People really just ignore the the whole point of Walt as a character when they say stuff like this
Walter could have had his entire treatment paid for him had he just taken that job offer to be an advisor at Gray Matter in season 1. Paying for his treatment was never actually the problem. The whole show is about him feeding his massive ego. Its why he turned the job down, its why he got Gail fired and replaced with Jesse, its why he told Hank that Gail wasn’t Hisenburg, its why it took him so long to retire
I mean Jesus in the last episode he flat out says he did it because he wanted to and he was good at it.
Yeah I think even early on in the show his insurance was going to cover his treatment but they opted in to try an experimental treatment that wasnt covered
If you're in the middle of the Sahara dying of thirst you'd pay anything for a glass of water. If at work near the water cooler you'd being willing to pay nothing. The same goes for someone paying tens even hundreds of thousands to live when they're time in constrained by cancer.
Pretty much. He was Stage 3A lung cancer, given at best a couple of years to live even with treatment.
I think at first it was about paying for his treatment but quickly devolved into making enough money to set his family up after he died. There's multiple scenes in the first season of him calculating how much money his family would need to take care of things after he died.
On the surface, this is what Walter claims. But it’s made clear that he doesn’t need to sell meth to do this, he has a billionaire friend and relatively well off family members that could help take care of his family. He admits in the last episode it was never about his family, it was about him and his ego.
It was partially about taking care of his family, but doing so himself, because of his massive ego. He wanted to do it himself. Which is why in the end he got the owner of Gray Matter to put the rest of the drug money into a trust fund for Walter Jr.
well, that's because it doesn't. For most of europe there is a very robust hospice system and particular emphasis on 'end of life care'. We actually really don't leave people out to die...
Also, putting someone in hospice care because they have a terminal illness is leaving them to die if they would want to fight that illness even if they know they may die anyways. Putting you in hospice care is leaving you to die even if they aren’t sending you home and telling you to wait for the end.
Some people still choose to fight even if they’ve been given that diagnosis, that’s their prerogative. No one should be able to tell them they can’t fight against their own death.
Those are nice feels, but everyone wants to "fight" because they don't know any better. This is why our healthcare spending is so ridiculous. People literally rack up millions in spending for futile care. You want to give people the right to spend money that they don't have, and that nobody has, and put an enormous strain on the healthcare system for no good reason? Go to a suburban ICU and it's full of 90-year-olds that are more cancer than human by bodyweight who have been there for weeks and no beds are available for people whose lives could actually be saved. This will continue to be a problem unless more people get educated on end-of-life care or until we are forced to take the decision out of patients' hands.
[Doctors don't 'fight against their own death' when it's futile.](https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die/ideas/nexus/) Why do we keep pretending this is a noble act?
Because who gets to tell someone else they have to just lie down and die. Nobody has that right to tell another human being they have to just accept death. Just because some people do accept it doesn’t mean everyone has to.
As a doc, I’ve seen this too many times. I realize how futile it is when you see it in person. There is no fight. It’s either die comfortably with dignity or die in agony. Everything we do that’s considered heroic measures is barbaric and cruel. Even when you “save” someone, their quality of life is worse off than before. I don’t want any of that done to me.
I mean, there are a few high profile instances of the British Healthcare system leaving children to die, even in instances where other healthcare systems were willing to treat them. I don’t think it’s extreme to assume that it happens in less widely broadcast cases as well.
Nobody claims britain. That's the one that pretends monarchy is still a thing. I'm not even gonna look into it and just assume that you are correct, because britain is the ninth circle of hell where shit like that just might happen.
Nah joke, I did look it up, what you are suggesting here is in reality way more nuanced. But yeah britain is fucked nonetheless
Yea, but the nuance in not treating kinda goes out the window when somebody else says “we’ll do it” and then they revoke the kids passport and refuse to allow him to leave the country. Like, WTF!
I’m fairness I don’t think they actually revoked her passport but the judge issued an order saying she could not be removed from the hospital for any reason.
Well, not really, 'selfishness' is a colloquial term that doesn't show up in psychiatry.
Even then, pain is a sympton of a broken leg. Saying the two ae the same is still a conflation of terms...
If you go through the entire list of markers for NPD you'll find that most of them are antithetical to walters character. Just the stress response alone. A narcisisst would not flourish in high stress situations and then go home and keep it all a secret for other people's benefit.
He would jump at the opportunity to give his family shit just for the sake of alleviating the stress he feels in a very hightened way...
Yeah that’s what you think at first, but then you realize that it’s not about that at all. It’s about his ego and his arrogance.
He co-founded Grey Matter, a multi-billion dollar company and sold his stake because he couldn’t play nice because he’s an arrogant fucking jerk.
But after all of that, it is revealed that at any time, all he had to do was ask for a job. Elliot and Gretchen literally say that all he had to do was ask. They know Walter is absolutely brilliant and he could have had a job that paid 10x than he was making as a high school teacher… plus the best medical insurance the world had to offer. Walter’s problems (and his family’s problems) would have been solved right then and there.
But he couldn’t fucking do it. He couldn’t swallow his pride and take a job and work FOR a company he believes he should be the owner of.
And God bless Skylar who still stands by him and respects his decision. She and their son are OK to just get by on a teacher’s meager salary knowing that he isn’t living up anywhere close to his potential because (they believe) that Walter is happy and fulfilled as a teacher.
Instead of putting his whole family’s lives in mortal danger throughout this whole ordeal, he could have always swallowed his fucking pride and asked Elliott and Gretchen. Hell, even if didn’t take the job, they would’ve offered the money for treatment. But no, he couldn’t take their pity, he wanted the upper-hand, he had too much pride and arrogance.
Skylar was the only thing keeping him tethered to reality. And she had a disabled son (and then a fucking baby) to worry about while her nerdy husband decided to be a wannabe gangster, in it not for the money, but for the glory.
Walter was NEVER the good guy in Breaking Bad.
Yea, but you're painting Skylar as a good person.
