Now a convenient store currently occupied by a tall, jewish closeted transformers nerd, and an ultra-shy untra-invert girl about to have a psychotic break? Yeah, that’s closer to the scope of Sal’s imagination. 😛
More often than not for the insured, even. A lot of insurance agencies like to claim nearly everything as not a “bona fide medical emergency”, stuff like kidney stones or heart palpitations that might freak people out and get them to call an ambulance but aren’t ultimately life-threatening.
Here in Australia with supposedly universal health care, there’s no dental coverage & depending on the state you have to buy ambulance insurance too. I’m in a lucky state that covers ambulances.
I had an ambulance ride the week before last that would have cost A$416 if I were not insured. On the other hand, in states where ambulances are free enough people abuse them (e.g. call an ambulance to get a ride to the hospital for a routine appointment) to be an expensive nuisance. Perhaps there is some sensible middle ground, such as ambulances costing twice as much as a taxi.
In my country, ambulance is free if it was needed. If not, you pay for it. The medical personnel decides whether calling the ambulance was the right thing to do, not the insurer.
Trying to use the ambulance as a taxi actually costs you a fine, in addition to the ambulance costs.
And here I am in Canada where ambulance rides are not covered and depending on the province cost between a hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars. >< And if you don't pay they send you a few polite reminders and then give up.
Two thousand dollars to get your badly-injured kid to the hospital in in a timely manner while undergoing emergency medical care is fucking inhuman.
The large charges one sees in the US are rare; searching over this issue produces the same three or four incidents reported over and over. Most of the time, the charges are waived (i.e., absorbed into what others pay).
I know someone personally who had to pay $2k for an ambulance ride after the fact when she was having an extreme asthma attack due to inhaling mold, that couldn’t be treated with her inhaler alone. The fees were not waived. I know my sample size for data is just limited to people I know, but from other folks I’ve talked to, her experience seems to be the norm.
I know it is too late now but in case anyone else reads this: I was an EMT for a private ambulance company in America and I know we did not waive fees… that’s just not the case. Public ambulance services (fire departments) may waive fees—though I doubt it—but you have no control over public vs private… it just depends on what contracts your municipalities have made as well as population density. Volunteer ambulance services may have more leeway to waive but they are the absolute minority of ambulance services, only covering very rural (read: low population) areas.
Well statistics say that the percentage of active complaints to incidents is similar to that of advertising flyers – about 2-4%.
Mind you if one hits the news and you have never ever heard of similar happening through the grapevine it is pretty sure it is a one off – if not then there is a problem.
Here in Ontario, it’s either $45 or $250, depending on whether it’s considered necessary or not. (And there are a bunch of situations where it’s covered.) (The handful of times I’ve taken one it’s been the $45.)
Really? I nearly had a seizure when I was 14 and I don’t recall anything being said about a bill for the ambulance. I guess that would have been considered necessary? My mom stopped it just before I started seizing and we didn’t know what it was.
It’s the luck of the draw, at least in some towns in the US… If
you’re lucky enough that the local First Aid Squad is available
and picks you up, the cost will be between free and relatively
inexpensive; if, however the First Aid Squad ambulances are all
busy, you are dispatched a private (For profit) ambulance, and
it costs thousands of dollars, more if they use any of their supplies.
Ambulance insurance in Victoria, Aus, at least is only 40 dollars per year for a single person. If you have a low income health care card you get ambulance insurance covered through that. It’s not all that bad (especially compared to the mess in the USA) but I can’t wait until teeth are considered part of the rest of the body for sure.
My grandmother insists on an ambulance ride whenever she self-diagnoses that she needs to go to the hospital. Apparently they aren’t allowed to send her home the same day if she arrives on a loudmobile rather than us driving her in.
in her defense, the most recent time, she had cracked a rib coughing. Also, while the police still show up, they have figured out we’re doing as she wishes, and are not engaged in elder abuse, even if there have been three calls in two weeks.
They are genuinely helpful.
If you live in a sane European country with free (but more basic) healthcare and have some chronic problems. It saves a lot of money, as the national healthcare provides only for the bare minimum of tests, and the waiting times are always long. If you have additional, private healthcare, you are generally able to find better doctors with more free schedules, while you’re still able to rely on the national healthcare system when the private company decides to be an ass. That’s what capitalism does when you are no longer constrained by literally NEEDING the product in order to live. It provides for a better product.
I live in Brazil, a third world country, and we never have to pay for ambulance (it’s a public emergency system like police or firefighters) and the public healthcare system is sometimes even better than the private hospitals o.o Well, the wait times are suuper long and there’s a general lack of … everything… in smaller, more remote towns, but in bigger cities it’s great, and almost everyone believes the government has a responsability of proving free, quality healthcare for the population.
I find it baffling that in richer countries like the US that belief is not there.
The US is an anomaly there, and is currently backsliding into being a developing nation due to such. Most 1st world countries have free universal healthcare.
Really interesting to learn more about Brazil! Thanks for that info. 🙂
I find it odd that every time somebody takes an ambulance ride they have to pay for 1/10th the cost of the truck they took a ride in. If you go to the hospital 10 times do they give you the ambulance?
It really depends on the station. My volunteer company is one of the last two in our state that doesn’t charge for ambulance rides. We survive entirely on grants and donations (the latter far more than the former).
But yeah, apparatus are expensive to build, outfit, and maintain; they aren’t mass-produced in the traditional sense: they have to be built from the chassis up, which tends to take about a year. Ambos cost around a quarter million; engines can run between a half and a full mil; ladders and quints can reach one-and-a-half.
The sheer amount of cash required to run a respectable company is mind-boggling.
Plus, you’re paying for a couple of skilled professionals, who might not have done anything for you, but have to be ready to handle the next guy, who might be bleeding out from a gunshot wound or have spinal trauma or damn near anything. That’s what you’re paying for.
It’s essentially the same reason emergency room care is crazy expensive compared to other kinds of medical care, even if you wind up having the same things done.
If all you need is the ride, call a taxi.
Depends if you are in province or not. Few years back, I had to live on raman and food bank donations for a couple months when an out of province severe asthma attack resulted ina $700 bill.
I did the math and at that rate at even the highest priced rate in Canada at that cost you cold get an ambulance ride from Washington DC to a hospital outside of Chicago. In Ontario that ride would have cost $45 and the surgery would have been free.
Yeah, stalking or no, rapist or no, that is not the sort of promise you break right in front of someone at their job like that.
(If Marcie knew the ‘no I’m being stalked and have been followed off campus’ thing, she would probably still not say ‘fight the mysterious stalker’ but at the very least that’s something the rent-a-cops can act as separation of the two for.)
Marcie knew she was being stalked – she was there the first time, when AG was stalking her off campus. And the rent a cops (aside from marcie) did jack all.
Regardless, though, yeah. Marcie was NEVER going to not be pissed off at this.
Stupid useless rent-a-cops. Can’t you at least be meat shields?
Certainly a bad choice of Inevitable Throwdown Venue on Sal’s part. She stops having good ways to deal with it once ‘seeking authorities’ is out (I don’t think AG would have stopped for anything short of what she did and things probably would have escalated further, that period of time was SCARY,) and even if Sal trusted authorities she didn’t have a whole ton of evidence after the initial parking lot fight. (Though I bet if she had said ‘the campus vigilante appears to be stalking me’ a lot of authorities would have been Interested. Moot point because Sal would never, but there we go.) So, throwdown. But it’s harmful to Marcie two ways over when it’s right in front of her, at her work.
They definitely are not, and if they’d said ‘Dude, you don’t pay me anywhere NEAR enough to do this’ or ‘Don’t get involved, we called the police’ I’d respect that a lot more than just saying ‘I’unno, Amazi-Girl’.
Marcie got fired over the fight with Ryan and his bros. Sadly she didn’t see that Sal only got involved because they were about to kick the shit out of Amazi-Girl :C
No, you have that backwards. Amazi-Girl was trying to fight Sal. Sal was rightly pissed off about being stalked and harassed, but she wasn’t the one who started that shit
On the stairway above her, IIRC. Where she was crouched, stalking Sal. Given her previous attack and that she’d been stalking her for awhile, Sal was justified, but she did start the fight, such as it was.
After that first move though, they were both basically posturing, trying to get the other to attack to justify the fight they wanted.
Sal wanted AG to get whatever she was going to do over with. She didn’t want a fight specifically. She was READY to fight if that’s where things were headed, but she WANTED answers and for AG to fuck off.
Wage garnishment, for one thing, and holds on their bank accounts. Repossession and sale of things to pay the debt. All that assuming they can deal with the invasive questions and such. (Assuming for a moment at least one member of the Diaz family is undocumented, a distinct LACK of known pay sources or bank account would be one of those things a debt collector would find and probably be very suspicious of.) Terrifying phone calls and general ‘We can and will make your life a living hell.’
you get collectors harassing you for Years and the bills ruin your credit so it’s extremely difficult to get loans or apartments, and if you can you get exorbitant rates on them
To my knowledge, it can be less of an issue when you or your family snuck in (to the USA) because you are renting, your job(s) pay cash, and you are using an assumed name anyway.
This did not include my mom years ago; we did lose our house.
To say nothing of “luck” when the timeline advances to the point where the flashback is now flashbacking to 2017/2018…right now it’s just flashbacking to 2012-ish.
