A place for for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology. That means any support for any liberal capitalist political party (like the Democrats) is strictly prohibited.
A zero-tolerance policy for bigotry of any kind. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
RULES:
1 Understand the left starts at anti-capitalism.
2 No Trolling
3 No capitalist apologia, anti-socialism, anti-communism, or liberalism, liberalism is in direct conflict with the left. Support for capitalism or for the parties or ideologies that uphold it are not welcome or tolerated.
4 No imperialism, conservatism, reactionism or Zionism, lessor evil rhetoric. Dismissing 3rd party votes or 'wasted votes on 3rd party' is lessor evil rhetoric.
5 No bigotry, no racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or any type of prejudice.
6 Be civil in comments and no accusations of being a bot, 'paid by Putin,' Tankie, etc. This includes instance shaming.
Introduction to Socialism (external links)
Marxism-Leninism Study Guide: Basic Course
Marxism-Leninism Study Guide: Advanced Course
Had some leg problems and went to a specialist. Not an emergency, but it was recommended by my doctor.
The virtual call (yes I know) cost $400.
Then the scans cost $1800.
Finally, the procedure cost $7200.
Nearly $10k. And insurance only paid for 2/3 of it. The virtual call was a 30-min call where they repeat everything I answered on the form.
I have yet to meet anyone in healthcare that will admit those kinds of fees are wrong.
So...
Bit of a funny elephant here....
Hum...
When can we start using the same rhetoric towards Americans as they're having towards Mexicans? Or the nationalists/fascists/racists have towards immigrants in general?
I mean, if we're going to see an influx of Americans going to other countries to benefit of the things which are better outside of America.... Isn't that literally the whole argument anti-immigration people have?
I dunno. The irony kinda has me smiling like The Senate at an opera light show.
Unfortunately the people who you should be bigoted against aren't leaving.
The fact is that the people of the U.S. that are stuck here need help. Desperately, as the walls are closing in faster than they ever have.
Oh the irony (and hypocrisy) is fucking thick, my guy.
My MAGA father-in-law wants to end abortion rights for all Americans in all cases. But when confronted by my wife that her and the rest of his 4 daughters might find their life in danger from an Ectopic pregnancy or other dangerous medical condition in which the only remedy is terminating a pregnancy, he calmly assured her that if they needed an abortion he'd fly them out of the country to get them one (but also the American Healthcare System is still the best in the world, btw). Meanwhile, he and those like him disparage those moving the US seeking opportunities and safety for their families instead of staying fixing their country that WE largely are responsible for destabilizing and putting into poverty.
And he doesn't put stock in us being held responsible for the state of those nations as the things we did to them happened decades ago (for the most part). Also he doesn't believe that Native Americans should have any claim to lands within the US or any sovereignty under US law. In unrelated matters, though, Isreal has a right to those lands because they were stolen from them thousands of years ago, and they can and should have a one state rule over the region and people there despite other people living there already, and also it is totally cool that they get put under a decades long blockade because those people voted a group into power that opposed their occupation, and they do not have a right to resist this blockade or occupation in an way with force.
If you are looking for consistent, thoughtful policy positions, I'm afraid the modern American Right has little to provide you.
he doesn’t believe that Native Americans should have any claim to lands within the US
Isreal [...] should have a one state rule over the region and people there despite other people living there already
Unfortunately this is pretty consistent.
The Palestinian and Native American sovereignty rights, or lack-there-of is consistent. The claim to the lands stolen from them (the Isrealis) not so much.
It's just 'might makes right' combined with 'our guy won' and a helping of Western imperialism. You don't need to be a philosopher to see the underlying reasoning.
From what I've heard, you can see about the same thing in Ayn Rand's lectures where she retroactively excused colonization of the Americas because 'they didn't do anything valuable with all the land'. You know, same Ayn Rand that wrote the bible of US corporatocracy. (Alas, I don't think I have long enough time left to waste on Rand's lectures myself.)
No one is stopping you.
And they are trying to bring that US system to Canada and the UK so maybe a dozen people or less cab make billions.
They're trying to bring it to all "western" countries. The US ideology is being pushed hard everywhere in order for US firms to come in and start monetising everything (among which, health, of course).
We're not the product. We're the cows getting milked dry, and once they have taken everything they can from us, we're discarded without a second thought.
And these people will do it to every country if not stopped.
Why tf is he talking AI
Hate to break it to you, but humans have been using the em-dash since before AI existed. AI output is modeled after effective communicators, and those people still exist.
I can even make it on my keyboard — because I use a proper keyboard map on a decent system. And I could do it ten years ago too!
Seems rather to be the LinkedIn style, with barely more than a short sentence per paragraph, and infused with the unmistakable pathos that feels a bit reserved but is definitely too pompous for business talk.
The formatting is similar to the BBC style aka modern news sites, but idk why it got adopted on LinkedIn when posters are presumably not paid per ad impression.
I’m pretty sure we’re reading an ad for a Tijuana based gastric bypass doctor lol.
There should be a distinction between posts written by humans, and those written by AI. Political discussions should be for humans, not robots.
If this person wanted to make a comparison between dental prices, they could've written it out themselves. But instead the relied on an AI. That's not innovation, that's laziness!