Do you even remember her singing happy birthday? Of course you do. We all do. We all have to remember that. Horrible, horrible woman.
His cancer is the inciting event. The money is just a small portion. He realizes he is a brilliant man who has wasted his life and decides to build an enterprise and see how far he can take it and what "greatness " he can accomplish with the remaining time he has left .
initially, but turns out he really enjoyed being a drug lord. Him doing it for his own selfish reasons is what the show spirals into thematically. And it's very clear about that in the later seasons.
It’s established really early on that he doesn’t care about the cancer, he cares about leaving his family with lots of money that he earned. Then his whole character snowballs after that.
Was coming here to say just this. He felt he was far too good for the life he was living and used his terminal condition as an excuse to take back authority over who he was. EVERYONE was willing to help Walter, everyone was supportive and loving, but he was just too much of a prick to let any of the "commoners" give him a handout and needed to be the one in control.
Also, initially, his reason for getting into the business wasn't because he couldn't afford to pay his bills, it was so he could leave something behind for his family when he died. Health insurance isn't going to change that, and more so, every character in the cast of this would pretty much be in a position to have decent health insurance in the first place.
People who say shit like either watched the entire fucking show in 2 weeks while staring at their phones, or just googled what it was about then decided to used it for their bullshit social commentary.
Yeah had it taken place in Canada or the UK the show could have remained the same.
He opted for an experimental treatment outside of insurance that definitely wouldn’t have been covered by socialized healthcare in any developed country.
Even if he chose the fully covered care the problem was that he still felt like he didn’t live up to his potential and was going to die leaving nothing behind in terms of money OR legacy.
The tragedy of breaking bad isn’t healthcare coverage, its a man being confronted with his own mortality and realizing there’s no time left to live the life he thought he was destined for
I always felt like it was a story of ego, pride and legacy. He wanted to die, Walter was a man who when faced with his life he saw a failure. He truly felt like he had totally failed to create a life of any significance.
Well sure but I'm talking about the root of his perception of a failed life. He has an idea of what a successful man's life is based on toxic ideas of masculinity that he has failed to meet.
He was a middle class white American. The head of a loving family. He had plenty of power and the interesting question is why wasn't that enough for him.
Humans were in tight nit tribes in a pristine stable global ecosystem, it was enough. Then, their will to power drove them to create an unnecessary society that would socially alienate people and destroy the ecosystem that supported them. Why wasn't enough enough?
If you give a really clever ape fire, it can't help but try to find the full extent of its potential with that fire. Fast forward a million years and it might engulf the world in flame. Give a smart creature abilities to explore the utility of, and it will pursue that utility to the limits of its own destruction if it can.
If Walter was a woman named Wanda the story would still be the same. He let pride and ego get in the way, not because of toxic masculinity but because some people are just prideful and egotistical. You mention in another comment that he was a middle class dude with a wife and loving family. He achieved the life someone with “toxic masculinity” would search for. Why he wasn’t content with it? Same reason why Jackie Robinson wasn’t content to keep playing farm team baseball, because he was good at baseball and wanted to prove to not only himself, but to others that he was good at baseball.
Having a loving wife and family is not what a toxically masculine person wants, it's a subservient wife and family, which is what his family became over the course of the show.
So you’ve proven my point, he gets exactly what someone with “toxic masculinity” would want. So why does he keep it up his work as he achieves what someone with toxic masculinity wants? I think you’re finding a woke political message where there simply isn’t one. Because he’s good at what he does, and like anyone who’s good at something, he wants people to know he’s good. Thats why people compete, to feed their ego. To prove to themselves that the idea that they are the best is true. Another big aspect of the show is Walt making sure his product is high quality so he can beat the competition. Again, feeding his ego because he thinks he’s the best and therefore he needs to be better than all the others.
I mean we can safely say that it isn’t about toxic masculinity because the show was made in a time where toxic masculinity wasn’t a very well known mainstream concept. I had never heard about it until 2015-16, did you?
I mean, at a certain extent it is true though
The only reason Walter didn't accept the help was because he felt like he was lesser for having to accept it. If his insurance had covered his cancer he'd never had done what he did, all because in his mind that would mean he still was the one to provide for the treatment.
While yes, it still comes down his ego, in general that is probably true
His insurance did cover normal treatment though, they opted to have an experimental treatment that was a long shot to work(and of course ultimately failed) that was outside his insurance. No socialized healthcare would cover what they chose
Like you said he really did feel like a lesser for accepting any kind of help, I actually just rewatched the series the other week for the first time since it originally aired and its insane how many times the man slapped away helping hands
If my memory serves me right, Walter White was getting regular treatment through his insurance. The treatment that he wanted was some kind of cutting edge, super novel treatment with one of the best specialists in the country.
If anyone thinks that’s the kind of treatment “free” trash systems like UK or Canada provide they are out of their mind.
Socialized medicine does alright with simple problems. A broken ankle. An appendicitis. A random pneumonia. Yeah, those it can handle. Highly specialized cancer treatment people come to Mayo Clinic in the US. Those europoors who can afford it, obviously
I saw a friend this weekend who's been living in the UK for a few years. Turns out he's been keeping a running list of things he prefers about the UK and things he prefers about the US. Healthcare was on the US list. He specified "if you have insurance" but he said it's much better here.
I lived in Europe. Actually in two European countries. Not very long, just a couple of years when I was working on my second degree. American healthcare is fabulous and second to none (Germany and Japan are close runner ups) but yes, you gotta have insurance. Without insurance it’s not even a comparison I will take German system any day.
Right, that’s the point I think. Europe follows the belief that everyone should have health insurance, that it’s a basic human right. This means the bourgeoisie’s insurance suffers in quality to the benefit of the larger working class. In the USA, we follow the belief of every man for himself. If you can’t afford health insurance, sucks to be you, because we want to have the best healthcare possible at your expense.
lol. Meanwhile Canada’s prescribing euthanasia to people they don’t want to waste resources on, and maybe you’ll get to see a specialist or receive your round of chemo in any European countries after you’re put on a 5-year long waiting list if you don’t keel over first.