Unless someone develops a working Time Stop spell with a permanent duration, that moment is inexorably drawing nearer – within 6-12 years or so, every flashback already in the comic will be (or have been) set during the current-now. :/
Because its not a bad thing to answer questions for your kid, especially if he has no idea that Sal is going to rob a store for the money? Why WOULDN’T you answer? My parents always answered me when i asked stuff like that.
I think when there’s a definite sense of Guilt involved, attaching ‘and this is how much you’ve cost them!’ is distinctly unhelpful. He may not be recognizing there’s guilt involved rather than trauma, but if there was even the slightest chance (especially with survivor’s guilt being a thing) I wouldn’t risk it. And once again I’m not entirely sure where he’s getting this number or information from. (Ambulance rides don’t appear to have a flat rate, and billing is probably at least HIPAA-adjacent. He should not have this information, and if he’s a doctor like my vague recollection vibes say he might be he should not be sharing that information with anyone. Hell, he’s not Marcie’s doctor so he shouldn’t have ACCESS to that information.)
He has a smart phone so it’s possible he googled how much an ambulance costs on average for that area. Lots of people are willing to complain about the outrageous costs of things online.
In theory the answer is “because you know your child’s personality and the fact she feels responsible”, which wouldn’t necessarily come up with this exact answer, but should at least be a factor.
It is likely that a real parent of a 12 year old in the real world wouldn’t, but it was necessary for the story Willis is telling. People tend to give these fictional characters agency – they have none, they are there to serve the narrative.
Ohhh, sweetie. And yeah, that promise….oh honey. It IS adorable she’s giving her allowance though – it is such a KID thing to do. <333 I'm more than a little nervous about what pushed her to the robbery specifically though – it's about a year off from this incident but more than likely, yeah, this is why.
Also, the American healthcare system is a horrifying dumpster fire, but I feel that's generally commented on here so I won't harp on it. Too much.
I’ve been skeptical of both the “Marcie was injured as a result of Sal’s fighting” theory and the “Sal robbed the store to get money for Marcie’s medical needs” theories. But not, of course, after this strip.
Ambulance bills are horrid. And I’ve only had them in the city. In the country, the ambulance companies are now owned by hedge funds and private equity trying to gouge even more. I’ve been in so much pain that I was throwing up, and I drove myself to the hospital because of outrageous ambulance fees. In the country, there’s just not that option.
Story time! One time I cut my arm open while cooking, the knife slipped and I bled out a lot and collapsed. My neighbor saw me through the window and called an ambulance, and I came to and did not want to let them int he door even through my delirious state because I had insurance but it didn’t cover me outside of my state, and I had recently moved across the country. My neighbor was kind enough to wrap my arm in some towels and took me to the hospital. I needed 9 stitches and it cost me over $3500.
I won’t tell the story of how it happened because it brings up memories and a deep, unaddressed anger that I do not need to relive right now, but I will say FUCK “out of state” ambulance bullshit. **flips double birds at every single fucking insurance company in existence**
… and this was me NOT getting into my deep anger by telling the actual story.
At some point you guys will wise up and nationalize healthcare like every other civilized country. You managed it with fire departments, you can do it with healthcare too.
That said, i LOVE this dramatization of the US healthcare system. It really drives the point home in a way “I don’t need no gov’mint healthcare. Ima ‘murkin!” type people can’t ignore. As do the comments here.
As a canadian, Sal’s experience here is so completely outside of my experience that this strip actually surprised me. The previous ones where she’s worrying and feeling guilty about her friend? Sure, i get that. This one where a little kid is worrying about money! Totally out of left field, did not see this coming.
Oh it’s easy for the “Ima ‘murkin!” types to ignore:
If her parents had been responsible, they would have gotten real jobs and she would have been covered by insurance, so it’s their fault. And they’re probably illegal so she shouldn’t have been here anyway and we real Americans shouldn’t have to pay for criminals coming here to sponge off of our hard work.
Unfortunately we won’t any time soon. In order for that to happen we’d first have to fix the issues with our political system so our politicians would even begin to feel comfortable trying to fix all the other issues such as our long broken health care system.
My fire department is a volunteer thing. I pay 20 dollars every year in dues.
My ambulance service is the same thing, although the dues are a little higher. However, my fire department doesn’t have a helicopter.
The problem with health care in the US is too little competition. Having to actually justify to customers why they should stay with you rather than join up with someone else is a remarkable disinfectant.
Nationalizing health care would just trade one set of problems for another.
A quick google finds that per student tuition in the US is over 12K, or in a classroom of 30 kids, around 360 thousand dollars a year. Most children go to socialized schools, and the parents of most of the rest still pay for it. America ranks pretty middle of the pack in math and science scores, despite three classrooms worth of kids costing more than a million dollars. Do you REALLY want socialized medicine, too?
You think universal public schooling is why our schools suck? Really? Are you unaware that effectively every country on the planet has public schooling and several of the top education systems in the world have systems structurally similar to ours?
I mean I would really like not to die of preventable conditions because I can’t afford healthcare? Our healthcare costs are so much more expensive than literally any other industrialized nation for honestly no reason other than corporate greed so I mean, yeah I’d like to be able to buy an epi pen for less than $600
Sympathy. I have family members in similar positions with the Epi-Pen thing. (Also insulin, which is its own brand of terrifying when they can’t afford it and so go untreated.)
Medical care should not be for-profit. Straight up. I could list all the reasons why that’s true, but I’ll settle for this: Medical care is a public service, and you should not be able to make obscene amounts of money for it and letting people die because they can’t afford it. I have preexisting conditions. Lawmakers are quietly trying to repeal the clause that guarantees I can get health insurance. I would literally die if I went uninsured because my GENERIC medications can cost a thousand dollars before insurance. Forgive me if I have no patience for a system that is so broken it kills people and I can see where it would kill me too without a second thought.
And for the record? I am safe. My family is lucky enough that I will not ever have to go off health insurance. But I look forward to future fights with said insurance company in the vein of ‘occupational therapy is rehabilitative, and your daughter never had these skills so you’re on your own!’* Like, ‘do you REALLY need the only hormonal birth control that covers premenstrual dyspeptic disorder?’, or maybe ‘are you sure your thyroid hasn’t started working again spontaneously?’ And even if I didn’t, that doesn’t preclude me from having empathy for the people who are fucking dying from this.
* Actually happened. Skills I didn’t have before but picked up from OT included fine motor skills such as the ability to open doors consistently.
Depends what you mean by “for profit”. Most of the major hospital around here are public or non-profit – no stockholders making money. But all the employees still need to be paid, the buildings, equipment, and supplies still need to be paid for – non-profit is far from the same thing as free. Same for individual medical practices. Yes, some individuals in the healthcare system make very large incomes, but probably fewer than you imagine – and arguably some (though not all) that do “deserve” them – at least as much as high earners in other fields do. It is certainly the case that things as they stand in health care in the US are problematic (and somewhat, if less so in other first world countries). But there are no obvious, simple, and practical answers or they would have been implemented. Just making things “not for profit” doesn’t actually solve anything.
Yeah, no. “Competition” is not the solution to the US’s screwed up system.
Treating health care as a commodity in a capitalistic market is a big part of why we’re in this mess.
The goal of a health care system should be to maximize people’s health by delivering appropriate support preventative care and treatment when necessary. It should judged on *quality.*
The “competition” you’re suggesting functions to maximize market share and thus profit by minimizing cost. The market cares only about profit.
A health care system can have as its goal quality or money, but not both.
The US system is effed up because it’s in the hands of insurance companies whose purpose is to maximize profit.
US education system is bad because it’s “socialized”? #1 No. #2 Are you suggesting children’s education should be proportionate to parents’ ability to pay?
Any market solution, to pretty much any problem, results in some people not being able to afford the product. Prices are set to maximize profit and that means some won’t be able to pay. That’s fine when it’s luxury goods. Acceptable when there’s a range of goods even for more basic necessities – we all need food, but we don’t all need filet mignon.
A complete failure when it comes to something as fundamental as medical care, for which there aren’t cheaper, but basically equivalent substitutes. We’ve long recognized this and aren’t actually willing to just accept that poor people will die from lack of easy available care, so we’ve tried various patches on the basic for profit system, but we’re well past the point where we can even pretend those suffice.
International comparisons show that “socialised” medicine costs half as much as what the USA gets and produces longer life expectancy, lower infant and maternal mortality rates, and comparable or better outcomes on specific conditions.
The excess of American healthcare costs over, for instance, Australian health care costs comes to 9% of the USA’s GDP, which is 20% of the wage share of GDP. If the USA could somehow manage to organise a health care system like Australia’s you could have longer lives, fewer infant deaths, fewer maternal deaths, and save enough money to raise take-home wages 10% while also cutting labour costs by 10%.
A year ago (almost exactly) I was staying in California with some friends, and had an attack of renal colic. One of my friends took me into the local emergency room, where they tested my urine to see whether the red colour was blood, did a blood test (to see if I was having a heart attack?), gave me a shot of some ineffective pain killer and prescriptions for ketorolac and oxycodone, which we went to a pharmacy to get filled.
Once I finished with a bill from the hospital and a separate bill from the doctor (WTF?) and paid for the drugs, it was damned near to A$1900.
And my insurance company said it was a pre-existing condition.
I can’t speak to anywhere but my local area, but… EMS ambulance service is free here if and only if the cause of the call is deemed through after the fact investigation to have been immediately life threatening, otherwise it’s about $5000*. EMS service where the issue isn’t immediately life threatening and they don’t take you to the hospital themselves, such as where a private ambulance is called in to do so, costs about $1000*. Private ambulance services range between $500* and $1500* depending on where they’re picking you up and where they’re taking you. Most health insurance will only cover the costs of any of that if it’s taking you from one medical facility to another or if you are admitted to the hospital as a result of the call and only if you have specific clauses in your policy that include ambulance rides on their own or as part of hospitalization costs.
