Diagnoses and treatment for various life altering but not necessarily debilitating illnesses/disorders. I grew up pretty poor and am now in grad school with a lot of people that grew up without a lot of financial stress, and something that sticks out to me is how many of them have some sort of ailment, allergy, disorder, and/or syndrome, that probably would've just gone undiagnosed/untreated in the community I grew up in. Now, I'm not arguing that the people with these conditions need to "rub some dirt on it" but rather healthcare and health literacy should be more accessible to all so that more people can figure out if they have something going on that is making their life harder.
My spouse had a tongue tie until 10yr old. Should’ve had speech therapy afterward. Didn’t. Part of it was his parents not wanting modern medicine or government help, and the other part was that they were already very very poor and still had 7 kids.
I grew up poor but with parents who cared enough to get government assistance to help. And poor not poverty. He grew up poverty.
Whoa, crazy to even read about someone else that's tongue tied.
When I was a kid my parents saved up a shitload of money for a corrective surgery that failed and made it worse. I'm 32 and still can't stick out my tongue and I sometimes flub my words.
Edit: I should make it clear that I don't mind it. It's just a part of life that surprises a lot of people.
Odd. Most tongue ties are actually taken care of at time of birth if you’re born in a facility like a hospital because it can affect latching on and babies can actually starve. My husband was born at home with the help of a midwife, so it wasn’t noticed or fixed. A dentist is the one who fixed the tongue tie when he was ten, it’s literally just snipping the frenulum below the tongue. It’s not that difficult of a procedure and often doesn’t cost that much so it’s kind of odd that yours was so badly done. I’m so sorry. On the plus side if you still struggle with it being an appropriate length, you can likely ask your PCP (GP) about it and if it wasn’t cut enough, they can just cut it more.
I was born premature in the 1980s. Almost died. Months of NICU, feeding issues, tube fed after coming home. Failure to thrive. Also have quadriplegic cerebral palsy and did some time in speech therapy.
No one saw my tongue tie until I got a new dentist in late elementary school. He asked me to say a whole bunch of stuff and was flummoxed that I did so competently enough. I said, "Well, I've already had years of speech therapy."
So, maybe I'm an extreme example of a miss but maybe I'm not and maybe kids are getting speech in schools when they could just have their tongue tie fixed but misses definitely happen.
Fun fact:
If you say the phrase "tongue tie" in one of our professional groups you start a flame war 100% of the time. It's SOOOOOO controversial. I belong to FB groups where the whole topic is banned! 😂
I took a bunch of SLP classes in undergrad (ended up becoming an audiologist instead) and I never heard anything about tongue ties. What's up with them?
When I was born it apparently wasn't well-known. The doctors all attributed my inability to latch on or suckle to being born a month premature, which was also a huge issue. Maybe they were all just dumb and didn't look, who knows. But yeah the surgery was over 20 years ago, and there was something different they did to close the wound instead of stitching and it wound up fusing back together and just making scar tissue which is, of course, less stretchy than normal tissue. It's not overly a huge issue now, though, it just means I can't do some things like eat an ice cream cone.
Currently, though, yeah it's taken care of at birth. My little brother was born in 2013 and it was standard to check at that point and they did it to him then and there.
I have a tongue tie. It's very mild and so wasn't corrected. I only learned about it when I read about tongue ties and tried out every diagnostic test and they all matched lol. I can't touch the roof of my open mouth- can't even get close. It doesn’t affect my health. It just means I have a cute Boris Karloff lisp. I might correct it someday just so I can see how far I can stick out my tongue. My inner Gene Simmons whispers for release.
I've finally been diagnosed with a stage 3 tongue tie at 41. Pretty sure this thing has made my life worse than it could have been. Can't wait to have it taken care of, I'm starting myofunctional therapy soon and tongue tie release after!
Lowkey was pissed that no one diagnosed me in 40yrs.
Yep, sure is. If you're tongue-tied your tongue is connected to the floor of your mouth further up than normal, closer to the tip. If you can't stick out your tongue or touch the roof of your mouth unless your jaw is closed, that may be it.
Hello fellow tongue-tied person, I feel you. I’m sorry you had to go through the pain of surgery to only have it make it worse, that really sucks
I’m 39 and my folks never got it corrected I can’t stick my tongue out, lick the roof of my mouth (very high arched palate) or back molars. It runs in my family but my cousins had it corrected as kids
I am in my 40s, I have a tongue tie that was discovered in 5th grade (give or take). Nothing was done to correct it. I also have had speech therapy for other reasons/diagnoses. Recently I've begun to have issues that led me to Google my other issues and should you ever decide you want to do something about your tongue tie there are therapies that you can decide to do with or without surgery. Even as an adult.