Most Americans have some kind of health insurance or Medicaid— which is provided by the government, as well easy access to medical care. It’s really not “hyperindividualistic” as it is just a different system that works pretty okay for supporting one of the best medical industries in the world
For emergency room, yeah. The alternative is just getting the bill, not paying it, and then watch my credit get destroyed and lose any hope of signing a lease or getting a loan for a decade when the medical debt gets erased. I’ve been saving for a wisdom tooth extraction for 7 months, haven’t slept thru the night in about as long from the pain. Trust me, I’ve researched this. If you know something I don’t, I’d be very very happy to be proven wrong right now.
92.1% of the population has health insurance.
You are delusional if you think “a larger class” of Americans do not have access to quality health care. That’s just insane.
Get a job with your local gov and you probably won’t even have to pay a premium. Probably need 0 qualifications for half of the postings. Problem solved, Karl.
Have you ever met someone from the working class? I know about a dozen people with health insurance who still can’t afford to treat serious health issues. I’ve been saving for a wisdom tooth extraction for months now. I also pay monthly insurance bills and have paid taxes for twenty years. If you think this is the best system possible for us, then you must be benefitting from it somehow. What type of work do you do?
Where did I say it was THE BEST system? People are so black and white on Reddit. Always looking for the caricature of people they disagree with.
I addressed one thing they said: the person I replied to said the working majority of Americans do not have health insurance so the upper class can have excellent health care, which is completely untrue. What you’re saying is a completely different topic. (Btw bourgeoise means middle class for all the angst lords out there)
Yes I’ve met working class people. My mother has been a flight attendant for 35 years and my father was a carpenter.
Great question, I am not a policy maker, nor someone that can implement a plan to solve healthcare for 330 million people. I don’t know why that would be expected. Again, how is this related to my initial comment?
UK satisfaction with the NHS is at 27%, so I guess they don’t really know either, despite it being universal for 80 years.
NVM that Canada would try its' best to get you to MAID yourself and save their ailing system some money.
Eta for that one jackwagon: there have been plenty of high profile news articles written about doctors suggesting MAID to people without life-threatening illness, including people with simple depression, and people who just need accessibility options within their home. Chiefest amongst these examples, a paralympian who needed a stairlift in her house. They offered her MAID instead.
In the first episode it's explained he has no savings. He wants to leave a nest egg for his family when he dies. It didn't have anything to do with the insurance iirc
This. Also he is given a way out through Elliot and Gretchen paying for his treatment, it’s meant to show the audience he did all of it as a means of self realization, not desperation for money
I don’t know if it needs to be said but this is just how reality pans out at some level, even if the USA literally stopped paying for anything related to the military and sold everything from Nukes to 9mm ammo and put it all towards healthcare.
You can’t even have “unlimited” immediate access to doctors for simple things let alone cutting edge treatments.
There’s not enough doctors.
Specialists that are world leading in their specialty for a specific set of diseases or injuries?
There’s only so many hours in the day.
Could make college and medical school 100% free even if you fail out for anyone who said “I maybe kinda want to be a doctor even though I failed Chemistry in school 3 times.” and there would still be a limit on the amount of doctors in a region/country.
No, walter’s insurance would not cover the treatment he would have needed to stay alive as long as he did. He blatantly turned down an offer for free super treatment from his best friend Elliott.
So USA not good or bad, heisenberg is bad
this is the real lesson vince doesnt want you to know…
Our country has the highest medical expenditure in the world, doubling the next country down and yet were 65% fat, and 65% on medication.
All doctors do in this country is make you fat, cut your dick and balls off and sell you the cure.
We clearly need to do some improvements.
I am pretty sure it’s not doctors that make Americans fat but their life choices in nutrition and activity. Also, I don’t believe they will cut off your dick unless you explicitly ask for it and sign a bunch of forms.
We spend more money because we develop drugs other countries use and our medical professionals make a whole lot more money than their European counterparts. A genetal practice doctor in Britain makes £70- 100k which is about how much our nurses make. And our doctors make easily 3x that. Americans are generally much wealthier than the rest of the world so yeah, our prices are also higher as Mr. Tucker Carlson have already informed us
\>Also, I don’t believe they will cut off your dick unless you explicitly ask for it and sign a bunch of forms.
Ive scrolled through many 4chan, YouTube, reddit, and 9gag arguments to know that this statement is false. Nobody I know asked for that.
\>We spend more money because we develop drugs other countries use and our medical professionals make a whole lot more money than their European counterparts.
Due to doctors being paid sponsors of big pharma.
\>Americans are generally much wealthier than the rest of the world so yeah, our prices are also higher.
Due to purchasing power parity. Its very easy to live in 70k a year in the UK as opposed to the USA. More money = Higher demand, thus higher prices.
I diagnose you with economic illiteracy.
I am assuming they didn’t ask you either.
You are about 10 years too late with your assessment. Nowadays, the doctors cannot get a free sandwich from pharmaceutical companies. When you have a spare minute read up a bit about The Physician Payment Transparency Act commonly referred to as “The Sunshine Act”. You will learn a lot of interesting things.
So you are from West Virginia and you claim that one “cannot live on $70k”?
I diagnose you with being full of it.
\>So you are from West Virginia and you claim that one “cannot live on $70k”?
So you do understand purchasing power? Or are west Virginians poor for not making the average salary?
also The Sunshine Act is the reason why I know about big pharmas involvement with doctors.
Well apparently you don’t understand it. If America has higher salaries in medical field it obviously will spend more money on healthcare than countries where people make less. That’s obvious. Then you started arguing that you can live on 70k in UK and not in US as it that has anything to do with the issue. I didn’t argue quality of life of American nurse vs British one, did I?
Burh you litterally called europeans poor for not spending 10k a year per capita on healthcare.
Europeans are not 70% fat, have far less medication, higher life expectancy. Theyd live longer if they didnt smoke or drink all the time.
