Interrupting my most popular blog for one minute with something important for my fellow US peeps:
Who else in the USA would be interested in a spreadsheet organized by state & hospital that lists each hospital’s no-insurance, out-of-pocket costs for common procedures?
Becausewe could make that.We could literally crowdsource this info and put it together as a common resource.
Hospitals have tools online that list out those costs, but they are terrible. Absolutely fucking terrible and time-consuming to compare with other hospitals, which is absolutely on purpose.
But! if people filled this out together, everybody doing a little bit (like when you yourself are looking something up), we could make a communal resource that helps people in the USA compare costs for procedures between hospitals.
Here’s an example I made comparing the same procedure at 2 different hospitals in Oregon:
in case that’s hard to see, here’s just the costs:
that’s terrible!
imagine not knowing you had a choice that could save you $300!
we can make something better for each other, because our corrupt, for-profit capitalist healthcare system ain’t gonna do it for us!
This time of year is always very nostalgic for me bc I used to be the Token Gentile at an office and every few months there’d be a Jewish holiday and my friend would be like “Hey, I need you to do Gentile things for us” and I’d be like hell yes dude. Gentile Things often meant I’d sign things in exchange for a few dollars on venmo but Pesach was a special time for me because it meant everyone gave me boxes of pasta, cereal, and other baked goods. The first time my friends were like “Hey for reasons we won’t bother getting into we’re going to give you all of our bread” I was like, it is a powerful responsibility but as an Ally I cannot refuse. Best time of the year, frankly
