To ask you to tell me the bad things about living in America?

[Witchofzog]

Ever since I was a child I thought I would live in America. Any visits I have made there reinforced how much I love it there (I am aware a holiday is not real life) but for various reasons it never happenned. I am now early forties with a mild heart condition and I am aware it is probably too late for me now.

I went to uni with a lovely woman who has literally got the life I wanted. She now lives in a sunny state with her husband who is handsome AND kind and has made lots of friends out there. And I am both happy for her and envious as hell. I know comparison is the thief of joy but today I have been unhealthily fixated on how her life compares to mine and I find mine sadly lacking. I will pick myself up tomorrow, re-evaluate and am already thinking of what I can do to make my own life better but still I feel sad that I never achieved my dream.

Please be kind. My uni friend is beautiful inside and out and she deserves everything she has - and she worked hard for it. But I really need to snap out of this somehow hence asking for the bad things about living stateside. I am aware my spectacles may be rose tinted so some perspective would be really helpful

I haven't lived in the USA, but I have lived in quite a few countries around the world, so I thought I could still give some useful insight.

Assuming we are only comparing developed countries, life isn't drastically better or worse anywhere. It's all what you make of it. So many things make up a country - education systems, health care, social attitudes, religion, employment opportunities, climate/weather, house prices, crime rates, population density etc... when you move from one country to another you get to wave goodbye to a whole bunch of headaches from your home country, which feels great, but you say hello to a whole bunch of new problems, some of which you may not have had to face before. It really depends on what you want as an individual.

Moving to a new country does not make you happy. I love where I live now and I'm glad I moved over here, but I still have a "normal" life. I have bills to pay, I still have the same health issues I had in the UK, and my husband and I still argue about the same shit. We're just dealing with it all in a different setting.

Hope that helps.

I'm an American who is in the opposite position, I always sort of thought/hoped I'd end up living in the UK, Scotland is my favorite, and it almost happened for me. I could have definitely done it, but the man I'd have married to do it wasn't my true love, although he was lovely and there were times before I met my current husband that I really thought I'd been a fool for not trying to lock that down!

@Mathanxiety....I work.for a.major hospital in my state part time and I own a care agency where my employees just got a 1.50 raise thanks to Covid so they are up to 12 bucks and I pay for their health insurance. For every year of service after their first year they get an additional week of vacation. Some of my employees have more paid time off than I do.

Just before Vivid struck a member here was complaining about the wait for fall bladder removal. That's a next day procedure here.

No it's not. I had my gallbladder out (BlueX Blue Shield PPO insurance) and it took several weeks and grotesquely unnecessary testing (barium swallow to rule out an ulcer, among other dead ends) before I had my diagnosis and surgery. I wanted a surgeon who would do keyhole surgery and it was surprising how many didn't do that, even though my Dsis had had hers out in Dublin that way. University hospital, very big city. The US can be behind many important trends.

I know people who couldn't get the time off work for scheduled surgery and had to wait six weeks or more, depending on their industry's cycles. In my case, finding childcare was a stumbling block. My exH couldn't get time off to take care of our DD.

Just before Vivid struck a member here was complaining about the wait for fall bladder removal. That's a next day procedure here.

Italics.

$12 per hour squeaks past the living wage threshold for NC for a single adult with no children by 2 cents iirc. (According to the MIT calculator).
Would many of your employees qualify for food stamps and/or Medicaid at $12/hour?

@Mathanxiety...My employees wouldn't qualify for Medicaid at 8.00 dollars and hour and food stamps only if they have children. Lord knows they tried. Which is why I pay for their health insurance. They pay nothing. At 12 who knows. 2 years ago due to the Medicaid reimbursement rate they were barely making 9 which is a whole dollar more than people living closer to Raleigh with a much higher cost of living. My employees are treated as fairly as possible and with as much respect as possible. Thank you for your concern

@mathanxiety...I can't help of that is the truth. Excuse the typos. You go into ED complaint of ball bladder pain you get an ekg,an ultrasound and a surgeon called. That is not the way it is in Canada or the UK

Leaannb that's not actually true, either.
I went to ED in the UK and they suspected gallbladder issues.
I had an ECG. I saw a surgeon after I saw the ED doctor. They brought me back 2 days later for an ultrasound and to be reviewed in a clinic. Turns. out it was something else, though.
The ultrasound wasn't urgent enough to need to be done that very day. If it had been, it would have been.

Guns.
Trump.

That’s pretty bad. Boris and knives are nothing in comparison.

To be fair to Americans, more of them voted for Hilary Clinton than Trump. It was the way their electoral system works that ensured they ended up with him.

Effectively, you have to be incredibly poor in the US to qualify for welfare. You can be just about keeping the wolf from the door and qualify for no welfare at all. It's that all-or-nothing part that makes the US stand out, and not in a good way, from the rest of the world. Taxpayers eventually pay the cost of stress related illness and inability to afford good quality food, housing, or consistent medical care and medicine. The short sighted choice always wins out, boosted by a deep-seated Puritan belief that poverty and poor health are visited by God on those not deserving of his favour.