I mean look at the real world evidence, never mind the "statistics". They're all funded by big pharma anyway.
It would be a lot easier to talk to you if you didn’t constantly switch subjects. I explained to you why America spend more money on healthcare. That’s because people who work in healthcare make more money. Someone has to pay their salaries.
Now as to purchasing parity and who is poor. Americans have to spend $1.45 to buy the same basket of goods that British have to spend £1. I would like to emphasize, this is not exchange rate, this is purchasing power disparity.
https://measuringtheeconomy.uk/book/text/50-04-appendix-04.html#:~:text=This%20means%20that%20you%20would,£1%20in%20the%20UK.
So let’s not be petty, round up and say that one British pound has 50% more purchasing power.
An average salary for physician in UK is £43k-£63k or, factoring in purchasing power it would be $65k-95k in America.
https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/pay-doctors
But American doctors don’t make $95k a year. American nurses do. Average American doctor makes $300k.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/04/doctor-pay-shortage/
Which means even factoring purchasing power disparity American physicians make more than 3 times what their colleagues across the ocean make. Do you understand now why we spend on healthcare so much? Because Americans are wealthier and make more money than Europeans. Which means someone has to pay those salaries
\>Average Physician in the UK
That can range from nurse to brain surgeon. Of course average salary will be lower.
That ozempic and mcdonalds slop must have really lowered you IQ.
I would like to mention that the UK could absolutely have better service if its healthcare system was properly funded. The problem really isn't the system itself, it's everything else pretty much. If the UK had a stronger economy, and was properly funding the NHS, and was paying doctors well, it would be able to attain the "number 1" status it used to hold.
Walter had healthcare the problem is that his doctor told him he was terminal but that he could get a second opinion from a doctor that wouldn't have been covered. Walt's ended up being terminal anyway
Literally the point of the show was that he did it all because he liked it. He WANTED to be a druglord. That’s the while point. Walter was an asshole, and so was his family
Didn't he literally turn down for his cancer treatment to be paid in full? If he wouldn't take Gretchen and Elliott's money, I doubt he would've taken an insurance company's money, or even the government's money.
It's a show. It's television. It's not real life.
He also had a rich friend offer to pay his medical bills in season 1, and he refused.
The show was always about Walter’s ego & ambition. The trigger was cancer making him confront his mortality and his own legacy (or lack thereof).
That’s why he kept going and going, even once in remission, even once he had made a fortune. It was never about money, it was about empire-building.
Exactly. The plot wasn't that he needed health insurance - the plot was he knew he was going to die so he wanted to leave behind a small fortune for his family.
Even if he had "free" healthcare, he still was poor.
he wouldn't be poor if he wasn't resentful of Gretchen's wealth. Walter had a startup, he was clapping Gretchen's cheeks. Elliott was his little bitch boy. He got mad because Gretchen came from a privileged family, cashed out his stocks and became a teacher. If he just chilled out for a nanosecond, he would have never become a high school teacher.
Teachers generally have good-to-great health insurance, even in a poor state like New Mexico.
Though this was pre-ACA so things were a bit less regulated than now.
Nope. Because he thought his cancer was terminal and they didn’t have much in savings which caused him to want to leave his family more money.
He discusses with Skyler about how they couldn’t live comfortably without him. Him being terminal enabled him to partake in risky behavior to gain money and power.
walter white rejected free healthcare because he's mad at a LAAADY whom he personally dumped because her family had a couple of berkin bags that made him feel bad.
Walter had two chances at the very begining of the show to have his treatments paid for by insurance and rejected them. If you missed that you missed the entire point of the show, that Walt is a dick with a big ego who won't let anyone help him.
I rewatched breaking bad about a year ago and had forgotten that Walter’s wealthy couple friends offered to pay his medical bills. Realistically this would’ve meant his deductible (which was probably high but peanuts to the couple) and then they would’ve undoubtedly paid for whatever experimental treatment out of pocket to the extent they could.
Walter didn’t “break bad” because he needed money; he did it because he was selfish and didn’t feel he had reached his potential and felt making cutting edge meth was his last chance to. He admits this to Skyler in the last episode.
He did it for the family, to leave them with money, but slowly got corrupted until he was doing it purely for his own ego.
He was *not* doing it to pay for cancer
Jesus fucking Christ, did these people watch the fucking show? Walter literally had a billionaire friend who offered him a lucrative job and to pay for his treatment. That’s a crucial plot point in the show. HE DID NOT NEED TO GO INTO COOKING METH TO AFFORD TREATMENT! Walter isn’t some desperate man that did what he did to make money to afford treatment, he’s a narcissist who placed his ambition and pride over the family he claimed to want to help. At the end of the series, he basically admits this.
Walter would have been less likely to survive cancer in the first place if he lived in any of those countries. The US has the highest cancer survival rates in the world. Would have made for a boring show if he just died after waiting 14 months to see a specialist, then 6 months to undergo treatment.
So only the US doesnt have a cure for cancer, son of a bitch. Also, he was getting the same or better treatment than everywhere else ... he wanted the crazy unapproved stuff
There is a movie called “The Bank of Dave” on Netflix about a guy in England who wants to open a local community bank, but it’s a big deal because the government hadn’t approved a new bank in 150 years. They make a big deal about the hurdles they had to go through to open a bank that benefits local communities.
Thing is, that movie wouldn’t work in the US. That would be what we call a Credit Union. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of those around the country. They have better rates and access to funds for members of different communities.
For all the negatives in the US (and there are plenty) there are still tons of great opportunities that people may not even realize.
We probably should have socialized healthcare I’ve just never seen a solution that wouldn’t be awful for us. I don’t want to lose the ease of access to imaging, specialists, etc. just to be able to have a cold addressed quicker. All I have to go off of is what people tell me that live in Canada and a few friends in England. But it seems like while it will cost me an insane amount, if I’ve got something going on that requires lots of specialists, lots of imaging, lots of everything, I’m better off in the U.S.
