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animal56 t1_j71smhf wrote

No offense, but this sounds like every factory I've worked in, and I'm in Canada. Shitty team leaders, washroom break monitoring, limited and strict break periods, and constant, monotonous work that seems never ending. Long, strenuous shifts from the most deplorable concept ever: shift work.

And it gets worse, the bigger the company.

I've worked in family-owned factories where they are a little more laid back, and less strict, to giant mega corporations where they build cars, 1 car off the line every 50 seconds.

I've left factory life behind, but it truly is modern day slavery.

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DeTrotseTuinkabouter t1_j71y0ml wrote

It's incredible how much of a rough deal factory line work is. I'm a white collar workers and a lot of blue collar work I can imagine doing. A lot of it might be way harder on my body and there's other downsides, but yeah it's an option.

But working a job where you do the same thing every four seconds? Christ..

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MrDeeds117 t1_j72pm6r wrote

I’m happy making my $28 doing the same thing for 8 hours!

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anabolicartist t1_j72y3ku wrote

Are you kidding me? 8 hour shifts? Sheesh. No one wants to work these days.

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Happyman255 t1_j732wo4 wrote

Fuck I work 13 hours 6 days a week. I also make 14k a month take home doing it tho so it's a trade off.

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Peltonimo t1_j76d56x wrote

Wtf do you do for that much money? What's your base pay? I make $35 an hour and I've had weeks where I worked 84 hours (18 being holiday hours), but I get taxed so heavily I could never make close to that. $4,500 down to like $2,500.

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lilsky07 t1_j76dcit wrote

Probably sales of some kind. I used to pull that much when the markets were better. Don’t miss the stress though. Took a job with less hours and half the pay and now I get to actually see my family and friends.

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PoopIsAlwaysSunny t1_j750n70 wrote

Where you have to keep up a high pace of work day in and day out and the pay is kinda trash.

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ripperdoc23 t1_j734r0w wrote

I worked an office job (IT admin) where my main home base was a commercial print location. You’re spot on. The only job in the shop that seemed interesting was die cutting, but otherwise there’d be people called in for 12-hour shifts on a rush job so they could ship a few pallets of saddle-stitched brochures out. Then you wouldn’t see the saddle-stitch guy for 3 days, then he’d get called in. Pressmen and 2nd pressmen would complain a lot because the traditional setup is 3 operators but they managed to cut that to 2 jobs with the 2nd pressman playing a sort of jack of all trades mode. Long shifts of hearing the machines click away, hot or cold depending on season, lower pay than you’d expect for a trade with no raises in sight, etc. Manufacturing anything can take a lot of labor and I’m not shocked by what’s in the article, I think most people just haven’t been exposed to the pace and conditions of factory/logistics life.

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MrLanesLament t1_j739c40 wrote

I also work in a factory, in health and safety.

The IT department seems to be seriously thankless at my place. Most of what they do is sit and monitor screens spitting out data feeds.

Until something important breaks, then whoever is unlucky enough to answer their phone at 3am gets called in to work 14+ hours until the problem is fixed and everything connected to it has been re-tested.

Also, quite a few of our IT people are much older than one might expect. They’ve been with the company since it’s heyday in the late 80s to mid 90s. Most of our manufacturing equipment is from Europe, much is outdated, some machines still run with floppy disks, and the only certified techs remaining live in Italy or Finland or whatever the machines were made. We can pay the insane cost of flying them in, or IT can learn the stuff and try to figure it out.

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6spooky9you t1_j75db9x wrote

I one time spent 5 hours with my colleague troubleshooting a complex laboratory slide printer at 4 in the morning. It was the only printer we had that could print histopathology slides, so until we had it fixed the entire histo department was closed.

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TheHabeo t1_j75fgg9 wrote

I'm a commercial priting and packaging factory manager. We generally try to minimize 12h shifts but sometimes there are weeks where workers has to go full week 12h shifts Sunday included to make deadline. There are workers who by the end of the year had not used any of their paid day off.

