Hmm... I don't like to talk about this, but I guess this is a definite reason why VG lore might never comeback in full

Off Topic
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I didn’t notice this until my Twitter decided to do “in case you missed this.”

Here are a chain tweets that SugarVenom has made on her Twitter regarding her health (and probably financial situation too).

The jist of it for you TL;DR folks:

  • SugarVenom has a benign tumor in her brain (if you didn’t know already about it).
  • It has grown worst (and is presumed to be worsening), causing 50% hearing loss.
  • This one I find explains her financial situation and her standing in the company: “Three months ago, my job was reduced to four days a month and my insurance was gone. I filed for all of the government assistant things in the interim and set to applying for jobs. Dozens and dozens of them.”
  • This… is the sad part… “Tonight, I decided that it won’t be worth it to get future MRIs if I’m still struggling financially. If this thing in my head is going to paralyze or kill me, I’d rather leave whatever money I have left to my son and go out quietly than go bankrupt alone.”
  • The rest is her saying that American’s face hard choices with health care, and having studied about health care systems, I agree. You Americans have a really shitty health care system. Get sick once and you go bankrupt isn’t a meme or just a passing fear.

There’s not much I can say or help with her situation. Just pray that it doesn’t get any worse that it already is. If she goes, I hope she pass peacefully and have her family at her side.

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Holy shit this is sad. I still don’t understand how so many Americans can be Ok with this. No one should ever have to just accept death because they’re poor.

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Exactly!

It really does make me sad. For her and her son.

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The American health system is structured in a rather interesting one.

Here’s a vid that explains it. Do note it is somewhat dated. A lot has changed in 4 years.

Accepting death because one is poor isn’t ideal. Many poor countries experience this too.

Having to accept death as a possibility while in a country boasting great leaps in health & medical R&D is even sadder.

I haven’t really heard any health care related things ever since Trump came into power to be honest.

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This is heartbreaking as hell to read… Poor SugarVenom.

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While I deal with the shitty American health care system every day and agree that it’s beyond broken, I’m afraid I need to move this to Off Topic, as it has nothing to do with VG the game.

That said, SugarVenom’s situation is a bad one. Unless she gets a job that provides health insurance – and before the current administration gets its way in removing the rule that one can’t be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions – she’s going to have a very difficult time of it.

Without knowing exactly what she’s got (the two most common types are meningiomas and acoustic neuromas – but she’s never said), I wouldn’t want to make any guesses as to what she’s facing with regard to tests & treatment. Without insurance coverage, the costs of even just testing (repeated MRIs) and visits to the neurosurgeon would be very high indeed.

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Oh my God I never knew about any of this. That’s horrible…and yeah I hate how healthcare is absurdly expensive. It’s bad enough some of us lose our dogs due to not affording surgeries, let alone going bankrupt just to save one person.

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Yeah after Trump and Republicans couldn’t pass a new health Care system they just quit. I’m pretty sure he said “just let our health system implode”, so all of the US’s health care problems are just going to get worst because they don’t even care to fix it.

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It’s beyond me that the US doesn’t have universal health care ???

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It’s really fucked that semc can’t help her out just a little bit. I know healthcare bills are ridiculous, but seriously!

It’s absolutely heartbreaking to see SugarVenom almost accepting death and being forced to plan for her son.

Damn. We’ll never forget you SugarVenom.

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Most people don’t really know how the US healthcare system works.

You can imagine it as an onion, with many many layers. The problem is healthcare reform brought by an active party and or president only “fixes” the top layer. Everything underneath is inherently broken. To fix all layers of the onion would mean to reform the entire system. TBF, even if everyone decided to work together, that would take decades to transition.

Every society’s government tries to solve “The greatest happiness for the greatest amount of people.” Capitalism’s principle assumes a mixture of a Darwinist with free will. In other words, only the people who work to become smarter, faster, stronger, can survive, while those free to make bad choices end up on bottom.

Capitalism’s dependency on luck is probably the major factor why people dislike it. It always seems like the rich are healthy forever and the poor are ill forever.