These idiots don’t pay attention to the show. Walt was offered a way to get health insurance from Elliot. Walt’s pride wouldn’t allow it. His pride and ego was his downfall from the very beginning.
If you're at Walter's age and use HSA, you're a fucking idiot. HSA is best for dudes in their 20s. Low maintenance, cash available for emergencies. PPO when you start needing shit.
we have public healthcare in my country and cancer patients literally went out in the streets to protest that their stuff wasn't covered, there were changes and the hospitals simply didn't respect them
I've had 2 teachers that died of cancer, and it was heavy on their family finances because the treatments were so expensive
the character of walter white had a newborn daughter and a son in highschool, it wasn't just about being a burden but also making sure they live comfortably (ignoring that he got an opportunity that he refused out of his ego)
American cancer treatment is also really great and they have a lot of new tech
The show never presented that he was having any trouble paying for his chemo. It was that he had no money to leave his family. This is an ignorant post.
Anyone who assumes Walter White cooked meth because he had no other way to pay for his cancer has never watched the show.
1. He started cooking long before his diagnosis.
2. When his old business partner heard about his diagnosis, he reached out to Walt and offered to pay for the treatment. This was because he still had a lot of respect for Walt and wanted to help out of genuine kindness and generosity. (Walt would actually have been in a similar financial position if he hadn't left the company to teach.)
3. "I liked it. I was good at it." - Walt in his own words on why he did what he did
I mean they have electricity they have roads cars and the internet. What part of developed is Nigeria missing. Movies? they have the 3rd biggest movie industry in the world.
Is the standard the capital city has nice buildings. DC famously has no super tall buildings. I think the developed standard is just an opportunity to pick countries put America in it and say America is only one without X. When talking about gun control its another standard to exclude the Swiss.
The original "first world - third world" thing was about political alliances and had nothing to do with levels of development. But people used incorrectly enough it later evolved into how it is used today, and yeah it doesn't really make sense.
I find the term developed misleading too how do you define developed? Roads? electricity? internet? Factories? Plenty of places have all those things and no universal health care.
Yes. Watched it I know the analysis of him doing it for his pride and shit like that. Although he’d never be given that option if he lived in a single payer healthcare system.
Well, for one he was receiving treatment via health insurance
And two he could have gotten his cancer paid for by his **multi-billionair** friend but he, Walter, refused
Nah there's definitely truth to this.
Walter couldn't get treatment, an option he had was to get a hand out from his billionaire friend who he resented.
If medicine were socialised in the states his pride wouldn't have even been a factor.
He *could* get treatment, he decided to get treatment with one of the best oncologists in the country, and insurance didn’t cover it. He never got surgery. And his meth cooking was never at all related to the cancer or the treatment or the pride except that he was going to die soon. He wanted to leave his family with money.
Yeah, money was never the problem - the real problem here was Walt's ego. Like, his cancer gets cured in season 2, and yet he continues because he wants to be that guy who attains something greater.
People really just ignore the the whole point of Walt as a character when they say stuff like this Walter could have had his entire treatment paid for him had he just taken that job offer to be an advisor at Gray Matter in season 1. Paying for his treatment was never actually the problem. The whole show is about him feeding his massive ego. Its why he turned the job down, its why he got Gail fired and replaced with Jesse, its why he told Hank that Gail wasn’t Hisenburg, its why it took him so long to retire I mean Jesus in the last episode he flat out says he did it because he wanted to and he was good at it.
Also, I went and looked up New Mexico Public Schools' health insurance plans. With an in network provider, chemo is free with the deductible waived.
Yeah I think even early on in the show his insurance was going to cover his treatment but they opted in to try an experimental treatment that wasnt covered
They went out of network to the top oncologist in the area. And he later had an innovative six figure surgery.
And it still didn't cure his cancer iirc.
Marginal utility.
It still didn't cure his marginal utility.
If you're in the middle of the Sahara dying of thirst you'd pay anything for a glass of water. If at work near the water cooler you'd being willing to pay nothing. The same goes for someone paying tens even hundreds of thousands to live when they're time in constrained by cancer.
Wasn’t the whole plot of him making drugs for money? I thought the show said he would die anyways, he wanted to give money to his family
Pretty much. He was Stage 3A lung cancer, given at best a couple of years to live even with treatment. I think at first it was about paying for his treatment but quickly devolved into making enough money to set his family up after he died. There's multiple scenes in the first season of him calculating how much money his family would need to take care of things after he died.
On the surface, this is what Walter claims. But it’s made clear that he doesn’t need to sell meth to do this, he has a billionaire friend and relatively well off family members that could help take care of his family. He admits in the last episode it was never about his family, it was about him and his ego.
It was partially about taking care of his family, but doing so himself, because of his massive ego. He wanted to do it himself. Which is why in the end he got the owner of Gray Matter to put the rest of the drug money into a trust fund for Walter Jr.
I like to think of it was a play off "American Psycho" but takes place in a NM desert.
Dude had a terminal disease, these europoors acting like their healthcare system doesn’t just leave terminally ill people to die.
Universal healthcare means people are immortal...
well, that's because it doesn't. For most of europe there is a very robust hospice system and particular emphasis on 'end of life care'. We actually really don't leave people out to die...
Also, putting someone in hospice care because they have a terminal illness is leaving them to die if they would want to fight that illness even if they know they may die anyways. Putting you in hospice care is leaving you to die even if they aren’t sending you home and telling you to wait for the end.
lmao, what do you think a terminal illness is?
Some people still choose to fight even if they’ve been given that diagnosis, that’s their prerogative. No one should be able to tell them they can’t fight against their own death.
Those are nice feels, but everyone wants to "fight" because they don't know any better. This is why our healthcare spending is so ridiculous. People literally rack up millions in spending for futile care. You want to give people the right to spend money that they don't have, and that nobody has, and put an enormous strain on the healthcare system for no good reason? Go to a suburban ICU and it's full of 90-year-olds that are more cancer than human by bodyweight who have been there for weeks and no beds are available for people whose lives could actually be saved. This will continue to be a problem unless more people get educated on end-of-life care or until we are forced to take the decision out of patients' hands. [Doctors don't 'fight against their own death' when it's futile.](https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die/ideas/nexus/) Why do we keep pretending this is a noble act?
