My hubby forwarded this screenshot to me from a GTNH Discord server and I feel it is valuable advice for anyone struggling with American healthcare.
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Ok, let's say you go through with all of these steps and catch them red-handed in writing. Then what? Won't you need to hire a lawyer to escalate this? And that's gonna cost as much as the medical procedure itself, and god knows how long it delays any treatment even if you win.
It'll suck if you're the only one. But there's a good chance you won't be. If we signal boost this as a PSA and everyone keeps track of their insurance provider doing this, then class-action lawsuits will become more feasible.
Yeah, collective action is the only equalizer we have. But we have to preemptively pressure them as much as possible because time is of the essence once you have a life threatening condition. Medical bureaucracy is intentionally cumbersome to navigate as a layman without legal representation. I remember trying to negotiate some exorbitant charges to a medical bill once and they bumped me from one department to another with hour+ long wait times that was so frustrating that I eventually gave up.
It makes me tempted to start a coalition of volunteer lawyers who specialize in this. Straight out of law school, funded by a combination of donations and side jobs in law. These volunteer lawyers would have a group social media channel (probably on YouTube and other similar sites) explaining what they do and why. We'd probably also need a tip-line for submitting claims against these health insurance agencies.
An only slightly less impractical pan would be to get 1 or 2 lawyers who can train non lawyer volunteers and occasionally advise.
But finding even those 1 or 2 who have the necessary expertise and are willing/able to participate will be a challenge.
Have you ever been involved in a project like this at any level?
I helped to organize a couple protests back when I was in college, but I haven't done fundraising or nonprofit organisation. I volunteered to hand out food donations to impoverished families locally but I didn't organize in that case.
OK step 1 on this plan is to get involved in something that works in a similar way so you can get some perspective on the task you are proposing.
I promise you: the reason this doesn't exist already is not because nobody's ever had the idea.
For that matter, maybe it does exist. Step 0 is to find out for sure if it already exists, even if it sucks. Or if it ever existed. You'll want to know about that.
Are you a lawyer too? Without the expertise and connections to get it going its a pipe dream. If you have the expertise the connections are the easier part.
I'm not a lawyer, but I am a UC Davis alumni. I'll see what I can do.
Not being a lawyer will make it way harder. People like to see "look what I made and built and did the work for" and will work with you then. Asking people to make it for you doesn't tend to work, its gotta be collaborative. Not to dissuade you, its just going to be a very uphill experience. As someone with a lot of experience organizing (I made my own LGBT center, do trans homelessness stuff), I suggest thinking about your profession, your background, what you share in common with others, and leverage that. Even with major disabilities and being fully online you can make a difference if you choose something relevant to you that you can always zealously pursue no matter your mood.
For me, I've always been a people person and hated being alone in a queerphobic world and I've been hurt a lot. I put all my effort into community as a result. And as a trans person a lot of trans people are more willing to work with me, particularly transfems. Every time I felt alone and traumatized I harnessed that alienation to build social gatherings and get people resources. A lot of people can do this, but if say, there was a trans ally that wanted to build a similar space, they wouldn't have gotten nearly the same traction.
I guess my tender advice as an old ass trans woman is, follow your heart and your abilities.
Despite being a genetics and genomics major when I was in college, I found animation to be a fun hobby. I intend to get my roots in the internet as a content creator, getting my views in the open, and working from there.
It will absolutely be a long and tedious process, but I'm stubborn and persistent.
Animation and stuff can be really useful for getting the word out, people love quick visual snippets. If you wanna work with some of our mutual aid groups lmk might help you springboard into this
Awesome!!!! I was already working on writing a few video essays with heavy animation elements.
I have a side channel prepped for it and everything, I just need to get the ball rolling. I want to prepare sufficiently and actually have a few months worth of daily shorts ready before uploading the first video essay, though.
To save time on animation, I was going to build the background environments in Minecraft and then port them into Blender, where I'd use grease pencil to draw in the characters and import external sources (such as data, quotes, and charts) to back my claims.
So for example, when I start a section related to education, the animation would take place in a public school or university.
I was hoping to come to hexbear for peer review and critique from other LGBTQ+ people during the writing process for my video essay, "A Calm Explanation of Transgender People." I want to make sure that what I write accurately represents our community, and is educational without being inflammatory to the target audience for that video--people who genuinely don't understand the trans community but are willing to learn if the person explaining is patient enough to answer questions.
Basically, the kind of video that would have done me a lot of good back when I was an egg who didn't know I was autistic.
If that does well, then ideally, I'll have enough traction to get a nonprofit legal group going, to protect Americans relying on the Health Insurance industry for healthcare.
If you have a matrix and wanna help out with our thing / see if we can help with your thing lmk. Unfortunately we don't know many(any? would need to dig) trans lawyers but it would be very useful for some of our activities
I have actually seen one on YouTube, but I think it was a reupload of her video from TikTok and I don't remember her name.