Americans are so afraid of 'socialism' that they won't countenance universal healthcare don't seem to know or understand that American companies are in competition with companies operating in countries where universal healthcare means companies don't have to shoulder the burden of providing or administering it. The competition has more money to invest in R&D, can afford to price products competitively, spend more on marketing, advertisement, etc... Single payer, universal healthcare is a policy that should appeal to anyone who cares about business, but sadly America is still living the Cold War.

@allfurcoatnoknickers my friend does not work in a hospital- I never said she did. She works for the very contentious PP.
Protests are common outside and shootings do happen. She feels she is doing a public service and has mentioned that having an IUD fitted costs about 800bucks (subsidised). Ridiculous when people are protesting terminations too.

You go into ED complaint of ball bladder pain you get an ekg,an ultrasound and a surgeon called.

I am 55 and my friends and I have had our fair share of medical ups and downs. Not a single one of us has had a snap-your-fingers experience of the sort you described. We all had insurance. Actually, the only person I know who got anywhere near any high tech scanning after arriving at an ER was my DS who had a MCI injury on one occasion and a concussion the other time. Maybe it helps if you arrive in your HS football uniform.

If you go to an ER complaining of abdominal pain, you will more than likely leave with a recommendation for Maalox and advice to go to a family doctor (after they have asked you if you are pregnant).

You go into ED complaint of ball bladder pain you get an ekg,an ultrasound and a surgeon called. That is not the way it is in Canada or the UK

If you go to emergency in my province in Canada with pain that appears to be a diseased gall bladder, you will get tests to confirm what the medical issue is. You will be admitted for surgery if it's an emergency. If it's not an emergency, you'll be advised to see your GP for further treatment.

OP, I feel for you and see where you’re coming from. I think that many of us have grown up on the image of the USA that we saw on TV, where it was always sunny, everyone was smiling, houses were big, etc. So when you see someone on social media, on a sunny day, it can be easy to imagine they’re growing up in that “dream” world that we saw as children on TV.

The wisest thing that anyone said to me about relocating, and I agree as someone who has moved countries, is that the only constant in any move is you.

Dual-national here who has lived in the UK for 17 years, lived in Chicago my whole life before coming here.

Three words: 'employment at will'

In employment at will states, your employer can fire you for absolutely no reason at all as long as it's not discriminatory (age, race, etc). Your employer does not need good cause to fire you.

Also, and this may not be a factor for OP but for anyone who is interested, university costs are WOWZA. Undergrad degrees are four years, not three.

The yearly cost of the university I went to, tuition, room & board etc is currently $78,654. Now multiple that by four.

The culture was (and still is?) insanely competitive about the stupidest things. I have family members who will drive around a mall parking lot for AGES looking for the 'best' parking space rather than just park where there is space because 'look at what a good space I got, suckers'.

Between that and the thought of losing your job for nothing, you're just walking on eggshells all the time.

I won't even get into health insurance and the insanity of having to deal with in-network/out-of-network, negotiating bills, etc. HELLO, YOU'RE SICK! Last thing you want to deal with are staggering bills.

I've been over here 14 years now. The first two were so lonely and herd adjusting because it is a lot more foreign than I was prepared for. I was in Hampton Roads, Va so a fairly touristy area of beaches and it never stopped feeling like a holiday destination the whole time I lived there, even though we grew accustomed to it. We were very happy there, but there was a lot to dislike. Mosquitos most of the year, we drove through a tornado once that appeared out of nowhere, we were.literally on our way to the pool as it seemed a nice day then bang, tree branches hurling at our car and swirling all around us for a terrifying minute...
Still, for the most part, it was nice and our area was fairly liberal too. Bad things were never being able to afford doctor visits unless we were seriously sick as our copay was $75 per visit plus prescriptions... one time I had to take an antibiotic that cost $250. Another time I waa prescribed an anti nausea pill in the ER that I couldn't take because they cost $400! My son got pneumonia and had 3 weeks in hospital with an ICU stay and an operation. The bill was over 65k. After insurance we still owed thousands.

Then we moved to Philly. Obamacare meant changes to health plans that were good for some, but bad for us. Suddenly our plan would cost $1,400 a month for me and three kids. Husband was covered by enployer and a lot cheaper as females are penalized for having a womb. So we had to drop health coverage. We haven't been insured for 3 years. I have RA and haven't been able to get any treatment for it in years. We do have low cost clinics here for getting anti buotics, but one major illness will cost us our house. COVID19 is especially scary for us.

Then there is the constant need to update visas at large cost and effort, drivers licenses constantly running out, the difficulty establishing credit rating in a foreign country. And on top of that crap is the embarrassment of the government and Trump, the daily shit show of how he messes up the country and the crappiness of this city. If I could turn back time we would never have moved to Philly. The streets are paved in trash and my crime app pings alerts 20 times a day for my area. The guy 2 doors down was shot and killed last xmas outside the corner shop. The house on the corner is a crack house full of squatters and hookers and crack heads visit multiple times a day. Every month or so there is a cop raid on it. Next day it is business as usual. Gunfire is so ckmmon all the kids know the difference vetween gunshots and fireworks nd gas explosions... when it is gunfire they all scatter for home, but anything else and it brely makes them pause their games.