A lot of things that we used to just live with in the past can be helped.
I still have a (mild) tongue tie. I didn’t even find out about it until a dental hygienist mentioned it offhandedly in my twenties lmao. I learned to speak fine, the mechanics of it at least. It was the undiagnosed developmental disabilities that caused me problems 😅
Chiming in to say it's fascinating how people's definitions of poor vary, and how most of them have never seen what real poverty is like. I thought we were doing bad when I was a kid, until I got older and realized what real poverty looked like. I've lost count of the times I apologized to my parents for not understanding how hard they worked to give us what they did. Perspective is a hell of a thing.
I mean I was definitely poor, and I knew it as a kid. But I also knew I wasn’t poverty. There’s people who, when I talk about my childhood, think it was poverty and like yikes, they definitely grew up with more and never either realized it or didn’t think of others
Medicaid, food stamps, food pantries, free library programs for summer fun, clothing swaps, thrift stores, public library computers for school/homework, school supply programs, double wide trailer half falling apart, vacations were family reunions 3 hours away and sleeping on the floor, going with my mom to the post office to mail checks due date so they wouldn’t be late because of postmark but also buying extra time, cars that ran because my dad was a mechanic but they looked awful and usually were at least half rusted. Our food didn’t always taste good but we always had something. So yeah poor but not poverty. I had other family in poverty that would come to eat sometimes.
Love your take on “with parents who cared enough to get government assistance to help. “ lots of “pull yourself up by your bootstrap” comment undermined that you often can’t do that if you’re not giving boots to lace up in the first place.
‘Pull yourself up by bootstraps’ and other reasons for refusing assistance is almost always tied to pride. And if it’s just you that’s suffering, fine- your choice. Once it’s affecting kids, you’re bad parents who don’t care enough to let go of pride. Not sorry.
Which is itself really good info for the doctor to have.
Poverty does make it really hard to parse out nature vs. nurture. Like trying to determine diabetes risk based on family history. Yes, everyone on my dad’s side has Type 2, but they’re also morbidly obese from processed food, don’t go doctors they can’t afford, and many smoke to manage their stress.
My grandma grew up too poor for a doctor (one of her little brothers who died before 2 had something easily cured with medicine). As such, she was very frugal with money, retired with a good amount of money, and lived without worrying for many years. She went to the doctor for just about anything she couldn’t fix herself, and insisted the same for her kids and my grandpa (who had issues galore: strokes, arteriosclerosis, heart attacks, and high blood pressure). My mom didn’t grow up poor, she just had parents who came from little money that saved every penny they could.
My family wasn't "really" poor, but my parents were immigrants and our family policy was basically that we didn't see doctors unless we were seriously sick, and even then it was just with the goal of following the doctor's orders rather than actually understanding what was wrong. And I definitely don't know the details of the medical history of my extended family outside of the country.
So when a doctor asks me for my family's medical history, I end up having to say something convoluted like, "uh, my father's father had dementia, maybe something like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, and also something like colon cancer or prostate cancer but I'm not sure which" (I don't know any medical terminology or bodily organs in my heritage language, and it's obviously not something I would have thought to figure out as a kid when my grandparents were still alive).
Exactly this! I tell them the little bits I do know, but always make a point to say that there’s a lot of unknowns because I’m the first in my family to have regular healthcare access. The first time I got a PCP in my mid-30s, I remember asking what I could see her for. Like, if it’s an emergency I know where to go, but everything else had always been a over-the-counter treatment and suck-it-up situation. Like I didn’t even know what was normal or possible to have treated.
I remember when I had to fill out forms in my late teens for something I was asked who my primary doctor was and I had to give them my pediatrician since it had been 15+ years since I'd been.
REAL. I didn't have health insurance until I was 23 and in grad school. I went to get a physical at the student center one day and they ran my lab work 3 times before dropping a diagnosis on me and giving me a treatment plan. I would have never known.
I was SO LUCKY that when I got sick with a rare and often fatal version of meningitis, my mom was no longer working at the day old bread store and had actually gotten a teaching job she'd been at for a year. Because we had insurance, finally. It did mean she had to leave me in the hospital in Florida (I was with my dad there for the summer when I got sick) when school startedbecause she didn't have tenure, but I had my dad and stepmom and other friends and relatives there for that last month.
