I have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for what is sometimes mediocre medical care. I have to pay tens of thousands to dollars for education and a degree that doesn't even guarantee I get a job or the career I want. I could end up working at the same place as someone who dropped out of middle school. I don't get proper help from our government because my family income is too much to get assistance but not enough to pay for things ourselves. I don't get full financial aid for school because my family isn't poor enough, but I sure as hell couldn't pay for college by myself. Have you seen how much college tuition is these days?
Teenagers are encouraged to apply to colleges. It's drilled into their heads before they even start high school. Work hard, get good grades, keep your GPA up, do well on the SAT or ACT, and you'll be accepted. What they're not warned is that being accepted into college isn't the same thing as paying for college. I made a 1900 on the SAT and had a 4.25 average GPA throughout high school, but that didn't help me too much. Sure, there are scholarships and grants that you don't have to pay back, but they're not as easy to get as you think. I applied for plenty of scholarships and grants and only received two. Also, books for college classes are ridiculously overpriced. $600 for a text book? $100 for a lab manual? And not everyone is a full-ride athlete. There's this stigma that if you don't go to college after high school then you aren't doing anything with your life... Well, maybe it just isn't for everyone. Certainly not everyone can afford it. Some people can't even afford to apply to colleges. I remember three years ago, I probably spent close to $1000 just applying to colleges. The average college application fee is $200. And yes, that's non-refundable. That's ridiculous! Paying $200 to a school that I MIGHT go to? That I might not even be accepted into? That might just be my back-up school? Society wants high school graduates to so badly attend college and have the college experience but doesn't care about the amount of debt they'll be in four years later.
This country loans money to kids that they know will never ever be able to pay that money back. Not every college graduate lands a job right after graduation and has a six figure salary to start paying back loans before that lovely interest kicks in. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Don't get me started on medical care. Appointment after appointment, doctor after doctor, bill after bill. You're charged for EVERY. LITTLE. THING. Every opinion, every pill, every night you spend in the hospital, every prescription, every time you get your blood pressure checked, your finger pricked, your temperature taken. Insurance helps, but it's not a life saver. I didn't do anything to get cancer. I never smoked, I was active, I pretty much ate healthy. I didn't ask for any of this, certainly not hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical care that sometimes I question if it's even worth to keep getting.
I don't know, maybe this is just my opinion, but things seem backwards to me. People who are just too lazy to work receive huge amounts of disability money, when people who REALLY need it don't get approved. People who don't really need food stamps are able to get them and sell or trade them for drugs or money. People apply for student loans and take the money and run and never go to college or pay the money back. People who are addicted to prescription drugs are able to get free medical care and Medicaid to get drugs that other people actually NEED. Women are able to have kids they don't care about taking care of, just to get a check from the government every month. But hey, as long as you can buy that $700 pocket book, your baby doesn't need milk or diapers, it's okay.
This isn't about politics or placing blame on someone or a political party, but just realizing that this country is in a bad place and something needs to be done about it. I guess it just took getting sick and leaving college for me to realize it.
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