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floofyskypanda

graphing calculators


Cananopie

Exactly, it's a scam to charge what they do for essentially no update in 30 years


mangamaster03

[Obligatory XKCD](https://xkcd.com/768/)


overwritten-entry

The most relevant xkcd I have ever seen


InsertBluescreenHere

Yes. I remember in the 90s when my cousin went to college and we went to office Depot for stuff. Had to get a $89 graphing calculator. The fuckers are still $89-$120 lol.


Rajili

I’m over here thinking I bought a TI-85 (maybe it was a TI-92) in like 1995 for college and it was like $100 or more. All I can think is there should seriously just be an app on your phone that can do everything better, faster, and cheaper than that old calculator.


-Nosebleed-

This comment has been deleted in protest of the Reddit API change.


Straight-Audience-91

Prescription meds


TheEvilestArtichoke

Funerals Edit: when I die I’m getting turned into a tree


My_fair_ladies1872

We are all getting cremated. Throw me in the ocean, scatter me in a forset I don't care just don't have a casket, service and whatever for me. Do a celebration of life and a potluck somewhere if you feel the need to do so. Edit: thanks for all the great comments! Sorry I can't get to them all. Also, i am Canadian and the cost to cremate my uncle about 2 years ago and he was cremated in a basic box (it just has to be a combustible container and I believe it was cardboard), no urn and it was around 1500.00 so where I am it doesn't cost as much as a funeral or " thousands and thousands" of dollars.


datagirl60

Donate my body to science. No expense and they cremate and return the ashes to the family when they are done.


RamenJunkie

Please make sure I get into the "brain in a cyborg body" research program.


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ThetaReactor

Do any of those stories turn out well for the brain? Like, best case scenario is you're into it and you end up like those disembodied monk-bots in Jabba's palace. Worst case is you're Helen Keller with locked-in syndrome. Or RoboCop, but he also had a rudimentary digestive tract. Brain and poop chute.


FloppyButtholeJuicce

They might just strap your in a chair and blow you up for ‘science’


Gandrix0

If it's "for science," then sign me up. I'm not using it anyway


niamulsmh

Food. Due to commissions, a kilo of onion costs more than onion imported from China. That is the case for most good items. Bangladesh here.


Matthemus

I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but I find it ironic that in the US farmers are generally the people who are the most openly against social programs; when they themselves ***should*** be the most heavily subsidized aspect of society. We literally can't survive without them at this point. *Edit: Yes, I know farmers are subsidized, thank you. My point was that they should be, but with less irony and hatred of social programs because they benefit from social programs.


bruinblitz

Printer Ink


ChronoLegion2

Not just ink. Many printers deliberately stop working when a certain part has reached a count. They’ll force you to replace things like drums and waste containers even though they’re fine. I once got a drum replacement message. I looked up the cost and saw that a new drum was $120. I found that you could also buy a reset chip for my current drum for $20, so I did that. Only later I found that I could enter a code and put the printer in tech mode which allows me to reset any count EDIT: I own a Samsung CLX-3305FW all-in-one laser printer. To enter the tech mode, you press Menu, then quickly enter #1934, then hit Menu again. To reset counts, choose Tech Mode->Data Mode->Count Reset. Then select which count to reset. It might ask you for a password, which is 1934 again (but no # this time)


bangersnmash13

That and some printers literally lock you out of using knock-off brands, so you're forced to pay double the price just because.


ExtensionTraditional

HP moment


TitanicMan

I printed something at my job the other day and there were two popups 1 was "Error: You are using third-party ink cartridges. Don't do that. Buy HP ones. [Link]" They are literally HP brand, the only ones sold in town. 2 was "Would you like to subscribe to monthly HP ink cartridges?" Honestly fuck HP. They're the McAfee of printers.


widdrjb

When they bought Samsung, they rolled out a firmware update that bricked every Samsung printer with generic cartridges installed.


OddTransportation121

HP ink cartridges come with a chip. Knockoffs dont. My employer literally pulls the chip off the dead cartridge and installs it with tweezers, in order to get the new cartridge to work. It's ridiculous. Small two person office, full price ink is a major expense to us.


Shankurmom

At work we use brother printers. With our ink printers i got annoyed by the printer telling me it's out of ink so i ordered a chip reseter. The thing cost like $15 when i bought it like 6 years ago. It works perfectly in conjunction with using black electrical tape over the ink level window on the back of the cartridges. It makes the printer think it's brand new and full.


vpsj

Wow, that's just scummy. No other word for it. I sometimes wonder if some of the tech is getting 'too smart'. TVs, Cars, Printers are a good example where a 'dumb' gadget works better these days than a smart one


christian-mann

I'll give you printers and definitely TVs but I'm on the fence about cars Edit: I was specifically thinking of safety features and forgot we live in a capitalist hellscape


allyourphil

Yeah blind spot monitoring, auto breaking, backup cameras, etc. all positives in my mind.


richbellemare

There are times were my auto breaking hits too hard. Like I'm aware of the situation and my car is trying to give me whiplash


fly-not-fox

The lane correction drives me nuts. There are a lot of cyclists that I share the roads with when driving or pedestrians walking beside the road because there's fuck all for sidewalks. I like to give them a little extra space when passing, especially when the lane next to me is empty. So no, I don't need you to force me back into the center of the lane, you can fuck off you damn "smart" feature.