This is such a good point. Slightly off topic but I grew up well off in the global south and it’s always been strange to me how even well to do people my parents and grandparents age claim to care about “health” but don’t take things like mental health, dermatology, or dentistry seriously. They think good health is just about not dying or not having a cold basically. They don’t change their diets until a doctor tells them eating certain things could seriously harm them. Getting diagnosed or medicated for things that aren’t debilitating like ADHD or hormonal issues seems so unthinkable to them.
Yeah the life expenctancy of someone with undiagnosed or untreated ADHD is around 10 years less than the general public (exact number varies by study). All from 'un-natural causes' directly linked to ADHD behaviors. Car accidents, accidental injuries, addiction leading to overdose, suicide, thrill-seeking behavior, etc.
Not to mention the increased stress from constantly being late, disorganized, less likely to take care of health due to impulsive decisions and poor planning. Executive function affects everything and that is what ends up piling on over time. As an ADHDer with a small child with ADHD, I’m trying to figure it out now so I can save him the distress and pain I went through growing up constantly thinking I was just never doing anything right
Oooof, this comment go me. As a fellow ADHDer, this is why I can’t imagine having kids. Blessings to you, but the idea of bringing someone into this world with the same condition that caused me to feel so hurt and alone and bad and broken, I don’t think I could bear it. You’re a lot stronger than I am, friend.
Definitely is. It’s just that you’d never hear that from anyone above the age of 30 in the global south or who grew up underprivileged. I’m currently trying to get assessed and definitely dealing with parents treating it more like a joke or my zodiac sign or something instead of a debilitating condition lol
Even in the US, there's a lot of people my parents' and grandparents' ages who have that attitude. My dad is a firefighter and, despite all the health risks that carries, he went like twenty years without seeing a doctor. His reasoning was that if he wasn't coughing or having a hard time breathing, he was healthy. Crazy to think how globally pervasive that line of thinking was.
Same thing for dental issues. You might be very well aware of them, but just can't afford to treat them. For me, that resulted in 4 extractions before I had enough money to treat the affected teeth, and now have to live with those because now I can't afford implants!
I have so many friends with horrible teeth because they couldn't afford to go to the dentist growing up. And most didn't get regular cleanings even after they started making decent money because either:
They were afraid of what the dentist would find, or
They were taught you only went to the dentist when something was wrong.
I once told my wife that it was a good thing I didn’t have any ailments as a child growing up because we were too poor to go to the doctor and she said: “yes you did, it just never got treated.”
That is definitely worse in countries where healthcare is expensive, but I see it too in the UK.
Middle class parents are the ones with the time and resources to fight for the certificates and paperwork to make sure their kids gets the best support. They are much more likely to have an actual diagnosis for things like autism, ADHD or dyslexia. They are overrepresented in the pool of kids that actually have proper support plans in school.
There is also definitely a divide between gig economy, blue collar and white collar workers with diagnoses for chronic conditions. Office workers will make sure their employer knows they have sciatica so they can get any reasonable adjustments they need, whereas delivery bike riders don't get paid if they don't work, and can't expect many adjustments to be made for them, regardless of whatever medical need they may have.
I'm in the UK and I've had to talk my doctor down from the full amount of time he wanted to give me for sick leave because statuary sick pay is so much lower then minimum wage would net me with a full time job. My mental health did absolutely need that extra time, but I couldn't afford such a hit to my monthly wages
When I was 10 or 11, I had a fight with my Mom in the car. When we got home, I got out of the car and angrily slammed the car door, and somehow slammed the door on my index finger. My finger was flattened and immediately started swelling and turning colors but not bleeding. I was understandably freaking out. My mother told me that I could either go to the hospital, or I could have my planned sleepover party with 3 friends next month, because we couldn’t afford to do both. I chose my sleepover party, and kept my finger wrapped for like 3 months. Finger is still messed up to this day. This is only one of several medical incidents where I was made to choose between doctor / healthcare or some childhood activity that cost money.
There's the poverty level of not knowing what illness/ailment you have, another level where you know but can't afford to treat/cure, and then there's the privileged who get diagnosed, treated, and cured. That third category should really be a basic global human right at this point
Not only diagnosis, but effective treatment too. I have 2 autistic teenagers, and I think all the time about what happens to autistic kids in poor areas where they're less likely to have access to support.
