micnd90 [he/him,any]

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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: August 17th, 2020

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  • To my knowledge it is a bit fragmented. Like there are different tiers of public option for rural vs. urban people, and employers still obligated to provide insurance to their workers (also with different tiers), and a lot of people do out of pocket supplementary insurance. The rural vs. urban divide creates weird problem like some of my colleagues from China said if city people went hiking in rural areas, roll their ankle and had to be helicoptered out, they are out of coverage because they live in cities. But more or less the whole population have some base of insurance (e.g., universal coverage), and emergency services are covered, so people never got bankrupt from ambulance trip. It is just that for very expensive medical treatment, like cancer treatment or some specialist visits, MRI, etc. it is not completely free.








  • Just to dispel a little bit of fearmongering, the National Weather Service, who is responsible for weather forecast after significant pushback actually got their budget slightly increased compared to last year. So hurricane and severe weather warning will mostly be OK (discounting tons of people who got fired and retire early this spring). What is truly dire currently is the research division (“Ocean and Atmospheric Research”, OAR) at NOAA slated for complete annihilation, which would results in thousands of actual scientists losing their jobs, massive lost of institutional knowledge and gaps/shutdown in long-term observations (e.g., CO2 levels at Mauna Loa).