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Not exactly. Luck is an individual concern (“will my product be popular in this market, at this time?”), but it’s not a systemic issue related to capitalism specifically - it can be, and is, avoided. Remember that companies finance multi-million dollar research efforts to eliminate luck in their businesses. They have the money to do it, so they do, which pays for itself and more in profits. Systemically, capitalism rewards people who already have resources. You need money to make money, basically. It’s a by-product of any closed market system that wealth tends to concentrate, rather than disperse. Google “first mover advantage” or even “roots of income inequality.”

The myth of capitalism is that those who are well-off somehow deserve the wealth they’ve accrued. But really, it’s far more likely to be a factor of inertia than initiative, as I mentioned in the first paragraph. Those are systemic issues, not personal ones, and are the real reasons people criticize capitalism. (For the record, I’m not saying we should abolish capitalism, but we should be better versed in the ways it’s actually bad)

This is true; and it’s complicated. There are public (governmental) plans, private plans through your employer, private plans you can get as an individual, and they all result in different coverage options and fees. One of the main issues though is that so much of the US expenditure on health care is private, rather than public, which is governed by capitalist market forces. And like I mentioned in the paragraphs above, this is a recipe for wealth concentration through increased health care costs… Notably, rising deductibles, which is what is probably affecting SugarVenom.

I don’t know that single payer (totally governmental) would fix this, though, since the health care industry (hospitals, doctors, lawyers) has become so wealthy that they could probably lobby to affect standardized prices. I’m not an expert though, so I can’t really speculate on more than that. You’re right that we need a concerted, full-system effort, and not just a top-level fix. The issue is defining that system, and understanding how far it reaches.

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I think saying it would take decades to transition is extreme exaggeration. People are always so scared to vote in people who are willing to change the health care system(or really any government system, ex Americans concerning socialism) because they fear it would take to long and just hinder us by trying to change but the problem is that there is always push back from multiple states and the opposing party. Changing how something work only takes long when we are not putting in the full effort to change it. If everyone did agree on something or at least settled for something things would get done. If anything changing the healthcare system in the states is really only gonna take a lot of paperwork from the gov, private companies, and citizens. But definitely not years(if we were to actually agree on something)

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You’re seriously underestimating the power of the various non-governmental interests within the American healthcare system

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Yeah, agreed. Massively powerful. So much so that a part of the solution will have to include efforts like campaign finance reform and other measures to curtail excessive special interest power. I think Saint has a point though, that we don’t necessarily have to think of any reforms efforts as either/or, and in that understanding, a more compartmental one, we don’t have to be satisfied with decades. There are transitional ideas out there that can start the process, so I’m hopeful for eventual solutions.

Anyway, I’m going to duck out of this convo, as we’re getting to the limits of my subject area knowledge. :rbgwen:

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Was that a “BIG PHARMA” reference :joy:

A serious topic, nevertheless I chuckled

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Big Pharma, yes, but even bigger are the insurance companies, which wield much, much more power over the system than the pharmaceutical industry. Then there are the health care mega-conglomerates that control the delivery of care …

As Hipster and Saint say, though, just because it’s going to be hard doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to happen. I don’t know of anyone who works within the system who doesn’t think drastic changes are needed – and soon. However, it’s kind of like trying to turn a supertanker – there’s a lot of inertia to overcome.

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[quote=“HipsterSkaarf, post:15, topic:5172”]
Anyway, I’m going to duck out of this convo, as we’re getting to the limits of my subject area knowledge. :rbgwen:
[/quote]I ducked out the moment y’all started to talk about government and stuff like that :joy::skull:

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Umm idk why the quote ended up not working ^

:mask::hushed:

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I think you’re underestimating the levels at how organize we could work. What I mean is that we could reform any health care system in the matter of days if very human being really wanted too in a developed nation; but do I think that is realistic? Of course not. What I mean is just saying something will take decades is very much dependable on how important it becomes to people. I am not saying it won’t take decades but the general statement of that is very discouraging for people to want to change the American health care system. I have no clue when or if or how the American health care system will change but my point is the states has the ability to change the health care system right now, wether for worst or bad.

I might’ve made this more confusing idk.