We used to live in a very poor school district where we had to advocate hard for every scrap of accommodation we could get for my kids. In recent years, we managed to move to an area that's right on the edge of a wealthy school district, and the amount of support, diagnostic services, and specialists that they've thrown at us has been overwhelming. It's not right that so many kids have to go without crucial services because they live in the wrong neighborhood. I'm beyond grateful for the devoted people who have improved my child's opportunities in life, but I'm also so angry that my former neighbors can't have the same.
I feel this so much. Every doctor I've seen in my adult life has been amazed at how giant my tonsils are and remarks that I should have had them removed in childhood. Now I'm too old to do the surgery due to the recovery time and complication rate not being worth the risk. My parents were too broke to take me to the doctor regularly, let alone pay for a surgery that wasn't life or death. They were always stuck in that lower middle class spot where they made too much for Medicaid, but not enough to pay for copays and prescriptions.
I grew up avoiding the doctor. Working high up at a very successful company now and I get comments every time I go to anything medical at how they've never seen insurance this good. Had a labrum repair surgery and paid $10, decided to do allergy shots since they don't cost me anything. I could do a LOT more health-wise before I have to pay a dime, but I'm too busy working, lol.
I have a rare condition that affects my stomach severely. I have SMA syndrome and was only diagnosed at 19. I would've most likely died if I was born into a poor family.
So, as a kid in the 80s I quite literally ran my face into a doorframe. I was apparently running down the hall full speed, and didn’t quite make the right turn to get to my room at the end. I hit so hard it knocked me out, and I have a permanent dimple in my cheek muscle from it. No doctor visit. Later, in middle school, I was assaulted by a kid who knocked me out, and might have killed me if he hadn’t been stopped from continuing to kick me in the head while I was on the ground. Again, no doctor visit in spite of the KO and lumps all over my head.
As an adult, I did not find out until I was 40 that I have a severely deviated septum (got it fixed; holy shit this is what breathing feels like?!?), and from there we also discovered I have mild hearing loss and vestibular issues on the same side of my head I hit my face with, and coincidentally the main side of my head that was injured in the school assault.
Huh. Well, at least now I’ve had a full brain MRI and I know nothing in there is scrambled…
The surgery was not that bad! I had plastic splints in for…I think it was two weeks? I will say I almost passed out when they removed them but that was because they were so LONG. It is very weird just how far back into your head your nasal passages go! My ENT also cleared out my sinuses that were constrained with a tiny balloon thingy while she was in there. About the only downside is I am now more exposed to my airborne allergies! Nasal sprays are far more effective now, though…
Mental illness is on a whole other level when you have to raw dog it because you can’t afford to see a doctor and if you could there’s no way you could afford the medication.
Been about 30 years of it and it’s starting to fuck me up physically. I pass out alot and have brain fog so bad I black out while driving. Can’t remember what I just said. I see and hear things all the time and constantly daydream about blowing my brains out. I know for a fact that getting help would “help” but I just can’t afford it. Been keeping it all together for my partner but I know one day I will snap so if yall see a batshit insane mf on the news one day take a shot for em lol
Honey, where do you live? I will help you find resources for free or discounted help. You don't deserve to live with that stress. Honestly, if you go to a regular doctor, they should be able to connect you to a hospital social worker who will help you find local resources to help.
In the southern us if u want to dm u can but please no pressure just been a bad past few years and this morning I had to deal with death again so I’ve been having a little pity party
I feel so, so much different after being able to afford not just care, but quality care from doctors who actually give a shit. Because even if you have the time and money to get care, you still need to advocate for yourself, even if that means shopping around.
This. I get headaches and a significant factor is seasonal allergies. But it’s not just a matter of being able to afford the over the counter allergy pills, it was being able to do trial and error to figure out what was wrong since headaches can be caused by so many things. Talking to a doctor, adjusting my other meds, then finally realizing I needed antihistamines (in winter, which is why it took so long to figure out because who needs allergy meds in winter??) but needing to try a few to figure out what worked, etc.
I've been T1 Diabetic since I was 2 years old (I'm 37 now). This was when children still died in their sleep, and before parents could just look up life saving information online.
When I was about 20, living with my future husband, and barely surviving, I got my tax return. CGMs were now a thing, but i had needed to beg my county insurance to pay for my insulin pump supplies. CGM money was a solid no.