*All these costs are outdated since I haven’t had to deal with any of this since my mom died a bit over a decade ago.
Wow. 🙁 From what I’ve heard, here in Canada you have to be blatantly abusing the system to get a fine. No way would anyone have to pay for honestly thinking they needed an ambulance and turning out to be wrong.
This results in some amusing 911 calls from people who got high and didn’t know anything about pot. (The famous one being made by a cop)
OTOH, I wouldn’t want to live in a rural area here; if the forest fires or snow shut down an important road then ambulances just can’t get through.
…oh nevermind, apparently that was an *american* cop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW5trBzVAzE and since he’s a cop, no fine, no jail time for posession, just forced to resign.
Down here in a small town in a small country in southamerica, calling the local ambulance (There is only one. Yes, it is that small) costs 20.000. Translate that to USD, it comes out to roughly 40 bucks. That is, of course, if it isn’t a REAL emergency and the equivalent of getting a taxi to the urgency room because of a stomachache.
BIG emergencies, starting with broken bones and above, get waived and paid by the state.
Hell, if the small town ER doesn’t have the appropiate equipment to help you OR if you need a surgery, the local ambulance will take you to the nearest hospital, about 50 km away. Np Charge.
My grandpa was epileptic and wore one of those bracelets letting people know NOT to call an ambulance if he started having a seizure. Of course, this was a while ago, before I was born, so I don’t know if the costs were as bad…probably still not good, and the whole thing would be inconvenient.
a few months ago, one of the contractors working in my house had an accident with a disk grinder (using a wood saw disc), and i had to take him to the nearest Posta Médica. The nurses tried to stitch him up, but there was severe damage to a vessel and tendon in his hand, so they gave us an ambulance and send us wailing to the nearest Hospital. In the emergency área of the hospital (that looks like a field hospital you see in WW2 movies) a couple of doctors managed to stitch the vessel an patch him up. Tetanic Vaccine was infused and off we went. Up to this point, after buying several dosses of antibiotics, saline IV drips, the stitches, needles and syringe, the Tetanic Vaccine and emergency treatment, it was less than 60 dollars. The ambulance ride was for free. We were lucky there were very few people in emergency at that time of the day.
Once upon a time I got an ambulance ride from the district hospital to the local airport, and then a flight in an air ambulance to Sydney (about 450 kilometres) and then a ride across the city in another ambulance. The bill for that was spectacular (except by US standards), but fortunately I had insurance.
Wow, this has explained Sal’s extremely high level of devotion to Marcie, Marcie’s acute displeasure at Sal’s tendency toward solving things with violence, AND the state of Marcie’s voice all in one fell swoop.
“No more fights.” That explains why Marcie was so mad at her after the fight with Ryan and the other DeSanto volunteer guys whose names I can’t remember.
Dorothy: Walky we are not fucked…wait no your right.
Joyce: We’re fudged.
Walky: Wow not even the coming destruction of all life in the universe can convince you to swear.
Suddenly the door behind them opens and Ophelia steps out.
Joyce: Ophelia?
Ophelia: What happened…where’s daddy?
Dorothy: What did…does he look like he look like?
Ophelia: I…I can’t remember.
Joyce: Do you remember anything?
Opehlia: I…I don’t know…I don’t want to know.
Opehlia’s knees sink into the snowy ground as the only signs of pain come from the light tremors her lips made quivering. Like she desperately wanted to cry, but had long since forgotten how.
Joyce kneeled down and hugged Ophelia tightly, the girl gasped a second as Joyce’s body pressed against hers and long hard sobs came from Joyce.
Joyce: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Walky: I’ll be back.
Walky walks off into the woods.
Dorothy: Walky! Don’t worry guys I’ll see what this is about.
Dorothy walked for about a minute before she came across Walky pounding his fists against a tree his knuckles bloody.
Yeah, the last comic is from a couple day ago, and part 21 is from months ago, I kinda forgot about it for a while. So let me abridge.
Joyce, Danny, Walky, Billie and Dorothy ended up in a Isekai. When they first got there they heard a mysterious voice telling them to head East, and gave them weapons. Danny got a Uke, Dorothy got a book of spells, Walky got a epee sword, Joyce got a knight broadswowrd. They came across a town where they ate Pizza, and Danny heard the story of Solis and Luna, to gods that represent day and night and got his Uke turned into a Jojo Stand. They go to the woods where they are attacked by a monster and Danny uses his ability to summon an Avatar of Luna to kill it. Sadly Dorothy is poisoned and they conscript the help of an old man named Cyrus to help save her, Walky retrieves a magical herb, brings her back to health, and they travel down to face a giant octopus in order to get past a giant ice wall. Defeating it, they come out in a melt pond and go to a fishing village where they meet Ophelia and her false father. A portal opens and Joyce’s hat from the Noir Joyce storyline falls in (that’s a whole other thing) and Danny goes to the mountains in hopes of meeting the actual Luna and meets her daughter the giantess Skadi. Eventually they talk to the moon goddess who tells them something much worse than her brother is at play. Danny returns with Skadi to the village, where Askel reveals himself to be behind everything. He leaves them and we come to now.
The karmic destinies of all thesse characters are becoming clear: because of Marcie’s condition and her being an immigrant, Sal started committing crimes to help her economically; this is followed by her traumatizing Amber, who stabbed her and became a clinical case; Amber’s problems were already in action previously, and that contributed to what happened with Mike, who has been using people to get some twisted sense of vigilantism and screw Ethan; Ethan’s obvious gayness started to be shown through his friendship with Mike (and his mom noticed) and this future rejection by his mom led to him being in the closet and contribute to Joyce’s sexual repression; Joyce’s relationship with Ethan led her to some self discovery about her bigotry and to accept her best friend’s homosexuality… This narrative would take long, but the logic is obvious: these guys are affecting the destinies of everyone around like some Madoka multiple timeline thing.
It’s my understanding that US law demands that emergency medical care be given for free until the patient’s life is no longer reasonably in danger. However, I understand that the politicians of Indiana have some… issues at the state government level with pretending to be human, so, yeah, it might be that they charge non-docs for what would be covered by Medicaid and the like for anyone else.
They also don’t need to provide any kind of physical therapy or cover any needed medications that might keep you from relapsing.
In theory, Marcie would be eligible for Medicaid, assuming her parents income is low enough to qualify – though there’s often a big gap between that level and where you can actually afford insurance or real medical expenses. Even if her parents were undocumented (and possibly even if she was). However, taking advantage of that requires registering and many undocumented immigrants trying to stay off the radar might not want to do so.
Sliding timeline weirdness: This flashback is currently in 2012 (6 years ago). The ACA hadn’t gone into effect. Indiana hadn’t approved Medicare expansion (not til 2015). It’s not clear how much either of those would have changed her situation anyway. More likely to qualify for Medicaid, but there was still the perceived risk of doing so if undocumented.
What chem geek said. Additionally, Medicaid is not available to all people and very likely doesn’t cover ambulances either.$2k for an ambulence ride is pretty accurate and even most insurance plans don’t cover 100% of them. I’ve broken my ankle three separate times and never taken an ambulance to the ER because of the cost. With insurance, those broken ankles, ER checkups, surgeries, and after care cost me between $2k-$6k. And that was WITH insurance.
Medicaid should cover ambulances – emergency or otherwise medically necessary. You might have to pay a co-pay or some percentage, I don’t know the details.
Medicaid does cover ambulances if they’re licensed by the state *and* a doctor writes a note to the insurance that the ride was necessary (if the necessity isn’t sufficiently obvious to the government)
okay wait wait wait
are we going down this road that Sal tried to rob a place to pay for Marcie’s tragedy?
Also I never considered Marcie to be mute because of injuries, this is horrible
damn you willis
This terrifying country… Yesterday a grown family member wanted me to look at something that might be an infection before they spent money for prompt care. They lifted their shirt and I beheld a spreading 12 inch staph infection (my best guess, later confirmed). Trying to look calm because infections like that kill young people all the time. They wouldn’t let me pay for the doctor visit but the delay would not have happened if we had socialized medicine.
This mention of medical costs brings to mind my incident 17 years ago. Initial hospital visit was 13 days and roughly $200K, first surgery after was about $50K, and there were still 2 more surgeries after that, but they stopped sending bills after that surgery. Mind this was 2001-2, so I would be more screwed today.
The government in Appalachia actively wants to kill the poor people. It’s why they have worked to kill ObamaCare, ignored the opioid crisis (making it worse), and generally have restricted all financial aid to suffering areas. 3000 to 5000 people die of overdoses every year and 200,000 people go hungry with their kids not eating unless fed by the church outreach program.
What’s the generally held opinion of the UK’s health system in America? Every story i hear about America’s health system sounds insane on so many levels that it just seems like it would be better to switch over to what the UK is doing.
The loudest and currently most influential opinion here in ‘Merica of the UK health system is that it’s godless socialism and therefore bad and anyone who mentions it with less than beetle-browed, slack-jawed, fire-spitting hatred is a beta cuck snowflake. But they know nothing about how it works.