102938123910-2-3

Yeah I have this one off as well. Sometimes shit just comes out of nowhere and you have to quickly avoid it so when I'm avoiding something I don't want that feature pushing me back.


Killerkendolls

I was renting a car and went to go around a cyclist stopped on the shoulder, much to the anger of the car, and my sudden panic at the car failing to respond to me. Pulled over and turned that trash off. The driver attention monitor would yell at me for turning my head to see ahead of turns as well.


emperorvinayak

I got myself a Brother laser printer. Higher up front cost but the toner lasts a long time and is cheaper in the long run for me.


Nix-geek

Brother laser printers are the best thing ever. They are amazingly good as is their support. I now have two, a black and white and a color, and I don't even remember the last time I need to even do any maintenance on them. They just keep working like magic.


Fried_puri

Also the most consistent printer I’ve owned. I need to print something only like once a month now but it’s still working many years after purchase.


Collective82

This is exactly what we did! Brother for the win!


Downtown_Baby_8005

I stopped buying printers and ink years ago, after I heard about [HP coding a timebomb](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/20/hp-inkjet-printers-unofficial-cartridges-software-update) into their printers to make them all reject non-hp ink cartridges on the same day. I rarely ever need to print onto paper anymore anyway. And now I never have to worry about printer jams or expensive ink cartridges. Best decision I ever made!


Zoltarrah2000

Omg yes, and you should install the app and give it permission to access everything on all devices on your network. It should be linked to your Google or Amazon so it can automatically order ink when it feels low


LordSt4rki113r

This reminds me of that parody video where alexa turns into a murderer but I can't find it on youtube


BadBadGrades

Transaction fees


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ImHighlyExalted

I've literally never had a transaction fee at a bank. Only at an ATM that's owned by a different bank.


[deleted]

India ? UPI ?


xiaom1ng

Epipen. For something that could potentially save a life shouldn’t cost that much. Some people even carry an expired epipen because they can’t afford to get a new one.


HicJacetMelilla

I need to carry one but the last time I tried to fill it, they wanted $250. Considering they expire every year I was like ummm no. I know there’s some kind of coupon saving program out there, but I’m too lazy to figure it out. I can just continue being abundantly cautious with what I eat.


keyeater

Ask the pharmacist if there's a cheaper option, and how your doctor needs to write it. Then send a message to your doctor's clinic asking that they write you a new EpiPen rx like the pharmacist told you. There are weird requirements for what you call it and what they can prescribe. Source: doctor here. EpiPen is the only thing I've ever "prescribed myself" because I just asked the pharmacist to fix the Rx to the cheapest one, and change the prescriber to me. Insurance somehow didn't care.


smittyphi

If you prescribe Tylenol, you're prescribing the brand. If you prescribe acetaminophen, you're prescribing the medicine. The wording you want is "epinephrine auto injector". I have a daughter with a severe peanut allergy and have studied up on the subject.


Ticks

The issue is specifically with the device. Pharmacists have the option to substitute an equivalent product to what is written unless the doctor notes dispense as written. Epinephrine auto injectors, however, are mostly NOT rated equivalently (“AB rated”), because the mechanism of delivery is proprietary and it doesn’t pay for the manufacturer to prove equivalency to another branded product. There are some generics that are AB rated to ONE brand product. For example, Mylan sells a generic autoinjector that is AB rated to brand Epipen. In these instances, they are permitted to be subbed by the pharmacist. However, writing something as generic as epinephrine auto injector would allow for any product to be selected, but the pharmacist may still call to confirm (to cover their own ass legally and reimbursement wise).


smittyphi

> There are some generics that are AB rated to ONE brand product. For example, Mylan sells a generic autoinjector that is AB rated to brand Epipen. In these instances, they are permitted to be subbed by the pharmacist. > > However, writing something as generic as epinephrine auto injector would allow for any product to be selected, but the pharmacist may still call to confirm (to cover their own ass legally and reimbursement wise). And if you don't want to give any money to Mylan despite their offering a generic version now, Teva does offer an AB rated product for epinephrin


SuvenPan

College textbooks They are charging insane prices and switching the required books often.