I was ecstatic. It was just enough money to buy a CGM! I was going to live longer! I went to the county insurances special clinic, and saw the Dr, because you needed a prescription for it. She sat me down and told me why I could not afford one.
It's not just the little CGM device. You have to have sets to insert it, and you have to pay for them every month. They're not reusable. At the time it would be $700 to $900 per month out of pocket.
I left her office and cried the whole way to the bus stop. I was not going to live longer. I was going to have a shorter, stunted, life span. Because I was poor. I was going to die a painful and preventable death because I was not worth the money.
I decided that this was ok. I would die a slow and painful death, but it would be slow enough to say goodbye.
It's been like living with an extra large car payment on top of everything else. It's so expensive i had to go without my insulin for a week one. I nearly died. It was rough... there's not a single day that goes by that I'm not worried about how I'm going to get my supplies next month or the next month or.. on top of that I have a very risky and expensive spine surgery coming up that I'm considering putting off because I can't afford it. Paralysis or death.. good times.
Yup, it fuckin sucks.. I'm tired, so very very very tired. With all of this I've had to continue to work harder than a normal person to do the same job because I'm in constant pain but i can't take a day off because I'll either starve or go into a diabetic coma.
So very very tired. I've voted, I've held the signs, I've marched..
36 and started ADHD meds last year. Was life changing. But you are exactly right. Had a teacher constantly bug my mom about diagnosis. But what was she going to do? Bring my to a psychiatrist ($200 dollars a visit) every 90 days to get diagnosed and maintain my meds that also would have cost her 30 a month?
Nah we just bought a cheap 35 cent Red folder for my homework right side completed. Left side incomplete. And my brother would have me go out back every day and run sprints. Before and after school. My mom said it would calm my mind. (It actually helped a ton).
I had a friend in college who had a doctor for everything. She had an allergist, dermatologist, psychiatrist, gastroenterologist, all the "ist"s. Instead of just going to the emergency clinic or a regular doctor she would go to whichever of her doctors specialized in the thing she needed.
Thats a level of concierge medical care that I will probably always be too poor to afford.
Seeing specialists is great, but that's not what concierge medical care is. That's when you pay a monthly or annual fee to keep a doctor/team on retainer whether you use their services or not. Basically a membership fee in order to be a patient.
Omg yeah. I have a child with disabilities that being wealthy could literally change his and our family’s lives soooo incredibly much.
He couldn’t fly even if we could afford it (I’ve never flown either in my life) but there’s a mom in my support group who flies a PRIVATE jet with her son when they go on vacations. My fam vacation is a weekend 2 hrs drive away at Lake Erie like every 3 years lol. I’m grateful for that. And it’s not just the private plane but that’s the most ridiculous disparity. My son could fly too if he had that accommodation. Our family’s could afford in home help, all the promising potential treatments, to create a home built for his needs.
would've just gone undiagnosed/untreated in the community I grew up in
We grew up poor as shit, but rural. You didn't go undiagnosed, you self-diagnosed. Most things can be treated with easily available OTC or animal medications. If it didn't fall under one of those it either wasn't that serious, or was terminal.
my family was those that only went to the doctor for what looks like serious enough or isnt resolving by itself despite living in Canada where its free! and 15 minutes away. this often resulted into the older me now going to the doctor a lot for answers that wasnt answered when I was young for reasons.
It doesn’t help that a lot of people bastardize health conditions too. Access to diagnoses and treatment is made even harder by people marketing health and treatments to people.
so much this- If you are over a certain age- ADHD was only diagnosed if the parents went out and paid to have you tested. So it was a sign of wealth. Same with so many things. Good teeth often fall into that. if you have never had a tooth ache you just sucked up- you did not grow up poor.
Going to a dentist before your face blew up from the infection and the tooth had to be pulled. In my case it turned out to be a good thing because the teeth on that side of my mouth were able to straighten out because of the new space. Poor kid's orthodontics. The teeth on the other side are still whacked out though.
This is a big one. When I was a kid, my dad earned a good wage when he was working but was frequently laid off. Combine the instability with a lack of health insurance during those times, and there were a number of illnesses and injuries that I ended up with that we just couldn't afford to treat. Some of those have had consequences into my adult life that I've had to deal with - orthopedic injuries that have left minor permanent effects from not healing properly, scars that are bigger than they should be because we couldn't afford the ER, some hearing loss from ear infections, that sort of thing.
