Don't Demonize Chemicals, Demonize Policies

The speaker discusses various topics including fentanyl, hospitals, doctors, healthcare costs, and their personal experience with their landlord. They argue that fentanyl is not to blame for drug-related issues, hospitals try to minimize patient stays for health reasons, doctors are not motivated by profit, and healthcare should not be for profit. They also mention the consolidation of hospitals into conglomerates and the rising costs of healthcare. The speaker shares their negative experience with Kaiser insurance and criticizes their landlord for raising rent and lack of maintenance. They express frustration with the state of the healthcare system and the housing situation. You know, don't demonize fentanyl, I'm not mad at the guy that sold her that shit. He did warn her, you know, and he told her, but it was patently obvious what it was. It's not the drug's fault, okay? Fentanyl is the reason why we can do same-day surgeries now, whereas before, it would have required an overnight stay, maybe two, and the longer you stay in a hospital, the more likely it is you're going to get sick. Hospitals make people sick. You don't want to be in a hospital for long times, for a long period. You want your stay to be as short as possible, and doctors know this. That's why they're constantly trying to get you out. They're not trying to get you out because they want to, you know, people mistake that rush as, like, they're trying to cycle you through because they want to make more money or something. No, they don't see any of that profit. They just get a salary, for fuck's sake. They're not allowed to be sitting on the, I mean, to have shares in the hospital conglomerate, whatever system that they work at, because that would be a conflict of interest. So, you can either be, you know, hospital admin, and then, yeah, you can have, I guess, or whatever, I don't fucking know. I've never known a doctor who had shares in the fucking hospital that he worked at, or she worked at, or they worked at. So, don't blame the doctors. They're actually, believe it or not, they're just as powerless as nurses or nursing assistants when it comes to, like, how the resources get distributed and how much things cost. And they're just as unaware, too, a lot of the time. Social workers will be more likely to know what the costs are than doctors, but they're also equally powerless. So that anyone on your medical team, or your surgical team, or your psych team, none of them have any say in the cost. The bill you get later has everything to do with the people who own the conglomerate hospital that you stayed at, because almost certainly you stayed at a conglomerate hospital. And there's very few, like, well, okay, not very few, there are some, yeah, there's community hospitals that aren't owned by anybody else, just themselves. But those are becoming fewer and fewer. They're getting chomped up, and they're joining, and they're becoming these conglomerates. Around here, it's Sutter Health, or Kaiser. I mean, Kaiser's not just here, it's, I don't know, it might even be across the country right now, but it's a West Coast thing, for sure. It's the entire West Coast, and it might be much further than that, I can't remember. It expanded. Kaiser was, I mean, the hospitals was, there was just one branch of, Kaiser was a, I think he was like a boatmaker, that's when he made his initial fortune, with, like, pre-World War II, or during World War II. But one thing that, I mean, he died rich, and I think one thing he had also, no, I think he actually built it while he was alive, like, he's the first hospitals, the first Kaiser hospitals. Yeah, and then he, when he died, there was a big fund that left over to support the hospitals, which, you know, kind of slowly grew. Anyway, but lately, and for a long time, they used to be a very reasonable alternative to private, well, they are private, they're not like, you know, but they are both the insurance and the providers, therefore, they're more efficient in terms of, like, they don't try to overcharge themselves. However, and for a long time, they passed on a lot of that savings to the consumer, the patient, so gross, talking about healthcare this way, it should not be for profit, I mean, it just disgusts me that it's for profit, but anyway, they passed on some of that savings to the consumer, which is the patient, the more correct thing to call them is a patient, not a customer, or consumer, but lately, yeah, no, like everything else, and everyone else in this country, you know, corporations have been heading in a very fucking bad direction. He says, no one's stopping them, our government is toothless, it's been total regulatory capture, they're just, yeah, there's no anti-trust shit going on, they're just getting away with everything. They're in bed with them. They're letting them just fucking basically walk right into the frickin' Federal Reserve and walk out with huge bags of cash, and they're distracting us with all these other issues while that's happening, and the people, it's just a fucking mess, but anyway, Kaiser's premiums now, they're on par with all the other ones, they're not cheaper anymore, they're barely cheaper, I had Kaiser for a while, I had their lowest, well, not quite their cheapest plan, it was like a step up from their cheapest plan, and it was still catastrophic insurance, it had like a $2,500 deductible on pretty much anything except for medication, so yeah, but every medication, there was a $20 copay for, so I had to pay $20 for every medication, and out-of-pocket completely for every visit up until I've had enough visits where it's been $2,500 or more, and that never happened, so it was stupid, I was paying $500 almost a month for what? I was getting nothing out of it. But for the safety of just in case, but you know, I mean, I was in my early 