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Advice for my fellow Americans
(hexbear.net)
My hubby forwarded this screenshot to me from a GTNH Discord server and I feel it is valuable advice for anyone struggling with American healthcare.
Yeah, collective action is the only equalizer we have. But we have to preemptively pressure them as much as possible because time is of the essence once you have a life threatening condition. Medical bureaucracy is intentionally cumbersome to navigate as a layman without legal representation. I remember trying to negotiate some exorbitant charges to a medical bill once and they bumped me from one department to another with hour+ long wait times that was so frustrating that I eventually gave up.
It makes me tempted to start a coalition of volunteer lawyers who specialize in this. Straight out of law school, funded by a combination of donations and side jobs in law. These volunteer lawyers would have a group social media channel (probably on YouTube and other similar sites) explaining what they do and why. We'd probably also need a tip-line for submitting claims against these health insurance agencies.
An only slightly less impractical pan would be to get 1 or 2 lawyers who can train non lawyer volunteers and occasionally advise.
But finding even those 1 or 2 who have the necessary expertise and are willing/able to participate will be a challenge.
Have you ever been involved in a project like this at any level?
I helped to organize a couple protests back when I was in college, but I haven't done fundraising or nonprofit organisation. I volunteered to hand out food donations to impoverished families locally but I didn't organize in that case.
OK step 1 on this plan is to get involved in something that works in a similar way so you can get some perspective on the task you are proposing.
I promise you: the reason this doesn't exist already is not because nobody's ever had the idea.
For that matter, maybe it does exist. Step 0 is to find out for sure if it already exists, even if it sucks. Or if it ever existed. You'll want to know about that.