P-R-I-V-I-L-E-G-E spells privilege

[malakijr]

I was talking with a girl from work today and she was going on about how poor people should feed their kids healthy food like fruits and vegetables and their kids would be healthier and not need health care. So I mentioned that fresh fruits and vegetables were MORE EXPENSIVE and most parents would love to be able to give these things to their kids

Comments

[peskipiksi]

Rant ahoy!

Someday, I am going to write a book about how No, Really, Healthy Food/Exercise/Being Naturally Thin Is Not the Panacea You Think It Is. Healthier food might have helped you feel better as a kid, but it sure as fuck would not have cured your GENETIC DISEASES WHICH ARE GENETIC AND NOT CAUSED BY EATING TO STAY ALIVE. (or illnesses caused by anything ELSE for that matter. no, tomatoes do not prevent the common cold. really

deth

[malakijr]

Oh no, according to this girl, she eats healthy and that's why she's almost never sick and why she's almost never been sick her whole life (and I want to inject her with some staph bacteria or something because SRSLY I'm sick now...sick of HEARING THIS) and people in this country eat crap and that's why they're unhealthy (and everyone has money to go to the doctor when they're sick, I'm just LYING about not having money to go to the doctor) and poor people NEED TO REALIZE (yes, she said NEED TO REALIZE) that if they fed their children healthy foods, the rate of disease and illness would go down because tomatoes really DO prevent the common cold. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOOOOOOWWW

Re: deth

[peskipiksi]

Waaay too many healthy people think (a) they will always be healthy and (b) they are healthy by their own power. SO NOT TRUE.

"Poor people need to realize" is a whole nother rant. Because, um, POOR PEOPLE ARE NOT STUPID. In fact, they probably realize a WHOLE SHITLOAD of things better than non-poor people. Like how IF THEY HAD MONEY, they could maybe feed their kids MORE FOOD. And how they could also take their kids to the doctor, you know, IF THEY HAD MONEY. I'm pretty sure the connection between Things Needed to Survive and Money is exceptionally clear to people who STRUGGLE WITH IT EVERY DAY.

[nabba]

Seriously, wtf was she smoking? I want some of THAT shit. That's some pretty strong shit. Damn, what a crazy twat.

Doesn't she realize there's this huge thing in the US called a class system. Fucking piss on a cracker, honestly little girl. I think someone need to go back to school lol. Too bad you can't really say that to her in any way.

[malakijr]

lol, I was worried people would bitch at me for calling her a "girl" from work (and not a woman) but to me she's still a girl. I mean, she seems so naive sometimes, especially with conversations like this one we had this morning!

[blozor]

Not having the same life experiences and refusing to accept that other people might are two totally separate things.

Poor people can't afford health maintenance, so they have to wait until they're dying to get emergency health care, for which they can then file a claim and not have to pay. Whatever the hospitals can't claim as a tax write-off, the insurance companies pay and claim it as a tax write-off, forcing both our premiums and our tax burden to increase. Yet there are still people who prefer this system to giving everyone the ability to pay into their own affordable health maintenance.

[peskipiksi]

for which they can then file a claim and not have to pay

Assuming, of course, that they (a) know this in the first place or (b) are informed they can do so by the hospital. (A) is far less common than one would wish, especially since it requires not only knowing that EMTALA exists, but knowing who to ask in the hospital about it, and (b) rarely happens in practice because it's in the hospital's financial interest not to mention it.

Unfortunately, it's far more common for indigent people to seek emergency care, then be shunted into collections and finally into default judgment, where in most states any income they have is garnished to repay the hospital bill - in its entirety.

/does this for a living

[blozor]

Which is really no more or less worse in the long run than having to pay a little more tax to get health maintenance which could prevent emergency health care in the long run, assuming nothing unfortunate happens such as auto accident or gunshot.

[malakijr]

Not having the same life experiences and refusing to accept that other people might are two totally separate things.I never said they weren't two separate things. But they ARE related. I speak with tons of people who can't believe that XYZ are true because they've never experienced these things. If other people HAD to experience living on an income so low that they COULD NOT afford food, it would open their eyes. Thus the two things are related

[terminal83]

If ignorance caused people pain, she'd be in the hospital in life support. When I was a kid we didn't have enough money to pick and choose our food, so all we could eat was white rice, macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, and cold cuts. Is it the cause of my health problems? Who knows?

But like you said: It's better to have health problems at an old age than starve to death at a young age. I hope no one ever knows what it sounds like to hear a little kid crying because he's hungry and you have no money or no food to give to them.

In either case you know Morgan Spurlock? He did this documentary series on FX and he explained that he and his wife lived as low class tenants for a month. He claimed at one point they were so hungry they had no choice but to eat chocolate snack cakes.

THAT is the experience of living as a poor person. We don't have the resources to pick and choose, we just have to eat what we can find and buy.