There is a pool around the corner which is free in summer. We went a few times. Then the 18 year old life guard made a kid get out for cursing so much. He went home, came back with his whole family who beat the shit out of the poor female life guard simply for 'disrespecting' their kid. This sort of thing is common here and why we can't have nice things... the pool was closed for the rest of the summer. oh, and my kids have school shooter and tornado drills regularly in school. One girl in my daughter's school was shot on her way into school by a stray bullet and the school was in lockdown for 2 hours, the kids didn't know it wasn't a school shooter for hours. My kid was sat under a desk too scared to remember she had a phone in her pocket. The girl beside her was crying loudky and writing a goodbye note to her parents. My kid was scared the crying would draw a shooter to their classroom.

It just isn't the life I imagined growing up on a diet of Saved By The Bell and California Dreams. And it gets a bit worse each year.

Here:

www.gunviolencearchive.org

Oh, I have to disagree about the ER gall bladder scenario people though. I literally had that scenario. Gall stones I had known about for years back in uk, but had been on a 6 month waiting list for surgery. My surgery date was finally set for my wedding day so I obviously couldn't take it, and went to the back of the list. Stupid system. So 5 years later in America I flared up again while on vacation. Drove myself to ER since the taxi refused to pick me up in case I threw up. Walked in, and was given morphine within 20 minutes of arrival, then an ultrasound within an hour. Next morning I was operated on and released that same night. All very fast and efficient and with private room etc. Same sort of thing when i had a baby here. The insurance system does provide a more comfortable hospital experience, in nice areas and with good insuurance.

You get very little annual leave from work. When I lived stateside you were doing well if you get 20 days per year. Many places didn't give any annual leave until after a year of working there.

You get fined for every traffic violation possible. Parked the wrong way... didn't come to an absolute dead stop at a stop sign... speed limits are very low... you name it you can be fined for it.

Working in offices with no A/C - totally miserable with temperatures in high 30s. Humidity unbearable.

Snow days very rarely called. Doesn't matter if you have 2 feet of snow! Get to work!!

No good shops - dreadful fashion sense and very little choice outside larger cities.

Bread is awful, chocolate is vile. No Heinz baked beans or Heinz salad cream.

It's just so big... no sense of 'being together'.

Guns

Lack of health care

High property taxes

High Crime Rate from mugging, drive by shootings, car hacking, home invasions, murder

trump

Racism

Guns again (in the sense of mass shootings When you’re out and about be it shopping, at a concert, in a park )

FDA approving all sorts of rubbish in foods that are banned in most other countries. Plus pesticides in food.

Guns again (school shootings)

Trump - in relation to carona virus

Americans tend to avoid the ER because it can cost so much.

All those tests for, say, gallstones, are charged separately. The ER doctor might or might not be an employee of the hospital, might be part of a group who will bill separately from the hospital bill, and then a radiologist you will never have met (because radiology...) but who has reviewed your scans, etc., will send his bill on top of everything else.

Someone living here would go to a family doctor or an internal medicine doctor and they would order tests and send you home to schedule them at a hospital, send blood work to a lab, wait for results, see you again, tell you what was inconclusive/ had been ruled out/their diagnosis, tell you what they were going to test you for next time at the hospital, send you home to schedule that, or tell you what was wrong with you and send you home to phone a surgeon and make arrangements for a consultation at which the surgeon would go over your notes, maybe order more lab work, and then try to schedule your surgery.

Every time you crossed a doctor's threshold you would incur a bill, and all lab tests and other tests and analysis would also be billed. After your surgery you would get bills from your surgeon, from the hospital for hospital services, and from the anesthesiologist. Still cheaper then the ER in many cases.

I've only really visited cities in the USA so my experience is somewhat limited, but the main points that would put me off are:

Health and social care. The level of homelessness just astounded me. People left to fend on the streets who mentally were not capable of caring for themselves. Met an ex-veteran who lived on the streets - the loveliest guy - and there was just no way out of that life for him. As a pp said, if you're on top over there it's ok, but I also wouldn't want to be the person on top when the people on the bottom live like that.

The work culture. Barely any holiday and then some of it used for work events or sick days. Most Americans we spoke to (who also were on holiday) the first question to us (other than our names) was "what job do you do?" A few seemed proud to have not fully used their full holiday allowance that year. Everything was very work based, we,being on holiday to escape work, were a bit

I used to work in Germany with lots of US expats and it really surprised me back then how none of them wanted to return. It is easy to take all our employment and welfare rights for granted and Germany is particularly generous in that department, but for many of them the biggest issue was holidays. They got very little paid holiday for starters and often taking a fortnight off was frowned upon. This of course has big impacts on your downtime and your personal/family life. Having worked for a big US corporation I experienced first hand how employees were duhumanized to drive shareholder return. I agree with another poster that the US is a failed state; I actually think it is one of the most dysfunctional countries on earth.