I’d say, optimistically, that while that opinion certainly is the loudest and most influential, it’s not the most widely-held. I’d like to say it’s more of a “we definitely need to fix this, and the British system is one of many we might try to emulate,” but realistically, the most common American thought on the subject would be “wait, other countries do this differently?”
And if they’ve heard anything, they’ll often talk of long wait times and rationing of health care.
It is changing though. For all its flaws Obamacare made a sea change in American attitudes towards health care. During the fight to pass it, it was all “death panels” and “government takeover”. During the recent Republican attempts to repeal it, there was much talk of how it wasn’t good enough, but there was overwhelming resistance to just getting rid of it. Even the GOP has to pretend it’s failing (and tweak rules to make it do so), rather than just bash it for being socialist. We’ve gotten used to government being involved. Now we’ll just complain about them not doing it well and demand better.
And if they’ve heard anything, they’ll often talk of long wait times and rationing of health care.
I will never understand how the concept of ‘triage’ is so foreign to the people who talk about this…Do US hospitals not actually do it? Do they just rush people in on a first-come-first-served basis, no matter the severity of the injury/illness?
(99.9% of the time, if you wait a long time, it’s a good thing…you’re not that sick. The other .1% of the time is about equally split between ‘the triage nurse fucked up’ and ‘this particular clinic/hospital just got slammed with a bunch of emergency cases’.)
Generally, they’re thinking of long wait times for non-emergency procedures.
As in “I can’t get this scheduled for six months?”, rather than “I’ve been sitting in the Emergency Room for hours”.
Often things that are more profitable and thus more prioritized in the US. And things that poor/uninsured people put off because they can’t afford them, thus easing demand on the system.
You can wait.
But since American rations healthcare by money, here you don’t have to as often. Triage is something we’re used to in emergency rooms and the like.
I’m just trying to explain that the idea doesn’t have anything to do with “triage nurses” or “hospitals getting slammed with emergency cases”. I’m not defending it as a major advantage of the American way. I don’t even have any idea if there’s any truth to the wait times thing. It’s just the popular idea and you didn’t seem to understand what I meant.
I understood perfectly well what you said. I also understand the argument being discussed perfectly well. I have seen enough Americans lying about the Canadian system to know that the idea that the talk of wait times is not not about lifesaving procedures and emergency services (you know, the stuff that’s triaged) is entirely nonsense.
If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be said in the same breath as death panels.
It is 100% to convince the proles that their lives are in danger if actual poor people are actually allowed to get medical care.
That’s a wildly optimistic view of how informed the average US citizen is. If asked of the UK’s National Health System, most would probably say, “Other countries have health systems? Oh, well, it most be a bunch of witch doctors or something anyway…”
And yes, that assumption would apply to any other country. Canada, the UK, France, Germany, it doesn’t matter; everyone else is at least a century behind the US, gotta be right, ‘cos it’s ‘Murica</b! Well, maybe not Japan, they make all that crazy e-lek-tronic stuff and have anime and weird sex stuff and all that, but they don't have anything like, you know, real medicine like in the U.S. of fucking A.
Nothing like reading about US healthcare to make me realise how lucky we are to have the NHS.
Last year, I was severely anemic out of nowhere. I had a gastroscopy, colonoscopy, capsule endoscopy, CT Scan, and about a million blood tests, and I didn’t pay a penny above what I normally pay in national insurance. That ends up being cheaper anyway, since hospitals aren’t gouging the price and there’s no pointless insurance company taking a chunk for their shareholders. Plus, no paperwork at all (I had to sign a consent form for the endoscopies, but that was it).
I can only assume if I was American I’d have either died due to not wanting to see a doctor over a bit of light-headedness, or would now be bankrupt and homeless.
I’m sorry, I can’t even think of the plot implications of today’s strip. My brain’s too busy trying to process that insanely preposterous ambulance bill (after confirming from everybody’s comments that it’s freaking true and not Sal being a kid and getting numbers wrong)
My guess is that Marcie got hurt trying to pull Sal off of fuckin’ Leland. Possibly by Sal herself, as she was flailing around. Even if it had been fuckin’ Leland who hit her or caused her to get hurt some other way – another fall, perhaps? – the fact that it happened because of Sal starting the fight would be enough to make her feel guilty.
However, it is also possible that Marcie was not hurt during the fight when Sal jumped fuckin’ Leland at all, but a bit later… possibly even a day or two later. But if so, why is Sal apologizing for fighting? Maybe because fuckin’ Leland made a point of it being retaliation against Sal, but did so in a way that put the blame on Sal as well.
Possibly a fight with Leland, but definitely not the one that started in the last flashback – they’re significantly older, Sal’s had her hair murdered, etc.
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“I’m sure banks don’t need ALL that money”
…it was Leland, wasn’t it
fucking leland and his overwhelming charisma
Yeah… bank robbery is a bit out of Sal’s reach.
Now a convenient store currently occupied by a tall, jewish closeted transformers nerd, and an ultra-shy untra-invert girl about to have a psychotic break? Yeah, that’s closer to the scope of Sal’s imagination. 😛
Oh jeez, she didn’t even rob it to get money for a surgery, she was just trying to pay for the friggin’ *ambulance ride*
Such is the state of “health care” in the US for the uninsured, and sometimes for the insured as well.
More often than not for the insured, even. A lot of insurance agencies like to claim nearly everything as not a “bona fide medical emergency”, stuff like kidney stones or heart palpitations that might freak people out and get them to call an ambulance but aren’t ultimately life-threatening.
Privatized insurance can go suck my wangalang.
Here in Australia with supposedly universal health care, there’s no dental coverage & depending on the state you have to buy ambulance insurance too. I’m in a lucky state that covers ambulances.
I had an ambulance ride the week before last that would have cost A$416 if I were not insured. On the other hand, in states where ambulances are free enough people abuse them (e.g. call an ambulance to get a ride to the hospital for a routine appointment) to be an expensive nuisance. Perhaps there is some sensible middle ground, such as ambulances costing twice as much as a taxi.
In my country, ambulance is free if it was needed. If not, you pay for it. The medical personnel decides whether calling the ambulance was the right thing to do, not the insurer.
Trying to use the ambulance as a taxi actually costs you a fine, in addition to the ambulance costs.
Very sensible.
Wow, that takes a special kind of complete disregard for the health and safety of others.
And here I am in Canada where ambulance rides are not covered and depending on the province cost between a hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars. >< And if you don't pay they send you a few polite reminders and then give up.
Two thousand dollars to get your badly-injured kid to the hospital in in a timely manner while undergoing emergency medical care is fucking inhuman.
The large charges one sees in the US are rare; searching over this issue produces the same three or four incidents reported over and over. Most of the time, the charges are waived (i.e., absorbed into what others pay).
I’m curious if you have any data supporting that?
I know someone personally who had to pay $2k for an ambulance ride after the fact when she was having an extreme asthma attack due to inhaling mold, that couldn’t be treated with her inhaler alone. The fees were not waived. I know my sample size for data is just limited to people I know, but from other folks I’ve talked to, her experience seems to be the norm.
I’ve personally been charged stupid amounts of money for a necessary ambulance ride on a couple occasions.
I know it is too late now but in case anyone else reads this: I was an EMT for a private ambulance company in America and I know we did not waive fees… that’s just not the case. Public ambulance services (fire departments) may waive fees—though I doubt it—but you have no control over public vs private… it just depends on what contracts your municipalities have made as well as population density. Volunteer ambulance services may have more leeway to waive but they are the absolute minority of ambulance services, only covering very rural (read: low population) areas.
Well statistics say that the percentage of active complaints to incidents is similar to that of advertising flyers – about 2-4%.
Mind you if one hits the news and you have never ever heard of similar happening through the grapevine it is pretty sure it is a one off – if not then there is a problem.
When I dislocated my knee back in Alberta the ambulance ride was $400. Don’t get hurt in Alberta.
Here in Ontario, it’s either $45 or $250, depending on whether it’s considered necessary or not. (And there are a bunch of situations where it’s covered.) (The handful of times I’ve taken one it’s been the $45.)
Well Ontario is where I am now, but the difference is here I’m getting screwed on the big stuff instead of the smaller stuff…
I think I prefer the ambulance bill to round peg I’ve been trying to square off… ><
Anyway, story for another time and place, haha
Really? I nearly had a seizure when I was 14 and I don’t recall anything being said about a bill for the ambulance. I guess that would have been considered necessary? My mom stopped it just before I started seizing and we didn’t know what it was.
It’s the luck of the draw, at least in some towns in the US… If
you’re lucky enough that the local First Aid Squad is available
and picks you up, the cost will be between free and relatively
inexpensive; if, however the First Aid Squad ambulances are all
busy, you are dispatched a private (For profit) ambulance, and
it costs thousands of dollars, more if they use any of their supplies.
Ambulance insurance in Victoria, Aus, at least is only 40 dollars per year for a single person. If you have a low income health care card you get ambulance insurance covered through that. It’s not all that bad (especially compared to the mess in the USA) but I can’t wait until teeth are considered part of the rest of the body for sure.
It will be a glorious day.
My ambulance cover in NSW costs A$47 per year.
My grandmother insists on an ambulance ride whenever she self-diagnoses that she needs to go to the hospital. Apparently they aren’t allowed to send her home the same day if she arrives on a loudmobile rather than us driving her in.
in her defense, the most recent time, she had cracked a rib coughing. Also, while the police still show up, they have figured out we’re doing as she wishes, and are not engaged in elder abuse, even if there have been three calls in two weeks.
They are genuinely helpful.