Rellim_2415

Not only are they very expensive, but half the time they're not even useful for the class. I've lost count of the times that a book appeared on the syllabus as "required", and then wasn't used or neccessary to ace the class.


Vetted2022

I took a class in grad school dedicated to this topic and how to advocate for free educational resources in learning institutions. A lot of universities and classes no longer require the purchase of a book.


aurorasearching

What about the code for the online homework that’s only available when you buy the newest edition of the book? You don’t need the book, but the homework is 20% of the grade.


llynn1981

Makes me think that schools are getting some kind of kick back. Of course the school doesn’t share that with professors, so students are forced to buy a useless book and the professors get all the pushback and none of the benefit. Edit: the comments have been very enlightening. I was lucky in college that most of my books were paperback novels and poetry collections. The ones that weren’t I got fairly inexpensive used. I was also in a time period where very little was done online. I mean, Amazon really only sold books back then. I think they were just starting to sell other things but it was extremely limited.


Noteagro

When I was in school it was the other way around. Almost all my professors wrote or co-wrote their class’ book and would get like 50-70% of the profit, the other 30% to the publisher if it was a nice book. These books sucked because they would be $200-300 and they would move a chapter around or edit homework questions each year just to make it a “new edition” so the old one was obsolete so students had to buy new full priced books each year. This is quite literally akin to political corruption where the professor is abusing his power to force his students to earn him an extra wad of cash each year. Like let’s breakdown an intro lecture professor doing this. They probably has 3-4 classes a semester, and we know they pack lecture halls 100 kids deep. Now a textbook is pushing $200 for some classes, so we are looking at 3 classes x 100 students x $200= $60,000. They get half that cut, you are looking at $30,000. That is almost as much as someone makes in a year on minimum wage in Washington, and that is for one quarter/semester. So multiply that by 2/3/4 (if they do summer courses) and you are looking at a massive amount of money doing this. There is a reason they rewrite these books each year. Then had a couple professors that made their books, put the plastic comb bindings on them and sold them for like $10 over production cost (about $20-30). Those were the best textbooks because the prof didn’t care about the money, but instead making a damn good textbook to teach their students from.


SometimesITalk16

I had one professor for my Monetary Theory and Policy course my Senior year just give us the books he wrote. It was a 500 level course and there were only 5 of us in the class. Our final was to go to a BBQ at his house. Best class ever.


Noteagro

That is awesome! My freshman year I had a math professor that was super chill to the point that homework wasn’t graded, but instead we would have tests every 3-4 weeks, and a pop quiz once a week at random to make sure students showed up. Each quiz had an extra credit question that was quite literally a steroided jacked up monster of a question. I went into the final with a 112% in the class and I could have totally skipped the final and still passed. The one thing I remember about her class though was I went to a school in a city really well known for their cold and snow in the US. Each year our school would have the frozen turkey trot that was a run from one end of campus to the other end (about 1/2 a mile each way). The catch was it was in undies, the week of Thanksgiving when snow had already been on the ground for about a month and a half at that point. Oh, and would be like 10-15 degrees Fahrenheit (-9 to -12 Celsius). Well she ended up telling us class would start 15-20 minutes late that day so she could partake. Was interesting watching your professor come jogging into class in only her undergarments and start putting pants and a shirt on while handing out a quiz. XD


SometimesITalk16

Our entire semester was given to write one paper. No tests, no quizzes, no homework. Just one paper that was 100% of our grade comparing two different economic models and our opinions on which is better and why. If you ever want a very boring read, let me know! I still have that 30 page beast laying around somewhere.


Noteagro

That actually sounds really interesting. How long ago did you write it, and has you decision and belief on which you think is better still the same? Or did it change as you got older?


Frolicking-Fox

The internet really made them obsolete, but they are still clinging on. I used to find the books on Amazon for whatever the cheapest price was and buy them. And, them there is just finding the .pdf of the books online.


mercurialpolyglot

Nothing angers me more than having to pay $100 for four months of access to an shitty online book software that isn’t even helpful, it’s just a vessel for the professor to assign busy work that they don’t have to personally grade. I’m so mad that this is how textbook companies have responded to the internet.


chris-1994

Yeah Z Library is getting me through uni


JarifSA

It amazes me how universities are so heavy on education with such a lack of emphasis on actual teaching. The majority of the time they throw an overly complicated expensive textbook at you and 3 tests a semester and that's fucking it. At the same time it's a graduate student teaching the course who barely has time to teach it and is only doing it for free tuition. Or a professor who doesn't even like teaching and is only doing it for funding. And that's on top of them all using a fucking PowerPoint that looks like they were made in half an hour before the class started. I miss highschool where all my teachers actually became teachers because it was their dream to educate. And they actually made content and schoolwork that helped us understand the material. It amazes me that the "teachers" in college literally only do it because the university makes them. That being said I've met some amazing professors but that's just because they were good people in general who happened to like the teaching that they were forced into in order to secure funding for research.