Ofcourse as compensation for the strenuous working condition, they are allowed regular smoke brake with some regulation and we made sure there are enough operators always. And their incomes are considered pretty high by local standard.

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ripperdoc23 t1_j75hfgk wrote

Yah, in my experience it was always sales overpromising that led to those long 12x7 shifts. "Oh yeah we can get that out easily in 2 days" that sort of shit. When you're making 10x what the average employee in the shop makes (that shop was still doing 10-15% commissions on $100k-500k or so jobs), you tend to be able to drag everyone else around by the dick. Stupid but that's how it was there.

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ackillesBAC t1_j725g3j wrote

Yet people still complain those jobs are taken away by robots.

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rukioish t1_j7296nz wrote

At the end of the day its all some people can do or know how to do depending on where they live. It's not like new jobs magically appear in dead-end factory towns.

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ackillesBAC t1_j72b97b wrote

That's true. And that's why someone needs to step in and help. A corporation is not going to do the best thing for those towns so it has to be government.

A large tax per "robot" that goes directly to the people would help alot, aka guaranteed basic income.

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CygnusX-1-2112b t1_j72di53 wrote

And that's a good way to ensure that the company will not build their factory in your country or will move it out if it is there, and that you now have even less tax money to support your people with.

It's all fucked no matter which way you tug it.

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VampireSurvivorsFan t1_j73s1oj wrote

If only it was that simple.

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ackillesBAC t1_j73s9td wrote

Corporations and the right wing would fight hard to avoid this. No one should get money for nothing, and especially not my money.

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tren_rivard t1_j755ob6 wrote

That sounds like socialism. Surely the free market will work everything out.

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flugenblar t1_j735y2e wrote

OTOH (just being argumentative) if the government comes in and makes people's lives comfortable even when the local economy sucks, then we're subsidizing certain choices being made by people. I don't live in a small town with few choices for employment. For a reason.

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ackillesBAC t1_j73bsze wrote

The counter to that, would be the free market has to compensate by increasing wages elsewhere in order to draw people to them. Win-win for people, loss loss for Corporations. And the government is run by corporations so we know something like this will not happen

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Bakemono30 t1_j73xv78 wrote

But if it's a loss-loss for corporations, where will the corporations go? Elsewhere. No one is going to agree to a loss-loss and especially not a corporate entity. Only place loss-loss exists is govt where they can eat the cost to help their constituents. You're leaning too much toward socialism which then has a lot of other issues wrapped in. Ultimately the good is only the extent of the good of the people at the top. And we all know you don't have goodwill measures to make it to the top.

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ackillesBAC t1_j73yuv4 wrote

I get it leans toward socialist policy, but it's far from socialism. The free market and capitalism will never sacrifice for the betterment of the individual unless its a board member.

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Bakemono30 t1_j73zen9 wrote

Well obviously, because it's a free market to do so. The idea is to always extend the strength of power at the top instead of appeasing the labor at the bottom. The lower you are the more replaceable you become. Thus the less valuable you are to a company. What you're suggesting can never happen as it's pretty much corporate suicide.

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ackillesBAC t1_j748577 wrote

It's stock market suicide maybe, the corporation can still exist with a stock price of zero. They would just have a hard time keeping a CEO or issuing new stocks to raise cash.

Microsoft last year doubled their salary budget, and increased their employees stock options by 25%. In an effort to retain their employees. Microsoft stock didnt seam to move when they announced this in May of 2022.

Edit: Amazon actually did the same thing last year, except for they increase theirs by a little bit more than double

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Bakemono30 t1_j749z2y wrote

Yeah you lost all credibility with me on that statement. Best you learn more on stocks, valuation and the economy before making claims on how you think the economy should be. Pretty juvenile statement. There's no way a company can exist with 0 stock price.

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ackillesBAC t1_j74i5ql wrote

It's quite complicated but a company generally only goes to 0 when they declare bankruptcy. Chapter 7 bankruptcy means they will no longer exist (sold off to pay debtor's), however can can declare chapter 11 where they work with debtors to pay down the debt, they still need exist as a company. Stocks fall that low because the company is dead, the company does not die because the stock is that low.