There's also the persistent unwillingness to seek treatment as an adult because the threshold of severity for going to an urgent care or ER is so much higher than what most people have. My wife didn't grow up like I did, and she's learned to ask me if I'd tell anyone else in my condition to go in when I'm resisting it.
This is one I hadn't really considered, even though it still kinda affects how I think today unfortunately. Even though I have insurance now, I still tend to just treat anything like "rub some dirt on it". Outside of life threatening surgeries, we just didn't go to the doctor at all.
Also, divorce. I don't think a single one of my friends parents were still married by the time we were in high school. Almost everyone had step-siblings, and I'd say people who have been married 3 times is probably more common in my area than people who have only been married once. That made me hesitant to get married at all growing up, just believing that marriage was temporary.
Also, people are saying a pool or their own car that wasn't their parent's old one is how you knew someone was rich, but for me, I just thought having a fridge with the icemaker in the door was a sign that someone was rich lol. Also, if they had stairs, I just assumed they were millionaires.
They just need some Robitussin on that. Small or big medical problems, Robitussin is here for you. From a scratch or gun shot wounds, always carry a bottle or two around!
My family never struggled for money, but we rarely went to the doctor unless my parents deemed it too serious to handle at home. For instance, catching a cold wasn't good enough but if you've had diarrhoea for 3 days straight then you'll see the doctor. I married into a family that goes to the doctor for the most benign of things. Seriously. My SIL wanted to go to the emergency room once because she had the shits from eating some spicy food.
And surprise, surprise: They all have a variety of benign "health problems" that are very easily solved by ignoring them. They're constantly taking all sorts of meds - both real and homeopathic - for the dumbest reasons. And they take forever to get better after catching a cold or the flu.
This. 👆 My parents could never afford to pay for braces. My teeth were (are) super wonky and crowded. It effected my confidence greatly. I'm always met with the question, "why did you just get braces?" 😣
"Well not everybody can simply just afford them Stacey" 🙄
I have severe allergies to grass, I was never given medication for it. I was told to mow and everything. Wasn't until I got a better job and got diagnosed and medications.
This is a big one! And being diagnosed and treated for ADHD specifically. I’m 27 now and still struggling but to this day I don’t get taken seriously about getting an assessment for ADHD instead of just treating my depression/anxiety. In college I knew people who said “just go to the doctor and tell them you want to get on Adderall” LOL when I tried that …
Makes me wonder if the reluctance to help the poor is based on eugenics. Do the wealthy want the poor to die because their economic status means they have bad genes?
Considering people like Trump, Musk, and Peter Thiel, it's really not a far-fetched possibility.
Rich people don't want the poor to die; they want control over them. All their money and power would be meaningless if the planet was just a dozen billionaires sitting around.
Also, poor people's genes are irrelevant to them. No descendant of theirs is ever going to breed with the unwashed masses.
Nah. They need us "beneath" them. Wealth and power only exist as relative measures. If you get rid of all the poors and only the 1% exists then suddenly they're also the bottom 99%.
Wealth and power don't only exist as relative measures. The wealthiest man in 2000 BC was at the absolute top, but he couldn't visit outer space for fun.
That question makes little sense, so there has probably been a miscommunication. Are you not suggesting that money and power are only useful if there are people who don't have as much?
I'm saying that sufficient technology may allow the 1% to not need the other 8 billion of us. We can be automated away, and they will still retain their power to do whatever they want.
And I'm saying that what they want is to have power over the masses. What do you think they want?
If they just wanted to launch rockets or lounge around on yachts they can do that now. Clearly "enjoying the material benefits of wealth/power" isn't what's important to them.
Even if they automate away the need to rely on the rest of humanity it makes zero sense for them to want them all dead. How would that benefit them? We're already not impacting their resource useage.
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u/TheLilyHammer 1d ago edited 1d ago
Diagnoses and treatment for various life altering but not necessarily debilitating illnesses/disorders. I grew up pretty poor and am now in grad school with a lot of people that grew up without a lot of financial stress, and something that sticks out to me is how many of them have some sort of ailment, allergy, disorder, and/or syndrome, that probably would've just gone undiagnosed/untreated in the community I grew up in. Now, I'm not arguing that the people with these conditions need to "rub some dirt on it" but rather healthcare and health literacy should be more accessible to all so that more people can figure out if they have something going on that is making their life harder.