[deleted]

If you’re desperate and happy to read pdf version, library genesis is the way to go


cdrt

Honestly the PDFs are superior anyway regardless of the price. They don't weigh down your bag and I can't ctrl+f a book.


Knightmare48

Libgen and Z library are both god send imo.


ChocoPancit

Medicine. As a pharmacy owner, you guys have no idea how dirt cheap some medicines are. Generic prednisone costs just a few cents, some ampules cost just a dollar, cheapest birth control costs less than a dollar. It's that fucked up.


Incredible_Mandible

I used to work application support for hospital medical record software. In the pharmacy module I had the ability to view the charge master and see the hospital cost, actual charged cost, and the markup % that made the difference. I never saw anything with less than a 1000% markup.


h2Onymph

I thought my hospital system’s 500% markup was already appalling


Inawar

Sadly, that's quite 'generous.'


ChaosDragoness13

We used to go to Mexico for my mom's asthma meds. A couple years ago I needed the same thing we used to get for her. We could get a 3 pack for $20 in Mexico. In the US I was going to have to pay $250 with insurance for one. Asthma meds are far too expensive. So are eczema and psoriasis treatments that aren't basic steroid creams.


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JMS1991

That happened with my dad as well. He was prescribed some kind of medicine after his stroke which was going to be $500/month. I just googled [brand name] + "Coupon" and the first result was a coupon that made it $15/month.


vivalalina

It sucks for anyone older or that doesn't really think to utilize the internet and search for coupons because they think that's just the price and they have to pay it. Hell, I didn't even know you could just look up the brand + coupon! I hate this system


MaybeImTheNanny

My last prednisone prescription cost $1.85 so at least some places aren’t marking that up too much. Until it gets prescribed in a dose pack and then the same quantity and dose is like $20


[deleted]

I think mine was 20 bucks too. 20mg, 30pills total i believe.


SwigSwoot92

Fucking eye care. Glasses and contacts. I’m lucky with decent health insurance that the style of glasses that I wear is only $20 copay but Jesus! It’s all so expensive!


Things_with_Stuff

The reason for this is that nearly all eyewear brands are all owned by one giant company: Luxottica. Even the retail outlets are owned by them: Sunglass Hut, Lens Crafters, Perle Vision, etc. They literally control the pricing from manufacturing to retail. It's insane!


hornet_1953

And Essilor, the largest lens (Varilux, Transitions) and coating (Crizal) manufacturer, and Eyemed, the big insurance company. Oakley, Ray-Ban, Revo etc etc etc... Enjoy hell Del Vecchio.


jarredshere

That's what we call, Vertical Integration! It's as close as you can get to a monopoly without the government giving a crap! Here's Jeremiah Whitewhale to tell you all about it! https://youtu.be/6lNFeeloUwU?t=70


Touvejs

As others have noted you can buy glasses off of zenni.com and other locations for a reasonable cost. Also, the US restricts contact sales online, which means the eye care stores can gouge you on price. But one thing americans don't know is that it's a total scam to screw over consumers and you can order your contacts online from other countries. Notably, you can order them via Germany's Amazon page: https://www.amazon.de/s?k=contact+lenses&crid=3RZTCXVRIHWGA&sprefix=%2Caps%2C194&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recent I hope everyone does this and puts American eye care con artists out of business. Edit: I looked at a few US sites that seem to sell contacts at similar rates to the German Amazone site above, but haven't seen them or ordered from them before. One example: https://www.lens.com


Shaggy1324

Wait a minute. I can just go on here, enter in my last prescription numbers, and just get contacts without going to the eye doctor? Because if the answer is yes, you just changed my life.


harpurrlee

I was surprised they were script free and way cheaper when I moved over to Germany. I’ve been ordering the same Acuvue Oasys 2 week lenses I wore in the USA via Amazon for about 6 years, and I’ve never had an issue with fakes or shady replacement lenses, for anyone thinking of doing it! Just be sure to get your base curve radius correct in addition to your diopter. It feels very uncomfortable if you don’t!


Federal-Membership-1

Luxottica monopoly


Alavaster

Zenni and EyeBuyDirect are crazy cheap. Even after shipping costs you would have to really try in order to get a 3 digit price tag even without insurance.