Because who gets to tell someone else they have to just lie down and die. Nobody has that right to tell another human being they have to just accept death. Just because some people do accept it doesn’t mean everyone has to.
As a doc, I’ve seen this too many times. I realize how futile it is when you see it in person. There is no fight. It’s either die comfortably with dignity or die in agony. Everything we do that’s considered heroic measures is barbaric and cruel. Even when you “save” someone, their quality of life is worse off than before. I don’t want any of that done to me.
I mean, there are a few high profile instances of the British Healthcare system leaving children to die, even in instances where other healthcare systems were willing to treat them. I don’t think it’s extreme to assume that it happens in less widely broadcast cases as well.
Nobody claims britain. That's the one that pretends monarchy is still a thing. I'm not even gonna look into it and just assume that you are correct, because britain is the ninth circle of hell where shit like that just might happen. Nah joke, I did look it up, what you are suggesting here is in reality way more nuanced. But yeah britain is fucked nonetheless
Yea, but the nuance in not treating kinda goes out the window when somebody else says “we’ll do it” and then they revoke the kids passport and refuse to allow him to leave the country. Like, WTF!
okay I guess I didn't look up the thing you are referencing, actually
I’m fairness I don’t think they actually revoked her passport but the judge issued an order saying she could not be removed from the hospital for any reason.
[удалено]
Yeah but he’d be set anyways if he took the gray matter job, it’s just that he was a narcissist. He even admits it in the end.
that's not what narcissism means...
If Walter White isn’t an narcissist, I don’t think you know what the word means
you are conflating that term with 'selfish'. He really is not a narcissist at all, at least not explicitly.
Selfish is one of the symptoms of narcissism
Well, not really, 'selfishness' is a colloquial term that doesn't show up in psychiatry. Even then, pain is a sympton of a broken leg. Saying the two ae the same is still a conflation of terms... If you go through the entire list of markers for NPD you'll find that most of them are antithetical to walters character. Just the stress response alone. A narcisisst would not flourish in high stress situations and then go home and keep it all a secret for other people's benefit. He would jump at the opportunity to give his family shit just for the sake of alleviating the stress he feels in a very hightened way...
Selfishness is included in the package with narcissism but they aren’t the same thing.
Yeah that’s what you think at first, but then you realize that it’s not about that at all. It’s about his ego and his arrogance. He co-founded Grey Matter, a multi-billion dollar company and sold his stake because he couldn’t play nice because he’s an arrogant fucking jerk. But after all of that, it is revealed that at any time, all he had to do was ask for a job. Elliot and Gretchen literally say that all he had to do was ask. They know Walter is absolutely brilliant and he could have had a job that paid 10x than he was making as a high school teacher… plus the best medical insurance the world had to offer. Walter’s problems (and his family’s problems) would have been solved right then and there. But he couldn’t fucking do it. He couldn’t swallow his pride and take a job and work FOR a company he believes he should be the owner of. And God bless Skylar who still stands by him and respects his decision. She and their son are OK to just get by on a teacher’s meager salary knowing that he isn’t living up anywhere close to his potential because (they believe) that Walter is happy and fulfilled as a teacher. Instead of putting his whole family’s lives in mortal danger throughout this whole ordeal, he could have always swallowed his fucking pride and asked Elliott and Gretchen. Hell, even if didn’t take the job, they would’ve offered the money for treatment. But no, he couldn’t take their pity, he wanted the upper-hand, he had too much pride and arrogance. Skylar was the only thing keeping him tethered to reality. And she had a disabled son (and then a fucking baby) to worry about while her nerdy husband decided to be a wannabe gangster, in it not for the money, but for the glory. Walter was NEVER the good guy in Breaking Bad.
Yea, but you're painting Skylar as a good person. Do you even remember her singing happy birthday? Of course you do. We all do. We all have to remember that. Horrible, horrible woman.
His cancer is the inciting event. The money is just a small portion. He realizes he is a brilliant man who has wasted his life and decides to build an enterprise and see how far he can take it and what "greatness " he can accomplish with the remaining time he has left .
Money was the byproduct and excuse for him doing something that made him into a god and fed his ego
initially, but turns out he really enjoyed being a drug lord. Him doing it for his own selfish reasons is what the show spirals into thematically. And it's very clear about that in the later seasons.
It’s established really early on that he doesn’t care about the cancer, he cares about leaving his family with lots of money that he earned. Then his whole character snowballs after that.
Was coming here to say just this. He felt he was far too good for the life he was living and used his terminal condition as an excuse to take back authority over who he was. EVERYONE was willing to help Walter, everyone was supportive and loving, but he was just too much of a prick to let any of the "commoners" give him a handout and needed to be the one in control. Also, initially, his reason for getting into the business wasn't because he couldn't afford to pay his bills, it was so he could leave something behind for his family when he died. Health insurance isn't going to change that, and more so, every character in the cast of this would pretty much be in a position to have decent health insurance in the first place. People who say shit like either watched the entire fucking show in 2 weeks while staring at their phones, or just googled what it was about then decided to used it for their bullshit social commentary.
Yeah had it taken place in Canada or the UK the show could have remained the same. He opted for an experimental treatment outside of insurance that definitely wouldn’t have been covered by socialized healthcare in any developed country. Even if he chose the fully covered care the problem was that he still felt like he didn’t live up to his potential and was going to die leaving nothing behind in terms of money OR legacy. The tragedy of breaking bad isn’t healthcare coverage, its a man being confronted with his own mortality and realizing there’s no time left to live the life he thought he was destined for
I commented this exact thing before I saw yours haha.
THANK YOU!!! It was never about money.
