I can't go into much detail, but I know a lot of people with medical problems who aren't being seen by doctors in the US. Time and again I see people who have what I know to be fairly routinely urgent medical concerns that do get told by the ER that they have to wait for a specialist... 6+ months out. I'm sorry, but an infection doesn't wait 6+ months for you to put them on some basic antibiotics that a PA or I think even some nurse practitioners can prescribe in certain jurisdictions.
I remember when I was in the military (circa 2008), I had a colleague who told me his mother died on the sidewalk outside an ER because they couldn't afford any insurance and the hospital refused to see her. I didn't believe it, I though that it couldn't possibly be a thing in the US. But I keep seeing parallel issues time and again, but now it's for basic things and not because of insurance, but providers and networks are so fucked up that people must be dying from these things.
I know someone who worked in billing and claims for medical insurance too. They share horror stories about double leg amputees being denied a wheelchair...
Hope I don't get an infected cut or something, even with my decent insurance who the hell knows at this point!
It's rotting from the bottom-up. The collapse has already happened for the lowest income people, and in regions where incomes are predominantly low. If you don't have enough money, or a reliable car, or the ability to take time off work, that means you simply don't get professional medical service. For a lot of people, medical services have effectively stopped existing in the USA; you just ask your friends and family what sort of remedies you can buy at a corner drugstore, and do what you can. We're at the beginning of the process of drugstores starting to pull out of certain areas as well, which will basically just leave local corner convenience stores as the last place where you can acquire actual medical supplies.
This collapse is slowly creeping up the income ladder. It's been hitting middle income people hard for awhile, who are regularly foegoing some important medical treatments. It's even starting to creep into the lower eschelons of high income people, who are being hit long waits for scarce services, and are also at risk for bankruptcy for some medical issues.
It's a good example of how collapses happen. Not overnight, dramatic collapse of a structure. More like gangrenous flesh slowly rotting away until there's nothing left. The collapse of US medicine comes in the form of "guess I'll just die"
There's a quote been going around for years in regard to climate change that really hit home and helped me understand how things work. "The apocalypse has already happened, it just hasn't reached you yet." But, as you show, it applies to so much more than just climate change, it's a shortcut of first they came for the communists. It's people not masking and leaving immunocompromised peoples to fend for themselves. It's the US pretending they ended slavery when really they just nationalized it. It's privilege of leftists in the US thinking that sitting around waiting for the collapse is enough.
It's led me to a very important lesson I'm trying to keep at the forefront of my mind when I'm feeling judgmental of others: We're all somebody else's
But that being said; I don't know about y'all, but I fucking hate being a lib.
Global warming will not be an apocalypse... except for the people for whom it will literally be an apocalypse.
Decades from now, comfortable people will be sitting around talking about how all that global warming stuff was really overblown. Meanwhile, un-comfortable people will be in the midst of their communities being inundated, destroyed, and their people scattered and struggling to survive. The lucky ones will find a way to survive, and remember their history. Others will just simply be swept away by the slow moving apocalypse, and it will be like they never existed at all.
Raging pandemics, brain damaged peoples out the wazoo, unbreathable air, crops losing nutritional value, and we're just getting warmed up?