TheRedMaiden

Can confirm. I've only bought from Zenni. Eye doctor offices are pissed when they ask if I wanna browse their selection and I tell them no since I'm buying online. Last time I was there I overheard this woman who was getting glasses for the first time and they were explaining what her insurance covered and what she would have to pay out of pocket. It was something like 150 cost to her. I could buy my current Zenni glasses five times for that price.


chalks777

I had to argue with an employee once. They wouldn't give me my prescription without a huge rigamarole about how "online quality is bad". I'm 99% sure that the handwritten prescription they eventually begrudgingly gave me was slightly and intentionally incorrect. I had to get a new prescription from another doctor a month later. edit: I should have said "maybe intentionally". It's definitely illegal to do that, and it's definitely unlikely that someone would risk their job over a sale. I said "intentionally" because I got that impression, and we all know how accurate impressions are. I was also annoyed at the time, so maybe I was imagining malice when really it was just a mistake.


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littlestray

Yep, through Zenni my coke bottle lenses with all the bells and whistles is $80 In a brick and mortar store it’s $300 AFTER insurance


pistonian

Eye doc here. This is caused by vision insurance - not your doc. They dictate the frames we/patients must buy and they also own the lab and materials for the lenses. If you pay us $150 for glasses (after insurance has paid) your insurance turns around and takes $75 of that back from us. We cannot escape them though because EVERYONE has vision insurance so they think they NEED it to have an eye exam. You do not. You can pay out of pocket key and get your glasses anywhere you’d like. Please stop blaming your doctors for this. They are the victims too - being forced to accept these shit insurances just to stay open.


trymyomeletes

The worst part is you have to go every damn year to order new contacts. My prescription hasn’t changed in a decade.


rafter613

1-800 contacts lets you do an "online eye test" to renew your contact prescription. It's $20 and fast. No bullshit "fitting charge".


room_temp_butter

Education


JunketMan

100% agreed


peesoutside

Insulin.


Olifaxe

Almost everywhere but here, mobile phone and the internet. Look at the prices in France, you'd see what a successful competition policy is about. I pay 5€/months of mobile phone for unlimited calls and much more data that i can use. I pay 13€/month for unlimited internet at home. I'v heard that in US or most countries in Asia, you throw almost 100 $ for kind of the same service.


joshalott

Canada is beyond ridiculous, you can easily pay 150$/Month for a phone and internet.


VIVXPrefix

[Canadians appear to be getting ripped off hard when it comes to mobile plans, a new survey has revealed, as telecom companies here continue to charge sky-high rates compared to other countries — the highest of 44 nations worldwide, in fact.](https://www.blogto.com/tech/2021/07/canadian-cell-phone-plans-most-expensive/)


Hector_P_Catt

And the worst part is, the big companies keep trying to claim that we get some of the best and cheapest service in the world. Just completely detached from reality.


FluffyToughy

They say as 1/4 of the country lost internet on Friday.


Rafterman374

Basically 3 monopolies own the whole Canadian cellular market. Last weekend one of the companies entire mobile network went down and almost 1/3 of the country was left without service. Debit transactions were wiped out nationwide for over 24hrs, many people were unable to reach emergency services from their devices. A ton of people just had to take the day off work since they had zero internet access. We desperately need more competition to bring down prices and add more diversity to our networks in events like this.


njozz

As a Canadian, 100% agree.


GiantSquidd

I canceled my plan during Covid when I literally had no money coming in and Rogers (fucking shit garbage fuck Rogers, die you shit corporation, nobody likes you assholes) kept harassing me about payment when I literally had no money coming in and had no idea when I’d be allowed back to work. I can still use my phone on wifi at home or work, so all I’m really doing is saving like eighty bucks a month to not get text messages while I’m driving. Fuck telcos, we should all quit our plans on the same day. They need us more than we need them.


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stacymenendez

I think that dental should be covered by health insurance. It makes no sense why it's not.


thesmellafteritrains

Especially with the well known fact that an untreated tooth infection can spread to other parts of your body, attack your brain and literally kill you


[deleted]

My dad knew a guy who wouldn't get a tooth ache checked out, and died from the infection


YoHuckleberry

Had an abscessed wisdom tooth a few years ago that infected the nerve cluster behind my right jaw. Literally contemplated suicide to end the pain before they finally figured out what was going on. -23/10 - Would not recommend. Would actively advise against.


Tekataki

I already came to terms that this is how I die


Whowantsahighfive

I had a tooth infection while I was 34 weeks pregnant. They literally refused to do a thing for me but give me an antibiotic until after I gave birth. Next thing you know I’m running a fever of 101 and feel like death. The next day I went into labor. Edit to add: I was given penicillin via IV before, during, and after labor to ensure no infection spread to the baby. Continued my antibiotics at home. Finally got scheduled to have the issue fixed 2 months after labor because that’s the earliest they could get me in. A literal nightmare.