Today, online discussions are broken – you can't know which comments are written by humans any more. Luckily we have people like you who can tell the difference.
Disclaimer: This post was written by a human.
Yeah, I don't know; is it even true, then?
Idk if his specific post is true, but medical tourism is a booming industry. So common in the US that even the CDC has a page on it https://www.cdc.gov/yellow-book/hcp/health-care-abroad/medical-tourism.html
I live in a country on which USians love to shit online, and had root canal procedures and fillings done for free. Not sure about implants, though.
USians shit on lots of countries, you're going to have to narrow it down
Fuck them. Let 'em keep guessing.
That's roughly 23k MXN, which is also what some people here earn in an entire month. Just trying to clarify that while it's certainly not as expensive as it is in the US compared to the average person's salary, it's still not as cheap for people who actually live here either
Walking into a hospital in America is a month of work for me before they even do anything and i make good money for an American.
Sure, but 21,000 usd as he was quoted is closer to the average annual salary in America. So it's still disgustingly more affordable for a local Mexican to afford their own dental care.
Yeah that's what I expected. Yes we're being fleeced in America, but also low cost of living, lower wages, and cheaper education can all drastically reduce the price of dentistry
Not to undermine your point, dental services are still kinda expensive for regular people, but this is also Tijuana, a border city where stuff is more expensive.
And that dental clinic probably inflates their prices since they provably service a number of foreigners.
I'm aware, but if I started talking about that I would've ended with an entire wall of text, and I didn't feel like doing that
Still, thanks for providing additional context
Wait till people find out the technology and cost for health care in China.
My father will get his hearing and heart checked here, because in my birth country he has to wait 4 months to get an appointment and than likely another 3 months for the next step. Here we get everything done in one day including all scans, results, meeting with the specialist and possible medication.
Edit: link because medical tourism is becoming a real thing now in China. I can't believe how ridiculous the costs are in the US. It's a total scam.
https://chinaneighbor.com/guide/healthcare/medical-trip-to-china-overview/
They really did the Cock and Ball AND COCK torture on him
Sometimes, I think America loathe Mexico not because they are brown and poor, but because America is envious that a poor country have affordable healthcare than the supposedly richest country in the world.
I'm willing to bet the majority of Americans have no idea Mexico has affordable healthcare. Propaganda is a bitch
I'm surprised to hear that to be honest. I know many Americans go to Mexico for cheaper medical care.
Same in Europe. UK calls the perfect white teeth “Turkey Teeth” for a reason. And we all have universal healthcare here around. So this is not the only reason. Purchase power and GDP matter, too.
But "perfect white teeth" aka veneers are often a cosmetic procedure and are thus generally not covered by universal healthcare (there are exceptions ofcourse).
I'd argue a rootcanal treatment is very necessary so I don't think they are comparable situations. That is ofcourse just the opinion of a random internet person.
Teeth are never covered by health insurance as far as I know, unless the cause was an accident.
Which is insane, btw. Teeth are the beginning of the digestive tract, relatively exposed to the elements, and you only get one adult set.
I broke two front teeth and had a wisdom tooth knocked loose and later extracted in a fall at work. Workman's comp insurance is supposed to pay for it all (many thousands of $$$) but so far they've balked for the last eight months. Meanwhile my dentist has eaten the entire cost. Workman's comp insurance treats people only through preferred providers, but they have no preferred dentists or oral surgeons so it's a bit of a grey area.
And they still wonder why they get Brian Thomson’d.
Jokes aside, why is there not a single Mamdani in the US inventing now insurance should work, with private/contracted hospitals or doctors, forcing the premiums down so that it can be used by many people? I mean, it feels like 99.9% of the people would immediately switch to something like that.
We have something like that, it's called Medicare. You just have to be 65 to get into it. A very reasonable proposal, first mooted in the '90s, was called Medicare-for-all; the idea was that they would just lower the eligibility age by two years every year to allow the country to ease gradually into universal healthcare. If we had done this back then we would have universal healthcare today.
Some people blame Hilary Clinton for this, because she allegedly rejected this option and instead pushed for immediate universal health care back when her husband first became President. I think this is probably a distraction from the real culprits. The private insurance companies fought like hell against universal healthcare and would have fought just as hard (and just as successfully) against Medicare-for-all.
Can’t make money at it. Can’t get investors. Investors are a requirement. Can’t get into hospitals and doctor networks.
This is arguably because, if dental care was free, it would remove a visible signal of someone’s wealth and position in the social hierarchy
Dentist procedures are being done in the Balkans for people further north. And all countries there have universal health care. But waiting lines for free procedures are reality. So many opt to pay out of pocket to get it sooner.
I need similar work done, I keep forgetting this is an option. It'll cost me 15k to do here at a generic chain dentist. After insurance
I have dental insurance and it's near-fucking-worthless for this level of work (which I've had a lot of in the last few years). It pays only a small percentage of the costs and the payout is capped at $1500 per year, nowhere near enough to cover the cost of a single implant. I wouldn't even bother having the insurance in the first place but it's a free benefit provided by my employer.
Chain dentists are a fucking abomination, though. You're guaranteed to get work you don't actually need because of the corporate pressures they're under to generate revenue.
Unfortunately it's getting harder and harder to find independent dentists