I also should not have said a stock price of zero, but should have said virtually zero, such as movie pass now at 0.0001$.

can stocks go to zero

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Bakemono30 t1_j74p5oy wrote

Bruh you're talking about failed companies, how they going to help prop your idea? Better to have left that out than to weaken your stance.

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flugenblar t1_j7bld3p wrote

So are you arguing that Microsoft should move to small town in order to raise the median wages there? What about the town they left?

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ackillesBAC t1_j7bmqav wrote

No I was replying to the comment that doubling wages would be corporate suicide, yet Microsoft and Amazon literally did just that and seamed to not suffer at all from it.

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flugenblar t1_j7bl1si wrote

I think you are making your own best argument against your position.

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imafraidofmuricans t1_j72fhx4 wrote

Because they are replaced by starvation?

You talk as if the jobs have to be shit. THEY DONT.

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ackillesBAC t1_j72sf3x wrote

Your right another easy solution is to simply higher twice the people and have half the shift length

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dfields3710 t1_j72whmz wrote

But then collectively, everybody gets paid less. You go from making 4k a month to only 2k.

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ackillesBAC t1_j73besl wrote

Depends on the company, they could simply pay people the same, and likely get a higher quality of work, or they could pay people half, expect a low quality of work. I would wage that most corporations would not choose to cut the work time in half double the pay and take the losses from their profits. But I think it would make for much happier workers, and a far better product

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tren_rivard t1_j755tlo wrote

If you're only working half as much, why would you expect the same pay?

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azvnza t1_j75fxa1 wrote

cuz i want a better quality of life duh

realistically, at low levels of work, there isn’t much to add quality wise either… how high quality can plugging in cables be?

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ackillesBAC t1_j75qn0v wrote

Ever got something made in Germany or Italy vs made in China?

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ackillesBAC t1_j75qum3 wrote

You wouldn't, but the point is to improve peoples lives, so save pay half the hours would help a whole lot with quality of life. Id also say depending on the exact job productivity wound be more than half and quality would be higher. Happy people are better workers

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tren_rivard t1_j79mnc4 wrote

I wish I could get paid 100% for 50% work too. Makes no sense though, life isn't made up of wishes and rainbows.

Realistically, you know what people would do with that free time? Get another job.

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ackillesBAC t1_j79obxa wrote

What a novel idea, work 2 different jobs 4 hours each for more money.

BTW you may be surprised to learn many many people don't work 100% of the time they are currently payed to work. People tend to be alot more productive when they are at work less, as shown in many studies like this one

There's no law saying that you can't go and get a second job if you want more money, and that gives even more power and options to the people. I would say that would even bring back the old concept that work hard to get money. I'd say in modern corporate structure working hard quite often gets you nothing, sometimes even gets you punished

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tren_rivard t1_j79r1e3 wrote

So you just destroyed your own argument that less time working would lead to a better quality of life. Nice going!

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ackillesBAC t1_j7a7ov5 wrote

I said if you want more money. There's a big difference between working 8 hours to barely survive and working 4 hours to barely survive.

If you equate money to happiness then you can work 3 or 4 jobs if you want. If you equate free time, family, friends, hobbies yada yada with happiness you can work one job 4 hours a day. It's your choice and that's the point.

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imafraidofmuricans t1_j72fexp wrote

Oh well that's fine then. Good thing we killed all workers right movement's everywhere.

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animal56 t1_j72igew wrote

Nowhere did I say it shouldn't be improved or better. It's just that the writer described factory work in China, as if THEY are in worse conditions than us.

Yes, factories everywhere are horrid work environments. Yes, there are real horrid work environments that work people literally to death. However, this article proves that what we have here in NA or in first world isn't much better, but as long as we wave our flags higher then we can be more Righteous in our ignorance.

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Bodacious_Dad_Bod t1_j76eoui wrote

Apple factories have suicide nets.

It’s not the same thing.