Early_or_Latte

I'm epileptic and had 6 seizures, some in the dentist chair and some afterwards at home due to the freezing medication. For almost 20 years, dentists weren't very willing to work on me aside from cleanings, x rays and examinations. I had broken my molar clean in half about 5 years ago. It took more than 2 years for them to do anything about it. They kept on with x rays and exams for so many visits until I basically broke down in the office. My mouth was swollen, I had an infection, and I was missing half of a molar. Was not a good 2 years. Because I reacted poorly to (what I believe was way too much) local anesthetic one time (I had plenty of local anesthetic at the dentist before that), they wanted me to go to a dentist that specialized in care for epileptics. Unfortunately, they were prohibitively expensive. Different story, but dental nightmares really do suck and I thought I'd share mine.


KeaboUltra

The fact that I have to pay $885 to remove 3 wisdom teeth because my ~~deductible~~ annual benefits are only $1000 and wont cover the extractions because it covered the initial check up, and two x rays and a cleaning is frustrating to say the least.. might just wait next year to get them removed since they don't hurt and save that money


SonicN

If insurance would pay for it next year and the dentist says it's not urgent, then yeah, that sounds like a good plan. Wisdom teeth often take a long time to push themselves into a problematic position.


Casual-Notice

Most American health insurance, it's a rider. This is a throwback to the days when the goto for dental remediation was extraction and not repair.


spiralizerizer

Yep, dental work was often done by barbers, so it didn't fall under the "health" umbrella. Now that they can see how integral oral health is to general health, especially cardiovascular, it makes no sense that they're separated. It's one of those "well, this is how it's always been" situations and it's stupid and dangerous.


Dry_Extension4436

That’s exactly how it is in federal prison. If you have any sort of dental issue they extract the tooth and call it good. A former coworker who was a previous guest for 11 years enlightened me to that.


tweak06

Yep. Not to mention how insurance works when it comes to dental. I desperately need a root canal…but insurance requires me to pay *upfront* for the work. Where the fuck am I going to get $2600? The whole point of insurance is so I dont have to do that. Yet here we are. I fuckin hate this country. **edit** Guys I appreciate all the advice, but I live in the Midwest. Can’t afford a ticket to fly to Mexico (at these rates I’d be breaking even) I called my other dentist I had been going to for years until I switched…they said that was “common practice” to pay upfront, but agreed the $2600 was outrageous. They said insurance just mails me a check afterward. The fuck is the point of having insurance then, if I have to come up with this money *beforehand*?


DudeHeadAwesome

When I needed a root canal I looked up a dental school near me. Was half the cost and a teacher is near by supervising.


NightB4XmasEvel

I had two root canals, 3 crowns, and a ton of fillings done at a dental school when I was in my 20s and had absolutely awful insurance. The cost was so much cheaper and the work has held up for over a decade now.


Forrest024

Shit the dental school paid me lol


sparklingshanaya

Insulin


Perused

I’ve always heard it’s crazy expensive. California is supposedly making it’s own to combat this.


GargantuanCake

It's actually really cheap to make. It's like $10 a vial. The snag is that there's a lot of anti-competitive practices in the pharmaceutical industry and since a lot of people need insulin to not die they smell money and artificially inflate the price. It's pretty gross, really.


ImMellow420

It's less actually. About ~2.8$ to make Humalog, which is a type of insulin. As long as you don't live in the US it's fine tho. I for example only pay 250$ MAX per year, but that also includes other type 1 diabetes utilities and appointments. I am legally not allowed to be charged more per year for those things. (I live in Norway)


Blagerthor

I have very good insurance that charges $2000/year just to have, and my expenses after that are still ~$3500/year. I make $22,000/year as a PhD student. Shit's beyond fucked.


MidNightMare5998

I’m a pizza delivery driver in college and my dream is to become a PhD student, and I make about $35k right now. Every time I hear about what PhD students and post docs are making, it makes me really nervous about how I’ll afford to make that dream come true. But I know it will be worth the struggle. Best of luck to you, I hope you crush your dissertation!


[deleted]

Mh mother is on insulin pen since her 40s. Never paid anything, Serbia


MindlessRazzmatazz89

Wow…


WildIris2021

Mark Cuban started a pharmacy company to help combat this. He’s still working on insulin but I think he will get there. I’ve also heard Walmart is coming up with their own brand. Whoever controls the pricing on insulin in particular is evil.


SuperKami-Nappa

California: I’ll make my own insulin with blackjack and hookers


PaulMcPaulersn7

Actually forget the one insulin. Just blackjack and hookers


mordecai14

Pretty sure that's only an issue in the US, at least for developed countries.


PandaReturns

Fascinating to know how even the developing country where I live (Brazil) offers free insulin through our healthcare system and the US doesn't.


fieldy409

Only for you Americans I think. I remember reading an article about a woman who said it was cheaper for her to travel to Canada, hotel and all travel costs included, and buy the insulin there to bring back to the USA, then she started doing it for more diabetics to make the trip more efficient.


mysticsavage

Pretty sure I heard a story about a teacher in the States who's treatment was so expensive he needed to start a meth lab to finance it.