If you live in a sane European country with free (but more basic) healthcare and have some chronic problems. It saves a lot of money, as the national healthcare provides only for the bare minimum of tests, and the waiting times are always long. If you have additional, private healthcare, you are generally able to find better doctors with more free schedules, while you’re still able to rely on the national healthcare system when the private company decides to be an ass. That’s what capitalism does when you are no longer constrained by literally NEEDING the product in order to live. It provides for a better product.
I live in Brazil, a third world country, and we never have to pay for ambulance (it’s a public emergency system like police or firefighters) and the public healthcare system is sometimes even better than the private hospitals o.o Well, the wait times are suuper long and there’s a general lack of … everything… in smaller, more remote towns, but in bigger cities it’s great, and almost everyone believes the government has a responsability of proving free, quality healthcare for the population.
I find it baffling that in richer countries like the US that belief is not there.
The US is an anomaly there, and is currently backsliding into being a developing nation due to such. Most 1st world countries have free universal healthcare.
Really interesting to learn more about Brazil! Thanks for that info. 🙂
Don’t say free. It convinces supporters of the American system that you don’t know what taxes are. :p
I find it odd that every time somebody takes an ambulance ride they have to pay for 1/10th the cost of the truck they took a ride in. If you go to the hospital 10 times do they give you the ambulance?
Ambulances cost ~$150,000 unequipped, and $250,000 fully equipped.
Cool, just gotta go 115 more times to get my free ambulance!
It really depends on the station. My volunteer company is one of the last two in our state that doesn’t charge for ambulance rides. We survive entirely on grants and donations (the latter far more than the former).
But yeah, apparatus are expensive to build, outfit, and maintain; they aren’t mass-produced in the traditional sense: they have to be built from the chassis up, which tends to take about a year. Ambos cost around a quarter million; engines can run between a half and a full mil; ladders and quints can reach one-and-a-half.
The sheer amount of cash required to run a respectable company is mind-boggling.
Plus, you’re paying for a couple of skilled professionals, who might not have done anything for you, but have to be ready to handle the next guy, who might be bleeding out from a gunshot wound or have spinal trauma or damn near anything. That’s what you’re paying for.
It’s essentially the same reason emergency room care is crazy expensive compared to other kinds of medical care, even if you wind up having the same things done.
If all you need is the ride, call a taxi.
Just for perspective: In Ontario, Canada it’s only $45 ($35 US). In Yukon it’s free.
Yeah, here in Nova Scotia, Canada it’s ridiculously expensive. At $150.
Depends if you are in province or not. Few years back, I had to live on raman and food bank donations for a couple months when an out of province severe asthma attack resulted ina $700 bill.
I did the math and at that rate at even the highest priced rate in Canada at that cost you cold get an ambulance ride from Washington DC to a hospital outside of Chicago. In Ontario that ride would have cost $45 and the surgery would have been free.
Jeez, I keep forgetting how absurd the US healthcare system is.
gonna be a lotta bake sales
oh no sal my heart
Welp, confirmation for robbery motive!
That promise brings some new light to Marcie’s anger at Sal, for getting in a fight on her watch…
oh no you’re right
It does make that make a lot more sense, yeah.
Yeah, stalking or no, rapist or no, that is not the sort of promise you break right in front of someone at their job like that.
(If Marcie knew the ‘no I’m being stalked and have been followed off campus’ thing, she would probably still not say ‘fight the mysterious stalker’ but at the very least that’s something the rent-a-cops can act as separation of the two for.)
Marcie knew she was being stalked – she was there the first time, when AG was stalking her off campus. And the rent a cops (aside from marcie) did jack all.
Regardless, though, yeah. Marcie was NEVER going to not be pissed off at this.
the rent-a-cops didn’t have much of a chance; the comic where they showed up is the one where amazi-girl spotted not-ryan and stopped trying to fight sal. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/alert/
Where upon they stood around and did nothing because ‘Iunno, it’s Amazi-Girl’, so I’m not convinced they’d have done much anyways.
ah, yes. uselessness confirmed, when sal and amazi-girl team up to fight the bros: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/paid-3/
Stupid useless rent-a-cops. Can’t you at least be meat shields?
Certainly a bad choice of Inevitable Throwdown Venue on Sal’s part. She stops having good ways to deal with it once ‘seeking authorities’ is out (I don’t think AG would have stopped for anything short of what she did and things probably would have escalated further, that period of time was SCARY,) and even if Sal trusted authorities she didn’t have a whole ton of evidence after the initial parking lot fight. (Though I bet if she had said ‘the campus vigilante appears to be stalking me’ a lot of authorities would have been Interested. Moot point because Sal would never, but there we go.) So, throwdown. But it’s harmful to Marcie two ways over when it’s right in front of her, at her work.
Rent-a-cops aren’t paid enough to be meat shields.
Or to throw down with super-heroes.
They definitely are not, and if they’d said ‘Dude, you don’t pay me anywhere NEAR enough to do this’ or ‘Don’t get involved, we called the police’ I’d respect that a lot more than just saying ‘I’unno, Amazi-Girl’.
Marcie got fired over the fight with Ryan and his bros. Sadly she didn’t see that Sal only got involved because they were about to kick the shit out of Amazi-Girl :C
well, sal was trying to fight amazi-girl before that, despite marcie trying to stop her. that part was pretty shitty.
No, you have that backwards. Amazi-Girl was trying to fight Sal. Sal was rightly pissed off about being stalked and harassed, but she wasn’t the one who started that shit
If I remember correctly, Sal grabbed Amazi-Girls arm and pulled her out of hiding (above a door or something?)
On the stairway above her, IIRC. Where she was crouched, stalking Sal. Given her previous attack and that she’d been stalking her for awhile, Sal was justified, but she did start the fight, such as it was.
After that first move though, they were both basically posturing, trying to get the other to attack to justify the fight they wanted.
Sal wanted AG to get whatever she was going to do over with. She didn’t want a fight specifically. She was READY to fight if that’s where things were headed, but she WANTED answers and for AG to fuck off.
Yeahup.
whoever theorized that she robbed the store to get money for the surgery, looks like you were right.
Not even surgery. A friggin’ ambulance RIDE.
What do they do if you simply can’t afford the payment, last time I checked debtors prison was no longer a thing.
Wage garnishment, for one thing, and holds on their bank accounts. Repossession and sale of things to pay the debt. All that assuming they can deal with the invasive questions and such. (Assuming for a moment at least one member of the Diaz family is undocumented, a distinct LACK of known pay sources or bank account would be one of those things a debt collector would find and probably be very suspicious of.) Terrifying phone calls and general ‘We can and will make your life a living hell.’
you get collectors harassing you for Years and the bills ruin your credit so it’s extremely difficult to get loans or apartments, and if you can you get exorbitant rates on them
Bankruptcy.
In the end, the cost is passed along to other customers of the health care system in the guise of higher medical costs and higher insurance premiums.
To my knowledge, it can be less of an issue when you or your family snuck in (to the USA) because you are renting, your job(s) pay cash, and you are using an assumed name anyway.
This did not include my mom years ago; we did lose our house.
Well these days, Marcie’s folks would likely be met at the hospital by ICE and deported, maybe along with Marcie.
She’s lucky this is a flashback.
To say nothing of “luck” when the timeline advances to the point where the flashback is now flashbacking to 2017/2018…right now it’s just flashbacking to 2012-ish.
Hopefully we can just avoid having any flashbacks to this time.
Unless someone develops a working Time Stop spell with a permanent duration, that moment is inexorably drawing nearer – within 6-12 years or so, every flashback already in the comic will be (or have been) set during the current-now. :/
Well, yeah, but only retroactively.
As long as we don’t have any flashbacks to this time, while they’re taking place, I’ll be okay.
I believe Willis has Word of God’ed that Trump doesn’t exist in the Dumbiverse. So he can’t be president.
I’m 99% sure he was kidding, but let me pretend.
In dsome places they can sue, get a cpurt order, whereupon the court may jail you for contempt. ACLU fights de facto debtor’s prisons all the time.
Check again.
Not debtor’s prison as such, but people are regularly imprisoned for not being able to pay various court fees and the like.
Well, this is an interesting wrinkle.
well. that puts a new spin on the whole “insisting on fighting amazi-girl” incident. :/
ooh, and this one takes on new meaning too: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/cocked/
Charles why would you tell Sal exactly HOW much the ambulance costs? If you’d just said ‘oh, a large amount’ that wouldn’t have given her a goal.
Charles is really, really bad at interacting with his daughter, it seems.
Like this isn’t just ‘foot in mouth’, he managed to swallow up to his knee here.
Probably because Sal specifically asked him exactly how much did it cost.
In that case he probably should have said that she shouldn’t worry about it, though.
Because its not a bad thing to answer questions for your kid, especially if he has no idea that Sal is going to rob a store for the money? Why WOULDN’T you answer? My parents always answered me when i asked stuff like that.
I think when there’s a definite sense of Guilt involved, attaching ‘and this is how much you’ve cost them!’ is distinctly unhelpful. He may not be recognizing there’s guilt involved rather than trauma, but if there was even the slightest chance (especially with survivor’s guilt being a thing) I wouldn’t risk it. And once again I’m not entirely sure where he’s getting this number or information from. (Ambulance rides don’t appear to have a flat rate, and billing is probably at least HIPAA-adjacent. He should not have this information, and if he’s a doctor like my vague recollection vibes say he might be he should not be sharing that information with anyone. Hell, he’s not Marcie’s doctor so he shouldn’t have ACCESS to that information.)