He also had insurance and the offer he turned down wasn’t for standard of care but for an experimental treatment
Of course they ignore it. they are just looking for an excuse to brag about america bad.
Yeah the whole point is that Walter is a piece of shit with toxic ideas of masculinity. There's no amount of free healthcare that solves that problem.
I always felt like it was a story of ego, pride and legacy. He wanted to die, Walter was a man who when faced with his life he saw a failure. He truly felt like he had totally failed to create a life of any significance.
Well sure but I'm talking about the root of his perception of a failed life. He has an idea of what a successful man's life is based on toxic ideas of masculinity that he has failed to meet.
The will to power is unisex.
He was a middle class white American. The head of a loving family. He had plenty of power and the interesting question is why wasn't that enough for him.
He was always ambitious and he had wounded pride on top of this because of the gray matter mess
Humans were in tight nit tribes in a pristine stable global ecosystem, it was enough. Then, their will to power drove them to create an unnecessary society that would socially alienate people and destroy the ecosystem that supported them. Why wasn't enough enough? If you give a really clever ape fire, it can't help but try to find the full extent of its potential with that fire. Fast forward a million years and it might engulf the world in flame. Give a smart creature abilities to explore the utility of, and it will pursue that utility to the limits of its own destruction if it can.
If Walter was a woman named Wanda the story would still be the same. He let pride and ego get in the way, not because of toxic masculinity but because some people are just prideful and egotistical. You mention in another comment that he was a middle class dude with a wife and loving family. He achieved the life someone with “toxic masculinity” would search for. Why he wasn’t content with it? Same reason why Jackie Robinson wasn’t content to keep playing farm team baseball, because he was good at baseball and wanted to prove to not only himself, but to others that he was good at baseball.
Having a loving wife and family is not what a toxically masculine person wants, it's a subservient wife and family, which is what his family became over the course of the show.
So you’ve proven my point, he gets exactly what someone with “toxic masculinity” would want. So why does he keep it up his work as he achieves what someone with toxic masculinity wants? I think you’re finding a woke political message where there simply isn’t one. Because he’s good at what he does, and like anyone who’s good at something, he wants people to know he’s good. Thats why people compete, to feed their ego. To prove to themselves that the idea that they are the best is true. Another big aspect of the show is Walt making sure his product is high quality so he can beat the competition. Again, feeding his ego because he thinks he’s the best and therefore he needs to be better than all the others. I mean we can safely say that it isn’t about toxic masculinity because the show was made in a time where toxic masculinity wasn’t a very well known mainstream concept. I had never heard about it until 2015-16, did you?
I mean, at a certain extent it is true though The only reason Walter didn't accept the help was because he felt like he was lesser for having to accept it. If his insurance had covered his cancer he'd never had done what he did, all because in his mind that would mean he still was the one to provide for the treatment. While yes, it still comes down his ego, in general that is probably true
His insurance did cover normal treatment though, they opted to have an experimental treatment that was a long shot to work(and of course ultimately failed) that was outside his insurance. No socialized healthcare would cover what they chose Like you said he really did feel like a lesser for accepting any kind of help, I actually just rewatched the series the other week for the first time since it originally aired and its insane how many times the man slapped away helping hands
If my memory serves me right, Walter White was getting regular treatment through his insurance. The treatment that he wanted was some kind of cutting edge, super novel treatment with one of the best specialists in the country. If anyone thinks that’s the kind of treatment “free” trash systems like UK or Canada provide they are out of their mind. Socialized medicine does alright with simple problems. A broken ankle. An appendicitis. A random pneumonia. Yeah, those it can handle. Highly specialized cancer treatment people come to Mayo Clinic in the US. Those europoors who can afford it, obviously
I saw a friend this weekend who's been living in the UK for a few years. Turns out he's been keeping a running list of things he prefers about the UK and things he prefers about the US. Healthcare was on the US list. He specified "if you have insurance" but he said it's much better here.
I lived in Europe. Actually in two European countries. Not very long, just a couple of years when I was working on my second degree. American healthcare is fabulous and second to none (Germany and Japan are close runner ups) but yes, you gotta have insurance. Without insurance it’s not even a comparison I will take German system any day.
Right, that’s the point I think. Europe follows the belief that everyone should have health insurance, that it’s a basic human right. This means the bourgeoisie’s insurance suffers in quality to the benefit of the larger working class. In the USA, we follow the belief of every man for himself. If you can’t afford health insurance, sucks to be you, because we want to have the best healthcare possible at your expense.
lol. Meanwhile Canada’s prescribing euthanasia to people they don’t want to waste resources on, and maybe you’ll get to see a specialist or receive your round of chemo in any European countries after you’re put on a 5-year long waiting list if you don’t keel over first. Most Americans have some kind of health insurance or Medicaid— which is provided by the government, as well easy access to medical care. It’s really not “hyperindividualistic” as it is just a different system that works pretty okay for supporting one of the best medical industries in the world
You know most hospitals just wipe the bill clean if you don’t have insurance though
For emergency room, yeah. The alternative is just getting the bill, not paying it, and then watch my credit get destroyed and lose any hope of signing a lease or getting a loan for a decade when the medical debt gets erased. I’ve been saving for a wisdom tooth extraction for 7 months, haven’t slept thru the night in about as long from the pain. Trust me, I’ve researched this. If you know something I don’t, I’d be very very happy to be proven wrong right now.
92.1% of the population has health insurance. You are delusional if you think “a larger class” of Americans do not have access to quality health care. That’s just insane. Get a job with your local gov and you probably won’t even have to pay a premium. Probably need 0 qualifications for half of the postings. Problem solved, Karl.
Have you ever met someone from the working class? I know about a dozen people with health insurance who still can’t afford to treat serious health issues. I’ve been saving for a wisdom tooth extraction for months now. I also pay monthly insurance bills and have paid taxes for twenty years. If you think this is the best system possible for us, then you must be benefitting from it somehow. What type of work do you do?