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Bensemus t1_j81yecy wrote

Foxconn factories the size of cities have suicide nets. Most of your electronics are made by Foxconn. You aren't guilt free just for hating on Apple.

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Known-Room8477 t1_j73zryw wrote

What factory in Canada did you work in that only paid $182 a month?

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Peltonimo t1_j76dawk wrote

Money is a lot different in China. I read about a teacher who taught all over the world getting payed around $50-60k a year on average, but only $12k in China. She was able to save over $6k that year because it's so cheap to live there.

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Arijan101 t1_j7638ar wrote

Now imagine all that amplified by the fact that in China they earn in 1 month what a Canadian factory worker makes on a bad day.

Than add the fact that they live in inhumane conditions on factory campus, comparable to the KFC chicken bred for mass slaughter, resulting in a huge suicide increase among factory workers, most of them jumping from the factory rooftops or out of the Windows from higher floors.

Do you know what Foxconn did to prevents these suicides?

They've installed safely nets around the buildings and barred the windows.

So yeah, although factory jobs suck everywhere, there's really a HUGE difference between China and Canada.

Also a good thing to keep in mind when buying Apple products.

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blu3mys3lf t1_j7678l6 wrote

I don’t know about slavery. In most countries it’s relatively good pay for limited skills/training. That said it is good to strive for a future where mundane and dangerous tasks are automated and universally educated humans can focus on more creative pursuits.

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LingoJam69 t1_j730b0s wrote

yeah, but we’re your colleagues literally twelve years old? 💀

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scabootssca t1_j743oy1 wrote

True, did the factory life for 10 years, 12 hr days 10 min break every 2 hours, no other breaks like lunch or such. Got every other weekend off except for every 6 weeks you had to do 3 weeks straight. Super easy to plan things though, you always knew what you were doing every given day. Someone asks you what you are doing this weekend you already knew. Got 10 bucks an hour though.

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caidicus t1_j75c11s wrote

Hey now, we're busy hating on China and pretenting "large, profit driven corporations aren't the problem, China is the problem."

Don't go spouting logic and sanity in here, how dare you!

:P

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maexx80 t1_j73p4to wrote

You are not wrong but hate the slavery statement. People are getting paid and are free to look elsewhere. Its literally not slavery

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[deleted] t1_j723mti wrote

[deleted]

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animal56 t1_j7242md wrote

Lol

You don't know about the REAL Canadian health care system do you?

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[deleted] t1_j727lce wrote

[removed]

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imafraidofmuricans t1_j72fp93 wrote

What a weird comment. Nobody claimed it was perfect. Every model does not have its pros and cons, that's just objectively false.

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WanderingPickles t1_j72n7lb wrote

It isn’t that weird. There are substantial numbers of folks who will defend one model over another to the nth degree. It is weird.

Additionally, it is not “objectively false” that every model has pros and cons. As the old saying goes, “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” There is always a cost associated with what we do and what we do not do. Opportunity costs, economic, fixed, variable, environmental costs. Always a cost.

When it comes to healthcare there are costs. One model could be that 100% of everything is always covered, in full. And that the government funds and hires enough docs, nurses, specialists, etc. to ensure that there are no wait times, that there are enough everything for every eventuality. That simply is not realistic.

For example, I worked for a government run entity where basically everything was covered. We had a patient who was gone. Never ever going to wake up, the only “movement” was the result of nerve death causing spasming. But the machines kept oxygen in the blood, kept blood circulating, took over from the kidneys, etc. All machines. The wife knew what needed to be done but one of the kids was convinced his dad was going to come back hale and hearty. It costs millions and millions to prolong this agony. It was traumatic for everyone involved including our staff.

I used to live in Europe and dealt with socialized medicine. Certain things were great. In other instances, it was mystifying how certain kinds of imaging (MRIs for example) which are routine in the US are exceptional over there. Or how imaging is offered only certain days of the week; good luck if you have a broken leg, the X-ray tech will be here Tuesday (that’s a real thing that happened too).

Likewise, a model dependent upon employer provided insurance (or really employer subsidized/cost sharing) isn’t particularly perfect either.