He has a smart phone so it’s possible he googled how much an ambulance costs on average for that area. Lots of people are willing to complain about the outrageous costs of things online.
In theory the answer is “because you know your child’s personality and the fact she feels responsible”, which wouldn’t necessarily come up with this exact answer, but should at least be a factor.
It is likely that a real parent of a 12 year old in the real world wouldn’t, but it was necessary for the story Willis is telling. People tend to give these fictional characters agency – they have none, they are there to serve the narrative.
Road to Hell: Speed Limit unenforced. Next stop, karmic and physical pain, followed by limitless regret and internal torment.
*plays “Hellacious Acres” from the A Star Is Born (1975) soundtrack on the hacked Muzak*
Really? With your other comment it seems like any version of “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC would be more appropriate.
AC/DC is a band that “had me and lost me”. “Hellacious Acres” is a satiric riff on both Elton John and Alice Cooper, written by Paul Williams.
Ohhh, sweetie. And yeah, that promise….oh honey. It IS adorable she’s giving her allowance though – it is such a KID thing to do. <333 I'm more than a little nervous about what pushed her to the robbery specifically though – it's about a year off from this incident but more than likely, yeah, this is why.
Also, the American healthcare system is a horrifying dumpster fire, but I feel that's generally commented on here so I won't harp on it. Too much.
…USAIANS WHY????!
OUR GOVERNMENT LITERALLY HATES US AND IT’S AWFUL. D:
SERIOUSLY, THIS WHOLE FLASHBACK SEQUENCE THUS FAR HAS RESULTED IN HORRIFIED CANADIAN SCREECHING.
Out of curiosity, how does one screech in Canadian?
You kiss a cod. Then you drink. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/screech/
You don’t have to be Canadian to be Screeched in.
End it with “, eh”.
You gotta gargle maple syrup first, to condition your throat.
The regular way, but then they say ‘Sorry aboot that, eh?’
Be Canadian and screech.
koo koo koo cuh koo KOO KOOOOO!
Yeah, like that.
b/c “rugged individuality”
like, what’s the point of society, everyone for themselves, say us Americans -_-
But no anarchy! We gotta have a strong government to protect the banks!!
my feels. ;-;
I’ve been skeptical of both the “Marcie was injured as a result of Sal’s fighting” theory and the “Sal robbed the store to get money for Marcie’s medical needs” theories. But not, of course, after this strip.
Is this merely a long-planned confirmation of the theories, or a “Hey, that sounds neat” response to them?
The dramallama intensifies
Told you so.
Ambulance bills are horrid. And I’ve only had them in the city. In the country, the ambulance companies are now owned by hedge funds and private equity trying to gouge even more. I’ve been in so much pain that I was throwing up, and I drove myself to the hospital because of outrageous ambulance fees. In the country, there’s just not that option.
I feel this. My nearest hospital is useless beyond saline and life flight so it’s best to drive 2 hours to avoid the cost [upside down face emoji]
Story time! One time I cut my arm open while cooking, the knife slipped and I bled out a lot and collapsed. My neighbor saw me through the window and called an ambulance, and I came to and did not want to let them int he door even through my delirious state because I had insurance but it didn’t cover me outside of my state, and I had recently moved across the country. My neighbor was kind enough to wrap my arm in some towels and took me to the hospital. I needed 9 stitches and it cost me over $3500.
I won’t tell the story of how it happened because it brings up memories and a deep, unaddressed anger that I do not need to relive right now, but I will say FUCK “out of state” ambulance bullshit. **flips double birds at every single fucking insurance company in existence**
… and this was me NOT getting into my deep anger by telling the actual story.
At some point you guys will wise up and nationalize healthcare like every other civilized country. You managed it with fire departments, you can do it with healthcare too.
That said, i LOVE this dramatization of the US healthcare system. It really drives the point home in a way “I don’t need no gov’mint healthcare. Ima ‘murkin!” type people can’t ignore. As do the comments here.
As a canadian, Sal’s experience here is so completely outside of my experience that this strip actually surprised me. The previous ones where she’s worrying and feeling guilty about her friend? Sure, i get that. This one where a little kid is worrying about money! Totally out of left field, did not see this coming.
Oh it’s easy for the “Ima ‘murkin!” types to ignore:
If her parents had been responsible, they would have gotten real jobs and she would have been covered by insurance, so it’s their fault. And they’re probably illegal so she shouldn’t have been here anyway and we real Americans shouldn’t have to pay for criminals coming here to sponge off of our hard work.
Unfortunately we won’t any time soon. In order for that to happen we’d first have to fix the issues with our political system so our politicians would even begin to feel comfortable trying to fix all the other issues such as our long broken health care system.
Yeah I think the municipal governments are trying to fuck up fire departments in some areas too.
*Punts shitty unfettered capitalism and objectivism into the sun*
My fire department is a volunteer thing. I pay 20 dollars every year in dues.
My ambulance service is the same thing, although the dues are a little higher. However, my fire department doesn’t have a helicopter.
The problem with health care in the US is too little competition. Having to actually justify to customers why they should stay with you rather than join up with someone else is a remarkable disinfectant.
Nationalizing health care would just trade one set of problems for another.
A quick google finds that per student tuition in the US is over 12K, or in a classroom of 30 kids, around 360 thousand dollars a year. Most children go to socialized schools, and the parents of most of the rest still pay for it. America ranks pretty middle of the pack in math and science scores, despite three classrooms worth of kids costing more than a million dollars. Do you REALLY want socialized medicine, too?
You think universal public schooling is why our schools suck? Really? Are you unaware that effectively every country on the planet has public schooling and several of the top education systems in the world have systems structurally similar to ours?
I mean I would really like not to die of preventable conditions because I can’t afford healthcare? Our healthcare costs are so much more expensive than literally any other industrialized nation for honestly no reason other than corporate greed so I mean, yeah I’d like to be able to buy an epi pen for less than $600
Sympathy. I have family members in similar positions with the Epi-Pen thing. (Also insulin, which is its own brand of terrifying when they can’t afford it and so go untreated.)
Medical care should not be for-profit. Straight up. I could list all the reasons why that’s true, but I’ll settle for this: Medical care is a public service, and you should not be able to make obscene amounts of money for it and letting people die because they can’t afford it. I have preexisting conditions. Lawmakers are quietly trying to repeal the clause that guarantees I can get health insurance. I would literally die if I went uninsured because my GENERIC medications can cost a thousand dollars before insurance. Forgive me if I have no patience for a system that is so broken it kills people and I can see where it would kill me too without a second thought.
And for the record? I am safe. My family is lucky enough that I will not ever have to go off health insurance. But I look forward to future fights with said insurance company in the vein of ‘occupational therapy is rehabilitative, and your daughter never had these skills so you’re on your own!’* Like, ‘do you REALLY need the only hormonal birth control that covers premenstrual dyspeptic disorder?’, or maybe ‘are you sure your thyroid hasn’t started working again spontaneously?’ And even if I didn’t, that doesn’t preclude me from having empathy for the people who are fucking dying from this.
* Actually happened. Skills I didn’t have before but picked up from OT included fine motor skills such as the ability to open doors consistently.
* Dysphoric disorder. Thank you autocorrect.
Depends what you mean by “for profit”. Most of the major hospital around here are public or non-profit – no stockholders making money. But all the employees still need to be paid, the buildings, equipment, and supplies still need to be paid for – non-profit is far from the same thing as free. Same for individual medical practices. Yes, some individuals in the healthcare system make very large incomes, but probably fewer than you imagine – and arguably some (though not all) that do “deserve” them – at least as much as high earners in other fields do. It is certainly the case that things as they stand in health care in the US are problematic (and somewhat, if less so in other first world countries). But there are no obvious, simple, and practical answers or they would have been implemented. Just making things “not for profit” doesn’t actually solve anything.
Yeah, no. “Competition” is not the solution to the US’s screwed up system.
Treating health care as a commodity in a capitalistic market is a big part of why we’re in this mess.
The goal of a health care system should be to maximize people’s health by delivering appropriate support preventative care and treatment when necessary. It should judged on *quality.*
The “competition” you’re suggesting functions to maximize market share and thus profit by minimizing cost. The market cares only about profit.
A health care system can have as its goal quality or money, but not both.
The US system is effed up because it’s in the hands of insurance companies whose purpose is to maximize profit.
US education system is bad because it’s “socialized”? #1 No. #2 Are you suggesting children’s education should be proportionate to parents’ ability to pay?
Any market solution, to pretty much any problem, results in some people not being able to afford the product. Prices are set to maximize profit and that means some won’t be able to pay. That’s fine when it’s luxury goods. Acceptable when there’s a range of goods even for more basic necessities – we all need food, but we don’t all need filet mignon.
A complete failure when it comes to something as fundamental as medical care, for which there aren’t cheaper, but basically equivalent substitutes. We’ve long recognized this and aren’t actually willing to just accept that poor people will die from lack of easy available care, so we’ve tried various patches on the basic for profit system, but we’re well past the point where we can even pretend those suffice.
International comparisons show that “socialised” medicine costs half as much as what the USA gets and produces longer life expectancy, lower infant and maternal mortality rates, and comparable or better outcomes on specific conditions.
The excess of American healthcare costs over, for instance, Australian health care costs comes to 9% of the USA’s GDP, which is 20% of the wage share of GDP. If the USA could somehow manage to organise a health care system like Australia’s you could have longer lives, fewer infant deaths, fewer maternal deaths, and save enough money to raise take-home wages 10% while also cutting labour costs by 10%.