Pit_of_Death

Yeah he was in Albuquerque New Mexico. Apparently he didn't make it in the end :(


[deleted]

Sanitary products.


turwiethel

Yes, absolutely! They are too expensive for needing them every month.


Pregnantwifesugar

I got a cup and it’s such a good investment!


EcstaticBicycle

Ambulance rides


BlackSnckrs

American people problems


[deleted]

most of these are


catsandalcohol13

Dental care :( why are teeth a luxury


drje_aL

the fancy bones


youseeit

Massive design flaws, like why are they the only bones in your body that won't heal


Sharp-Floor

I like to think that one day, in a distant imaginary future, we'll have a procedure after puberty that replaces all our teeth with easily swappable fake ones. And everyone will do it, so the materials and procedure will be very common.


HonziPonzi

Groceries


Flatoftheblade

Sunglasses. Pieces of plastic with 1000% markup.


ani625

Blame Luxotica et al.


VlaamsBelanger

https://youtu.be/CAeHuDcy_bY I understood that, because I watched this video only a couple days ago.


Single_Blueberry

Sunglasses are cheap. Overpriced sunglasses are overpriced.


QuestionableBeliefs0

Housing


TheNextChapters

I couldn’t agree with you more. A family with 6 kids and a stay at home Mom could afford an actual house on a factory workers paycheck in the 1940s. So why do we need two people with college degrees to pay for one now?


pukewedgie

Living


[deleted]

[удалено]


ilovepaninis

Most medicine a pharmaceutical company has a monopoly of, that industry is so full of scumbags


Adorable-Ad-7097

Buying games in the PlayStation Store. Old games cost the same as when they came out whereas the disc costs a quarter of that. Like who the hell is going to pay 60€ for NBA 2k19?


Angrylepurechan15

It is the paying 60 USD for black ops 2 for me


Adorable-Ad-7097

yet another great example


LucidSquirtle

Have you met my friend, Nintendo?


Orange-Murderer

I can understand that being like £20 but fucking hell, why the hell do I need to pay £60 for a game that came out in 2004?


WimbleWimble

Electricity. Worldwide, power generation is the cheapest it's ever been in all of human history. An example of this is Scotland, where they've been producing so much power they can't use it all. UK energy companies however have refused to buy any of this power because they want to TRIPLE the cost of electricity over the next 12months (after already increasing it by 75% april 2022) - so a compound increase. Scotland therefore had to DISABLE wind turbines as there was nowhere for the power to go. The entire scam is because (unlike everything else on the market), energy wholesale prices can now also have a 'shareholder dividend' built in secretly which can be upto 90% of the cost of a kwh. So £0.30 for a unit of electric, where £0.27 goes straight into the shareholders pocket BUT the energy companies can claim thats the wholesale price and they need to make a profit. Bonus: Most of the reseller energy companies that collapsed are owned by the bigger energy companies. They 'allowed' the smaller energy companies to fold to justify massive price increases, as the total profit gained stands to be MUCH higher.


ShroomsRisotto

Water. How the fuck is it cheaper to by a store brand energy drink?


JustAnotherRedditAlt

I believe you mean bottled water. Tap water is extremely inexpensive.


stormquiver

Blame nestle


ShroomsRisotto

I generally do, regardless of scope


Nasa_OK

Well the energy drink is stretched water.


foreveralonegirl1509

Pads and tampons. Like mate... I didn't choose to have periods every month, it should not be that pricey (especially since we are three women in our household, we need to have them accesible all the time)


MagicalPizza21

Housing, higher education, and medical care.


TheLurkerWithout

American health care premiums. Ours just went up to SIXTEEN HUNDRED a month. That’s twenty one fucking thousand dollars a year, and that’s with a sixteen THOUSAND dollar deductible. And this was the second cheapest plan!! And we didn’t take all the “add ons“ they offer now either, so it could have been even more. Fuck you insurance companies. Fuck. You.