40s and whatever, fucking, it just seemed like a fucking waste. I mean, my uncle was paying for it, but he was paying for it with my money, so yeah, and that money is going to run out, and I want to delay the rate that that money runs out as long as possible, because it's all I've got, and I don't, it's not even, he doesn't give me enough to even cover the rent here. I'm massively behind on it, and the fucking landlord hasn't thrown me out for some reason. I mean, I'm like 50 grand behind on it, or more right now, and what the fuck? He put a pay or quit, you know, notice on our door before Maureen died, like when we were only just like, it wasn't even a full month behind, but we were struggling, you know, to pay rent, and it was really hard for us. We had to like, we had to pull all sorts of strings to every month, and you know, it was just a tough time, but he put a notice to pay or quit within like a month, and he hasn't done that this time, and the reason I, I'm beginning to come to think that the reason is he put that notice there because he wanted to, it was during the moratorium, the eviction ward, so he couldn't, he couldn't evict us so long as we filled out this form declaring that our difficulty in paying the rent was related to COVID, and it was, so we did, we filled out, and of course, neither that or be evicted, so we filled out the form, they gave it to him, and then yeah, that made him eligible to receive COVID relief funds for small business owners and landlords. That's why, that's why he hasn't evicted me because he, I make him eligible for COVID relief funds by being behind on the rent, so he's getting remunerated to the tune of what I owe, which he does not have to pay back. Meanwhile, I still owe it, so he stands to make twice as much on me. Meanwhile, I can't tell you how many businesses have closed around here due to COVID. It's a lot, a lot of small restaurants, yeah, places that really needed that money a lot more than him, and don't forget, this is the same person that paid his condolences to Marie, my fiance, who grew up here, who was a tenant here, and he was the landlord the whole time, so he knew her for that whole time, or knew of her, and once she died, less than a week later, he comes over, flanked by two other guys, and informs me that the rent is now 150% higher, or it will be, as soon as it legally can be paid, they give you like a three-month delay, and his reasoning was because it wouldn't be fair to the building if he didn't. I mean, this unit is atrocious, and he hasn't done any maintenance on this unit since it was made, and fair to the building? It's, hmm, let's think about that. What would be a different way to maybe make things fair? Hmm, can anyone think of a different way? Oh, how about raise, or lower everyone else's rent to what I was paying? Wouldn't that be fair too? And you'd still be making money. I know how much maintenance on this building costs, and I don't think he pays it because he does like the bare minimum amount of maintenance, and I'm not talking about remodeling. He has remodeled some units, but that's not maintenance. That's something else that increases the property's value, because, I mean, it's an asset. It already has tons of value, and he's already made a ton of money just on owning it alone, period. So for him to come in here and tell me that kind of shit, he couldn't even fucking just admit that he was doing it because he could, and he's addicted to freaking green paper, and his, you know, his other suggestion was, why don't you get some roommates? Well, you know, why don't I get a freaking unicorn? I mean, the state that this place is in, not just because of mess due to the tents, but just this state of disrepair, no one would want to live here. I'd have to pay someone to be a roommate. I mean, this is, this is my, this was my, like, hell that you couldn't escape, and I can see partly one reason for that. I mean, there's more than one. She was traumatized here, but there was that too. So, if you'll excuse me, I have a very negative view of that kind of landmark, and sometimes I slip into language that I never use. You know, I don't like labeling people. I like labeling actions. His actions are parasitic, that's for sure. I mean, that's true for pretty much any landlord, except for the kind that, like, actually lives in the building with you, and they're just, you know, because they're actually charging you for something that they, you know, it's a portion of their own home, and so they're actually giving something away that they could use. But when someone's charging you rent for something that they don't use, don't need, won't ever need, and won't ever use, it doesn't make sense, and doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem correct. Just because they own it, I mean, the building itself is an asset. When you buy property, it retains its value. It's not like you just, it's not like a car. You don't just throw that money away. And he bought it in either the late 70s or early 80s, I forget, and it blew the fuck up in value since then. So, just buying it alone made him feel like he was in the right place. So, just buying it alone made him a lot of money. But the entire time he's owned it, he's also been collecting on people paying him rent just to use it, even though he has no need for it. He has not ever had a need for it. He's never lived here. He doesn't use it for anything. So, how is that fair? And the people paying rent here don't get anything for it permanently. They just get a temporary right to use it, even though he doesn't need it. I mean, that's just not correct. They should get, we should get equity. Maureen's family should have owned this unit, because he had been paying rent on it for, you know, practically the entire time the building existed. Well, her stepdad and then her mom, when she finally moved here.