The USA has nationalized health care. It’s called the Veterans Administration.
A year ago (almost exactly) I was staying in California with some friends, and had an attack of renal colic. One of my friends took me into the local emergency room, where they tested my urine to see whether the red colour was blood, did a blood test (to see if I was having a heart attack?), gave me a shot of some ineffective pain killer and prescriptions for ketorolac and oxycodone, which we went to a pharmacy to get filled.
Once I finished with a bill from the hospital and a separate bill from the doctor (WTF?) and paid for the drugs, it was damned near to A$1900.
And my insurance company said it was a pre-existing condition.
Fucking useless travel insurance.
Also I’m so sorry that happened, I hope that the hospital was at least relatively close, that’s so awful. 🙁
I can’t speak to anywhere but my local area, but… EMS ambulance service is free here if and only if the cause of the call is deemed through after the fact investigation to have been immediately life threatening, otherwise it’s about $5000*. EMS service where the issue isn’t immediately life threatening and they don’t take you to the hospital themselves, such as where a private ambulance is called in to do so, costs about $1000*. Private ambulance services range between $500* and $1500* depending on where they’re picking you up and where they’re taking you. Most health insurance will only cover the costs of any of that if it’s taking you from one medical facility to another or if you are admitted to the hospital as a result of the call and only if you have specific clauses in your policy that include ambulance rides on their own or as part of hospitalization costs.
*All these costs are outdated since I haven’t had to deal with any of this since my mom died a bit over a decade ago.
Wow. 🙁 From what I’ve heard, here in Canada you have to be blatantly abusing the system to get a fine. No way would anyone have to pay for honestly thinking they needed an ambulance and turning out to be wrong.
This results in some amusing 911 calls from people who got high and didn’t know anything about pot. (The famous one being made by a cop)
OTOH, I wouldn’t want to live in a rural area here; if the forest fires or snow shut down an important road then ambulances just can’t get through.
…oh nevermind, apparently that was an *american* cop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW5trBzVAzE and since he’s a cop, no fine, no jail time for posession, just forced to resign.
Down here in a small town in a small country in southamerica, calling the local ambulance (There is only one. Yes, it is that small) costs 20.000. Translate that to USD, it comes out to roughly 40 bucks. That is, of course, if it isn’t a REAL emergency and the equivalent of getting a taxi to the urgency room because of a stomachache.
BIG emergencies, starting with broken bones and above, get waived and paid by the state.
Hell, if the small town ER doesn’t have the appropiate equipment to help you OR if you need a surgery, the local ambulance will take you to the nearest hospital, about 50 km away. Np Charge.
My grandpa was epileptic and wore one of those bracelets letting people know NOT to call an ambulance if he started having a seizure. Of course, this was a while ago, before I was born, so I don’t know if the costs were as bad…probably still not good, and the whole thing would be inconvenient.
Nope, still hear about epileptics having that same policy as of a couple years ago. Sadly.
Yeah? I think you misread my comment because I don’t know what you’re saying “Nope” to.
Ah, misread ‘costs were as bad’ as ‘if they’re still as bad now’ as opposed to ‘were as bad then’.
a few months ago, one of the contractors working in my house had an accident with a disk grinder (using a wood saw disc), and i had to take him to the nearest Posta Médica. The nurses tried to stitch him up, but there was severe damage to a vessel and tendon in his hand, so they gave us an ambulance and send us wailing to the nearest Hospital. In the emergency área of the hospital (that looks like a field hospital you see in WW2 movies) a couple of doctors managed to stitch the vessel an patch him up. Tetanic Vaccine was infused and off we went. Up to this point, after buying several dosses of antibiotics, saline IV drips, the stitches, needles and syringe, the Tetanic Vaccine and emergency treatment, it was less than 60 dollars. The ambulance ride was for free. We were lucky there were very few people in emergency at that time of the day.
Once upon a time I got an ambulance ride from the district hospital to the local airport, and then a flight in an air ambulance to Sydney (about 450 kilometres) and then a ride across the city in another ambulance. The bill for that was spectacular (except by US standards), but fortunately I had insurance.
*Hugs Swedish health care system tightly*
Okay, I can see where this is going, but I hope she tried a few other options first.
Wow, this has explained Sal’s extremely high level of devotion to Marcie, Marcie’s acute displeasure at Sal’s tendency toward solving things with violence, AND the state of Marcie’s voice all in one fell swoop.
… And also the small matter of the robbery.
Smol matter
But it doesn’t explain why Marcie has two arms now, when she apparently had just one after the accident!
What?
Drive an ambulance, Sal.
‘Murica.
Marcie seems to be trying to talk, I wonder if she’s listening to Sal
noooooooooooooooooooooo *low level scream*
“No more fights.” That explains why Marcie was so mad at her after the fight with Ryan and the other DeSanto volunteer guys whose names I can’t remember.
“Go away. No, stay with me. My voice! Go away. Stay…”
Two thousand dollars will buy a lot of baked goods.
400 boxes of girl scout cookies
🙁
hey has the latest dungeons and dumbing shown up for anyone? I posted it, but it isn’t showing for me.
what’s that?
The fanfic he posts. And no, I don’t see it.
I think I have it up now. I had to cut it, I think I may have managed to go over the sites limits for a comment.
Dungeons and Dumbing part 23
Billie: Well shit, what now?
Walky: Were fucked. We are so fucked!
Dorothy: Walky we are not fucked…wait no your right.
Joyce: We’re fudged.
Walky: Wow not even the coming destruction of all life in the universe can convince you to swear.
Suddenly the door behind them opens and Ophelia steps out.
Joyce: Ophelia?
Ophelia: What happened…where’s daddy?
Dorothy: What did…does he look like he look like?
Ophelia: I…I can’t remember.
Joyce: Do you remember anything?
Opehlia: I…I don’t know…I don’t want to know.
Opehlia’s knees sink into the snowy ground as the only signs of pain come from the light tremors her lips made quivering. Like she desperately wanted to cry, but had long since forgotten how.
Joyce kneeled down and hugged Ophelia tightly, the girl gasped a second as Joyce’s body pressed against hers and long hard sobs came from Joyce.
Joyce: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Walky: I’ll be back.
Walky walks off into the woods.
Dorothy: Walky! Don’t worry guys I’ll see what this is about.
Dorothy walked for about a minute before she came across Walky pounding his fists against a tree his knuckles bloody.
huh. this feels familiar, but I don’t remember where they last were or who ophelia is.
Yeah, the last comic is from a couple day ago, and part 21 is from months ago, I kinda forgot about it for a while. So let me abridge.
Joyce, Danny, Walky, Billie and Dorothy ended up in a Isekai. When they first got there they heard a mysterious voice telling them to head East, and gave them weapons. Danny got a Uke, Dorothy got a book of spells, Walky got a epee sword, Joyce got a knight broadswowrd. They came across a town where they ate Pizza, and Danny heard the story of Solis and Luna, to gods that represent day and night and got his Uke turned into a Jojo Stand. They go to the woods where they are attacked by a monster and Danny uses his ability to summon an Avatar of Luna to kill it. Sadly Dorothy is poisoned and they conscript the help of an old man named Cyrus to help save her, Walky retrieves a magical herb, brings her back to health, and they travel down to face a giant octopus in order to get past a giant ice wall. Defeating it, they come out in a melt pond and go to a fishing village where they meet Ophelia and her false father. A portal opens and Joyce’s hat from the Noir Joyce storyline falls in (that’s a whole other thing) and Danny goes to the mountains in hopes of meeting the actual Luna and meets her daughter the giantess Skadi. Eventually they talk to the moon goddess who tells them something much worse than her brother is at play. Danny returns with Skadi to the village, where Askel reveals himself to be behind everything. He leaves them and we come to now.
Oh, Sal. You poor thing. How many times have you had Linda lecture you about taking responsibility before this?
Oh. Oh that’s why Marcie was so angry. She promised.
So, that’s how a life of crime started; one that would end with a knife through the hand.
Did Leland strangle her o what?
I suspect that Marcie got in between Sal and whoever she was fighting and was injured when she was caught in the cross-fire.
The karmic destinies of all thesse characters are becoming clear: because of Marcie’s condition and her being an immigrant, Sal started committing crimes to help her economically; this is followed by her traumatizing Amber, who stabbed her and became a clinical case; Amber’s problems were already in action previously, and that contributed to what happened with Mike, who has been using people to get some twisted sense of vigilantism and screw Ethan; Ethan’s obvious gayness started to be shown through his friendship with Mike (and his mom noticed) and this future rejection by his mom led to him being in the closet and contribute to Joyce’s sexual repression; Joyce’s relationship with Ethan led her to some self discovery about her bigotry and to accept her best friend’s homosexuality… This narrative would take long, but the logic is obvious: these guys are affecting the destinies of everyone around like some Madoka multiple timeline thing.
In Buddhism it’s called “karma“.
This comment gets a like.
Ah.
So that’s why Marcie was so mad when Sal started that fight in front of her.
That childish, futile effort to make something horrible right by offering her allowance…
Contrast to the present Sal who knows very well that the world is full of wrongs that will never be righted.
#Heartbreak
I’m still expecting Sal and Amazi-Girl to attempt ‘self-therepy’ by way of going on a vigilante rampage together.
Ooh! *checks popcorn supply*
$2000 for an ambulance?! Is that accurate in USA? Woooow. I’m so sorry.
