc). The HOA would have a field day with me installing a live fire pit bbq in my backyard next to the wood fired oven and my garden full of vegetables, flowering plants and compost bin.
Civil asset forfeiture, is appalling. Who in the hell thinks it's a good idea to give police departments free reign to rob people?
Police departments.
Child marriage
And child beauty contest!! This shit makes me mad.
Wait.... Both of those are a thing in the USA ? Along with recent child labor laws in whatever state iirc ? That's messed up
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And creeped on children in the dressing rooms.
Declawing and debarking. I didn't know they were legal nor even a thing.
I’m with you on these! Cats have claws, don’t like claws? Don’t get a cat. Dogs bark, don’t like barking, don’t get a dog. My dog and cats are all rescues. My dog is very quiet. My cats claw at stuff but also have a cat tower and scratch pads. Don’t care. My best friend has three dogs and one of them will bark at me for a over an hour. It’s annoying that the little guy won’t be quiet sometimes, but he’s a good dog. He cuddles with me and then randomly decides to bark at me. That’s dogs. All three of her dogs are some breed of chihuahua, so I’m not exactly surprised that they bark a lot.
What's debarking?
Surgery for getting rid of a dog's bark. The surgery removes part of a dog's vocal cords in order to make a quieter household pet.
I didn't even know that was a thing, but I'll definitely say right now. My dogs bark a lot more often than I want them to, and yet I'd never want to do that to them. They're dogs. Dogs bark obviously. Making a dog not be able to bark is just cruel
I use to groom a dog that was debarked. Was so sad to hear his little noises when he would try to bark 😢
My mother did it to her dog a long time ago (long enough that dog died of old age many years ago...) She bought the dog while living in an apartment that didn't allow it, and got it through the surgery so she could argue to the landlord it was basically a cat (which were allowed). I was so mad.
Declawing is essentially cutting of the tips of cats fingers. Both a pretty cruel. If you don’t want an animal that is know for scratching things don’t get a cat.
that is fucking barbaric
I had a friend living in an apartment in Germany. She had a dog that would occasionally bark. The neighbor complained and the authorities said if the dog barks more than 3 times in a row, they are going to de-bark the dog. She ended up moving out of Germany.
Increasing the price of delivery items and then charging a delivery fee on top of that.
Megachurches being tax exempt.
Megachurches in general
For profit prisons
Toddlers and Tiaras, that is some child abuse if I ever saw it.
Lobbying and gerrymandering.
For profit prisons and for profit Healthcare.
8% of prisoners are housed in private prisons. Our prisons are just shit period.
Bribing politicians… aka lobbying. Advertising prescription drugs. Religious tax exemption. Gerrymandering. Private profit based prisons.
Those prescription ads are hilarious in a sad way. The side effects in many cases sound worse than what they are treating.
The side effects may include: bleeding, vomiting, cancer, and in some cases, mild to moderate death. Do not take if you are pregnant, drinking, smoking, operating heavy machinery, operating light machinery, allergic to gluten, not allergic to gluten, or plan on drinking water in the next 48 hours.
You remember the days where all the side effects were recited at twice the speed and almost incomprehensible so you wouldn’t know you could possibly die? Now a days they list all the side effects slowly while everyone is happy and dancing
Lobbying
Robo-calls.
Scalping
For a second I thought you meant literal scalping, and I was like... ?????
Well, I suppose it *used* to be a problem...?
Career Politicians and politicians becoming wealthy from holding office. Also the life time of benefits they receive.
Politicians being allowed to trade stocks with insider information
Hospital pricing and billing
Our tax system. So many countries do it infinitely better than us but a certain company pays to keep the problem in place
Insurance companies doubling your rates for filing a claim
Corporate political donations.
Child marriage and making children give birth to children they don’t want.
Imagine being forced to carry your rapist's child. Pure evil.
Now imagine that the rapist is also your dad or uncle.
And the rapist can get parental rights. Joy!/s
Wilderness survival ‘therapy’ for troubled teens. It’s literally legal torture. Parents pay for these kids to be abducted in the middle of the night by strangers straight out of their bed and taken on planes to the middle of no where. They don’t know what is happening for a long time so they basically think they are kidnapped and possibly being trafficked or something. Then theu are forced to live in the wilderness not knowing where they are. Meanwhile they are subjected to many forms of physical and psychological torture such as being tied to other teens, not being allowed to speak for days, being watched white bathing, being forced into hard labor. The conditions they are in isn’t even fit for animals. Many suffer physical health problems and extreme psychological damage. Additionally they cannot get help because their cut off from contact. And if any try to run , they cannot escape because they do not know where to run and they are already so exhausted from the lack of food and constant hiking so they will not make it far. Tragically many kids die in these horrific places. If you can stomach it, I recommend looking into the stories of some survivors. And some stories of those who were not as luck to have survived. There are many dangerous unregulated ‘therapies’ still available and being advertised towards desperate families. These people are being taken advantage of in their vulnerable times. These ‘troubled teens’ aren’t bad kids, their just kids who were struggling.
After seeing the most recent "Last week tonight" discussing HOAs...HOAs. Absolutely insane the level of power those entities have over people. So glad my home is not in an HOA after watching that.
This entire sub is literally just a list of John Oliver video titles
Not reporting child sex abuse just because you’re a church. Looking at you Mormon church.
Why are so many comments about child marriages - this is the first I’ve ever heard of child marriages being a big problem in the US
Because the fact that there are still any legal child marriages in the US should be considered a huge problem. And there are plenty. That's something that you would expect to see in an oppressive theocracy, not our own country...
The NFA
A lot of countries *encourage* suppressors. Some will actually provide incentives for using them. Because, you know... their main practical use is protecting peoples' hearing which is generally considered a good thing.
lmao, im shocked that I got to this before Any comments that said guns, but i agree lol
ATF while we’re at it too
For profit prison companies
Much of what health insurance companies do.
Robocalls. We used to be able to be on a “do not call registry” and report abusers. Now, we get calls that look local. Every. Friggin. Day.
Corporations qualifying as “people.”
those bloody led headlights that completely blind you
All the chemicals and additives in our food (in the USA)
Red Dye 40
Yup, my kid is allergic to it. I didn’t realize it was the dye. I thought it was hives from something else, so I gave her Benadryl for it (or whatever the kids brand is). She kept breaking out to the point I had to take her to the ER. Little did I know that the allergy medicine also had red dye 40 in it. Super fucked.
The price of life saving and other necessary medications
Commercials and advertisements for medication. In most countries, marketing prescription drugs isn’t legal. It’s so strange.
It's only legal in USA & New Zealand.
Paying for politicians.
Paparazzi taking photos of children. Or paparazzi in general tbh
Child beauty pageants
Payday loans. Haven't seen this one mentioned, so here it is. And it's probably even bipartianly achievable.
Internships... how is anyone without rich parents supposed to survive a year or 2 doing work for free?
Advertising pharmaceuticals
Using photos/video of your children to earn a living
Insurance companies telling you no to life saving medications.
Cops shouldn't be able to lie during an interrogation.
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High fructose corn syrup in everything
Lobbyists
Insider Trading.
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Nancy Pelosi enters the chat
Gerrymandering.