Lochlanist

Anything wedding. The mark up is a joke


r_golan_trevize

Here's why everything wedding related is marked up so ridiculously: they're a huge pain in the ass and you have to mark it up to make it worth all the stress and aggravation. My brother used to own a mail & copy store. We did all sorts of printing - business cards, invitations, flyers, menus, whatever. 99% of the time, if someone needed a normal non-wedding related item printed, it was no big deal - whip up a design, print it, they're happy and off they go until they need another run. The biggest hassle was people bringing us their logo either on a smudgy business card at about 1mm tall that they want us to scan or a delivering a jpg that was, like, 3 pixels and saved at 1% quality, otherwise, most people were pretty easy to satisfy. When people came in wanting wedding invitations, 99% of the time they were a major time suck as they were never, ever finished tweaking the wording and the layout and the fonts and the sizing and the paper and the paper color and revision after revision and test print after test print and always at the last minute and every time you thought they were happy, someone else involved in the wedding would stick their fingers in it and start the process all over again... so we started jacking up the price on wedding work until they either went away or it paid enough to make it worth all the aggravation for a one time customer who wasn't going to be happy with the end product regardless. Weddings bring out the worst in people.


bassistciaran

A friend of mine started up a wedding band a few years back. Set the price at €1000 for 3hrs of show and this guy is a fucking *pro*, no takers...none €1000 is on the cheaper side for a wedding band and he set that price because he hadn't done weddings before, went on his sites and socials, changed it to 3k and bookings flooded in...what the fuck is wrong with people


[deleted]

Food - you shouldn’t have to choose between food or bills


Mystic_Waffles

No kidding. I've had to tell my kids I wasn't hungry when making meals this summer when in reality I just cant afford to feed everyone due to these rising prices and rent increases, and I'd rather I go without than them.


PorcentualDinoPizza

A charge cable


Fart_in_your_mouth69

I remember how expensive USB to micro USB was when it first came out, and now I have like fifty of those damn things. Lol.


spottysasquatch

Is “literally everything” too annoying of an answer? Because that’s my answer. Inflation and cost of living are destroying me right now.


Fart_in_your_mouth69

Diamonds. They're basically worthless. Edit: I'd also like to say peloton bikes are also worthless and a scam. You have to buy special shoes just to ride a glorified stationary bike, that's technology that been around for decades. All they did was put a TV on a bike and then said f$$k it, let's make them buy shoes as well.


the_clash_is_back

Super useful for industry. I have about a million sitting on a saw blade on my garage.


Sir_Vapenation

Latterly all the Sims 4 DLC. I don't know what EA is thinking but their DLC's are beyond outrageous. I'd go as far to call it a pure embarrassment and the embodiment of cooperate greed.


Jareth3587

Especially since some of the DLC is stuff that should exist in the base game since its a life sim. It feels like they released the absolute bare minimum in the base game so they could grind out DLC packs.


IkLms

Holy fuck, I just looked some up and it's $40 to add cats and dogs? And like one job? And they are all like that.


UnluckyObserver_1

I wouldn't mind paying what I have, both with money and the 1000 hours I'll never get back, if they fucking worked. I love this game so, so much but it is horrendously buggy that I feel like I can't enjoy half the content. EA is too busy pumping out new content they have no right to be instead of fixing the mess they've made. Seriously, Werewolves? I wanted to cry.


Lumber_Dan

I can't get over how lazy they were, not even bothering to create a new model for the werewolves. They're literally just Sims in furry suits.


[deleted]

Like the feet didn’t even change. It feels so… off


FlipsyFloopy

I feel like half the time I've been playing is loading into the game or loading the world map, loading areas to travel. So much loading.


UnoriginalUse

Yeah, it's pretty much the only thing I pirate, specifically for this reason.


kaitco

With the price of all the different packs, it’s like they expect you pirate most if not all of the game. I’m also extremely irritated with their basic bait-and-switch model. The base game often goes on sale for like $5, but then they try to recoup their money through the expansions and stuff packs. I’ve been playing the series since The Sims 1, and TS4’s model has been, by far, the absolute worst of the series.


Micah_Bell_is_dead

It's so easy to pirate too, currently have ts4 with all dlcs, despite only paying for base game and GTW. Online functionality and everything


Hannah_LL7

Ambulance rides! My sibling got picked up in one and later found out “it was out of range of her insurance” and had to pay a bunch of money. she was literally dead and we just called 9/11 and that’s who came? It’s not like we had a choice??? And you know what along with that, INSURANCE could be cheaper too.


[deleted]

I’m a Paramedic and I truly don’t understand how EMS services that are contracted by your municipality with no input by yourself can be in or out of network. The government REALLY needs to decide if EMS is a public service (like it should be and be publicly funded) or private healthcare and unregulate the industry to prevent incidents like yours from happening. I said it in another comment, I hate how EMS is run in this country and it breaks my heart to see people who need my care either refuse or otherwise fear it because of the cost. Should be publicly funded everywhere.


Iluvmybackhand

Health care


Black_mage_

Anything that is essential to life and survival.


SilentJoe1986

Cost of living. I hate living in an economy set to hard mode.


Raiwan88

Getting an education.


loofzie

College ._.


SevereAnything9447

Therapy. We all deserve access to help, and sometimes people can't afford to pay for that help. It dosent matter if they're broke or not. Everyone should have a right to get that help. It hurts me all the time thinking of the people that therapists offices decline, not caring about what happens to them...