If it makes you feel any better my government is trying it’s hardest to ruin the NHS right now.
It’s my understanding that US law demands that emergency medical care be given for free until the patient’s life is no longer reasonably in danger. However, I understand that the politicians of Indiana have some… issues at the state government level with pretending to be human, so, yeah, it might be that they charge non-docs for what would be covered by Medicaid and the like for anyone else.
No. It requires hospitals to provide stabilization without requiring proof of ability to pay first.
Right. Then they bill you for it.
They also don’t need to provide any kind of physical therapy or cover any needed medications that might keep you from relapsing.
In theory, Marcie would be eligible for Medicaid, assuming her parents income is low enough to qualify – though there’s often a big gap between that level and where you can actually afford insurance or real medical expenses. Even if her parents were undocumented (and possibly even if she was). However, taking advantage of that requires registering and many undocumented immigrants trying to stay off the radar might not want to do so.
Sliding timeline weirdness: This flashback is currently in 2012 (6 years ago). The ACA hadn’t gone into effect. Indiana hadn’t approved Medicare expansion (not til 2015). It’s not clear how much either of those would have changed her situation anyway. More likely to qualify for Medicaid, but there was still the perceived risk of doing so if undocumented.
What chem geek said. Additionally, Medicaid is not available to all people and very likely doesn’t cover ambulances either.$2k for an ambulence ride is pretty accurate and even most insurance plans don’t cover 100% of them. I’ve broken my ankle three separate times and never taken an ambulance to the ER because of the cost. With insurance, those broken ankles, ER checkups, surgeries, and after care cost me between $2k-$6k. And that was WITH insurance.
Medicaid should cover ambulances – emergency or otherwise medically necessary. You might have to pay a co-pay or some percentage, I don’t know the details.
Medicaid does cover ambulances if they’re licensed by the state *and* a doctor writes a note to the insurance that the ride was necessary (if the necessity isn’t sufficiently obvious to the government)
This. Is why she started robbing stores.
okay wait wait wait
are we going down this road that Sal tried to rob a place to pay for Marcie’s tragedy?
Also I never considered Marcie to be mute because of injuries, this is horrible
damn you willis
In what kind of crazy dystopia do people have to turn to a life of crime to pay for a frickin’ ambulance ride?
‘Murica. I hear it’s great…
Isn’t the premise of Breaking Bad that the dude starts a meth lab to pay for chemo?
No, Walter makes meth so his family will be taken care of after he dies. He continues because he discovers he likes it.
This terrifying country… Yesterday a grown family member wanted me to look at something that might be an infection before they spent money for prompt care. They lifted their shirt and I beheld a spreading 12 inch staph infection (my best guess, later confirmed). Trying to look calm because infections like that kill young people all the time. They wouldn’t let me pay for the doctor visit but the delay would not have happened if we had socialized medicine.
This mention of medical costs brings to mind my incident 17 years ago. Initial hospital visit was 13 days and roughly $200K, first surgery after was about $50K, and there were still 2 more surgeries after that, but they stopped sending bills after that surgery. Mind this was 2001-2, so I would be more screwed today.
That Marcie is without her glasses, but we don’t see her eyes–still–is a nice touch.
It’s the fact in every odd-numbered panel she’s desperately trying (and failing) to talk that’s breaking my heart.
The government in Appalachia actively wants to kill the poor people. It’s why they have worked to kill ObamaCare, ignored the opioid crisis (making it worse), and generally have restricted all financial aid to suffering areas. 3000 to 5000 people die of overdoses every year and 200,000 people go hungry with their kids not eating unless fed by the church outreach program.
And that’s just my state.
They not only afflict the poor, but also strengthen the grip of the church.
What’s the generally held opinion of the UK’s health system in America? Every story i hear about America’s health system sounds insane on so many levels that it just seems like it would be better to switch over to what the UK is doing.
The loudest and currently most influential opinion here in ‘Merica of the UK health system is that it’s godless socialism and therefore bad and anyone who mentions it with less than beetle-browed, slack-jawed, fire-spitting hatred is a beta cuck snowflake. But they know nothing about how it works.
I’d say, optimistically, that while that opinion certainly is the loudest and most influential, it’s not the most widely-held. I’d like to say it’s more of a “we definitely need to fix this, and the British system is one of many we might try to emulate,” but realistically, the most common American thought on the subject would be “wait, other countries do this differently?”
And if they’ve heard anything, they’ll often talk of long wait times and rationing of health care.
It is changing though. For all its flaws Obamacare made a sea change in American attitudes towards health care. During the fight to pass it, it was all “death panels” and “government takeover”. During the recent Republican attempts to repeal it, there was much talk of how it wasn’t good enough, but there was overwhelming resistance to just getting rid of it. Even the GOP has to pretend it’s failing (and tweak rules to make it do so), rather than just bash it for being socialist. We’ve gotten used to government being involved. Now we’ll just complain about them not doing it well and demand better.
I will never understand how the concept of ‘triage’ is so foreign to the people who talk about this…Do US hospitals not actually do it? Do they just rush people in on a first-come-first-served basis, no matter the severity of the injury/illness?
(99.9% of the time, if you wait a long time, it’s a good thing…you’re not that sick. The other .1% of the time is about equally split between ‘the triage nurse fucked up’ and ‘this particular clinic/hospital just got slammed with a bunch of emergency cases’.)
Not always. Sometimes whoever pays most/has the best insurance gets treated first.
Generally, they’re thinking of long wait times for non-emergency procedures.
As in “I can’t get this scheduled for six months?”, rather than “I’ve been sitting in the Emergency Room for hours”.
Often things that are more profitable and thus more prioritized in the US. And things that poor/uninsured people put off because they can’t afford them, thus easing demand on the system.
Which still fits the same issue, of course. Barring an error on somebody’s part, if you’re waiting it means you can wait.
You can wait.
But since American rations healthcare by money, here you don’t have to as often. Triage is something we’re used to in emergency rooms and the like.
I’m just trying to explain that the idea doesn’t have anything to do with “triage nurses” or “hospitals getting slammed with emergency cases”. I’m not defending it as a major advantage of the American way. I don’t even have any idea if there’s any truth to the wait times thing. It’s just the popular idea and you didn’t seem to understand what I meant.
I understood perfectly well what you said. I also understand the argument being discussed perfectly well. I have seen enough Americans lying about the Canadian system to know that the idea that the talk of wait times is not not about lifesaving procedures and emergency services (you know, the stuff that’s triaged) is entirely nonsense.
If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be said in the same breath as death panels.
It is 100% to convince the proles that their lives are in danger if actual poor people are actually allowed to get medical care.
Congress the does triage: it rations health care to the prosperous and the old.
An insane proportion of US health “care” is inflicted during the patient’s last thirty days of life.
That’s a wildly optimistic view of how informed the average US citizen is. If asked of the UK’s National Health System, most would probably say, “Other countries have health systems? Oh, well, it most be a bunch of witch doctors or something anyway…”
And yes, that assumption would apply to any other country. Canada, the UK, France, Germany, it doesn’t matter; everyone else is at least a century behind the US, gotta be right, ‘cos it’s ‘Murica</b! Well, maybe not Japan, they make all that crazy e-lek-tronic stuff and have anime and weird sex stuff and all that, but they don't have anything like, you know, real medicine like in the U.S. of fucking A.
Short version?
It IS insane.
Profit before Patients.
This strip makes me appreciate the NHS even more 🙁
…and my Claireatar couldn’t be more inappropriate
Nothing like reading about US healthcare to make me realise how lucky we are to have the NHS.
Last year, I was severely anemic out of nowhere. I had a gastroscopy, colonoscopy, capsule endoscopy, CT Scan, and about a million blood tests, and I didn’t pay a penny above what I normally pay in national insurance. That ends up being cheaper anyway, since hospitals aren’t gouging the price and there’s no pointless insurance company taking a chunk for their shareholders. Plus, no paperwork at all (I had to sign a consent form for the endoscopies, but that was it).
I can only assume if I was American I’d have either died due to not wanting to see a doctor over a bit of light-headedness, or would now be bankrupt and homeless.
You’re in US “healthcare” system now, Marcie.
Eat Arby’s.
I’m sorry, I can’t even think of the plot implications of today’s strip. My brain’s too busy trying to process that insanely preposterous ambulance bill (after confirming from everybody’s comments that it’s freaking true and not Sal being a kid and getting numbers wrong)
My guess is that Marcie got hurt trying to pull Sal off of fuckin’ Leland. Possibly by Sal herself, as she was flailing around. Even if it had been fuckin’ Leland who hit her or caused her to get hurt some other way – another fall, perhaps? – the fact that it happened because of Sal starting the fight would be enough to make her feel guilty.
However, it is also possible that Marcie was not hurt during the fight when Sal jumped fuckin’ Leland at all, but a bit later… possibly even a day or two later. But if so, why is Sal apologizing for fighting? Maybe because fuckin’ Leland made a point of it being retaliation against Sal, but did so in a way that put the blame on Sal as well.
Possibly a fight with Leland, but definitely not the one that started in the last flashback – they’re significantly older, Sal’s had her hair murdered, etc.
I’m going to fucking cry at how unfair life is for these kids, christ
it just occurred to me – why the hell haven’t the nurses given marcie pencil and paper already?
Is something happening with Marcie’s arm (left)?
oh, so that’s why she was going around robbing convenience stores
I think we just found out why “It wouldn’t be fair.“