Another example; my son was born with a particularly serious heart condition. His mom was hospitalized prior to the birth because she was likewise “circling the drain.” Altogether it cost ~$2 million in the first six months for our son and hundreds of thousands for her. Insurance covered most of it but I was still having to figure out how to pay the deductible and “out of pocket maximums” and premiums. Half of my income before taxes was going towards some healthcare related thing. And I made good money. Half of every dollar. Before rent, food, taxes, gas, everything.

Even after that first year junior has continued with his medical checkups. While he had his surgical repair and is otherwise healthy, just the observational checkups rack up the dollars. It is also worth noting that his particular heart condition would not have been covered in most parts of the world including Europe or Canada. He would have been either euthanized or simply made comfortable and allowed to die. He is fine now and smart as a whip.

And when I was responsible for her (she ended up developing an uncommon illness that required ~$100k in treatment every month in perpetuity) I was still shelling out vast sums. It was untenable. I have a couple advanced degrees, made a good wage, paid my taxes, lived right and couldn’t afford rent or food on my own.

The point is, no system is perfect. There are always pros and cons. There are benefits and costs. I am fortunate enough that I have personal experience with several of the most financially flush healthcare models on the planet. I cannot say that one is better than the other, just that both can be maddeningly frustrating, limiting, and difficult to use. And also incredibly helpful in their own ways.

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kUr4m4 t1_j72voox wrote

How can you in good conscious say that one is not better than the other. It just baffles me.

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WanderingPickles t1_j72zegi wrote

Because I have dealt with both.

Broadly speaking I can’t really say which one is better than the other.

Personally speaking, my son is alive and well. So my personal vote goes to the American system. I would work two jobs again and again if it meant he had life.

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kUr4m4 t1_j72zvqb wrote

You dealt with both but under your specific conditions. Factually speaking, socialized healthcare is simply more cost-effective and results in a better outcome for the general population than private healthcare. Study after study comes up with the same result. It's not a matter of opinion as to which system is better for the greater portion of the population.

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WanderingPickles t1_j732udc wrote

It also helps that most socialized medicine nations are much more conducive to healthy living.

Those quaint, beautiful, amazing walkable cities, towns and villages in Europe are largely the result of their being built when feet were the primary mode of travel. Fun fact; the much vaunted German Army of WWII primarily walked into combat and its heavy equipment (artillery) was horse drawn.

It is one thing I really miss living back in the US. Here I have to get in the car to go to a store. Any store. For anything. It is bonkers. I went from walking 6-9 miles a day to a fraction of that. I have to be intentional about exercise; dedicating large portions of my time to the achingly boring and tedious exercise of… exercise. Blech.

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simplebutstrange t1_j729pon wrote

i got surgery and only had to pay for my crutches 👍🤷‍♂️

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animal56 t1_j72usew wrote

How much do you pay in taxes?

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simplebutstrange t1_j730hst wrote

canada pays less in tax then the states do. look it up. you just have an over inflated defence budget.

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animal56 t1_j735j6u wrote

First of all, I'm Canadian.

I pay increasingly more in taxes for increasingly diminishing services.

I pay extra on my paychecks to my group insurance plans so that I can replace those diminishing services.

This is not FREE. Yes, I won't be bankrupt if I don't have insurance, but it all comes at a cost, no matter how you spin it.

I wait 3-6 months for a consultation for treatment, after waiting up to a month go see my GP. If I need supplemental examinations, treatments or surgery, I can wait another 6-18 months for that surgery. I'm lucky enough to live in Ontario where wait times are the lowest in the country. Thank God I don't live in PEI where my mother has been waiting since before covid for her surgery. Thank God I'm not a native living on a reserve in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere.

Here's a demonstration of how good our free service is right now: My wife's aunt just spent the last month in the HALLWAY of a hospital wing waiting for a diagnosis of why she couldn't remember what was her own name was, AFTER receiving DAY surgery that she waited over six months to get. So now we have incompetence on top of poor service.

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