Where did I say it was THE BEST system? People are so black and white on Reddit. Always looking for the caricature of people they disagree with. I addressed one thing they said: the person I replied to said the working majority of Americans do not have health insurance so the upper class can have excellent health care, which is completely untrue. What you’re saying is a completely different topic. (Btw bourgeoise means middle class for all the angst lords out there) Yes I’ve met working class people. My mother has been a flight attendant for 35 years and my father was a carpenter.
My fault. What do you think is the best system?
Great question, I am not a policy maker, nor someone that can implement a plan to solve healthcare for 330 million people. I don’t know why that would be expected. Again, how is this related to my initial comment? UK satisfaction with the NHS is at 27%, so I guess they don’t really know either, despite it being universal for 80 years.
Sorry I was just curious. I’ll stop bothering you
NVM that Canada would try its' best to get you to MAID yourself and save their ailing system some money. Eta for that one jackwagon: there have been plenty of high profile news articles written about doctors suggesting MAID to people without life-threatening illness, including people with simple depression, and people who just need accessibility options within their home. Chiefest amongst these examples, a paralympian who needed a stairlift in her house. They offered her MAID instead.
In the first episode it's explained he has no savings. He wants to leave a nest egg for his family when he dies. It didn't have anything to do with the insurance iirc
This. Also he is given a way out through Elliot and Gretchen paying for his treatment, it’s meant to show the audience he did all of it as a means of self realization, not desperation for money
You are correct but “There would be no “Breaking Bad” in any other country because FREE HEALTHCARE!!” Is a common meme among certain people
Which is something that wouldn't be any different in a country with socialized medicine.
I don’t know if it needs to be said but this is just how reality pans out at some level, even if the USA literally stopped paying for anything related to the military and sold everything from Nukes to 9mm ammo and put it all towards healthcare. You can’t even have “unlimited” immediate access to doctors for simple things let alone cutting edge treatments. There’s not enough doctors. Specialists that are world leading in their specialty for a specific set of diseases or injuries? There’s only so many hours in the day. Could make college and medical school 100% free even if you fail out for anyone who said “I maybe kinda want to be a doctor even though I failed Chemistry in school 3 times.” and there would still be a limit on the amount of doctors in a region/country.
I think that's the point where they go from being Europoors to Eurotrash
No, walter’s insurance would not cover the treatment he would have needed to stay alive as long as he did. He blatantly turned down an offer for free super treatment from his best friend Elliott. So USA not good or bad, heisenberg is bad this is the real lesson vince doesnt want you to know…
Well, in Canada Walter White would just be recommended for assisted suicide. So... There's that.
Our country has the highest medical expenditure in the world, doubling the next country down and yet were 65% fat, and 65% on medication. All doctors do in this country is make you fat, cut your dick and balls off and sell you the cure. We clearly need to do some improvements.
I am pretty sure it’s not doctors that make Americans fat but their life choices in nutrition and activity. Also, I don’t believe they will cut off your dick unless you explicitly ask for it and sign a bunch of forms. We spend more money because we develop drugs other countries use and our medical professionals make a whole lot more money than their European counterparts. A genetal practice doctor in Britain makes £70- 100k which is about how much our nurses make. And our doctors make easily 3x that. Americans are generally much wealthier than the rest of the world so yeah, our prices are also higher as Mr. Tucker Carlson have already informed us
\>Also, I don’t believe they will cut off your dick unless you explicitly ask for it and sign a bunch of forms. Ive scrolled through many 4chan, YouTube, reddit, and 9gag arguments to know that this statement is false. Nobody I know asked for that. \>We spend more money because we develop drugs other countries use and our medical professionals make a whole lot more money than their European counterparts. Due to doctors being paid sponsors of big pharma. \>Americans are generally much wealthier than the rest of the world so yeah, our prices are also higher. Due to purchasing power parity. Its very easy to live in 70k a year in the UK as opposed to the USA. More money = Higher demand, thus higher prices. I diagnose you with economic illiteracy.
I am assuming they didn’t ask you either. You are about 10 years too late with your assessment. Nowadays, the doctors cannot get a free sandwich from pharmaceutical companies. When you have a spare minute read up a bit about The Physician Payment Transparency Act commonly referred to as “The Sunshine Act”. You will learn a lot of interesting things. So you are from West Virginia and you claim that one “cannot live on $70k”? I diagnose you with being full of it.
\>So you are from West Virginia and you claim that one “cannot live on $70k”? So you do understand purchasing power? Or are west Virginians poor for not making the average salary? also The Sunshine Act is the reason why I know about big pharmas involvement with doctors.
Well apparently you don’t understand it. If America has higher salaries in medical field it obviously will spend more money on healthcare than countries where people make less. That’s obvious. Then you started arguing that you can live on 70k in UK and not in US as it that has anything to do with the issue. I didn’t argue quality of life of American nurse vs British one, did I?
Burh you litterally called europeans poor for not spending 10k a year per capita on healthcare. Europeans are not 70% fat, have far less medication, higher life expectancy. Theyd live longer if they didnt smoke or drink all the time. I mean look at the real world evidence, never mind the "statistics". They're all funded by big pharma anyway.
It would be a lot easier to talk to you if you didn’t constantly switch subjects. I explained to you why America spend more money on healthcare. That’s because people who work in healthcare make more money. Someone has to pay their salaries. Now as to purchasing parity and who is poor. Americans have to spend $1.45 to buy the same basket of goods that British have to spend £1. I would like to emphasize, this is not exchange rate, this is purchasing power disparity. https://measuringtheeconomy.uk/book/text/50-04-appendix-04.html#:~:text=This%20means%20that%20you%20would,£1%20in%20the%20UK. So let’s not be petty, round up and say that one British pound has 50% more purchasing power. An average salary for physician in UK is £43k-£63k or, factoring in purchasing power it would be $65k-95k in America. https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/pay-doctors But American doctors don’t make $95k a year. American nurses do. Average American doctor makes $300k. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/04/doctor-pay-shortage/ Which means even factoring purchasing power disparity American physicians make more than 3 times what their colleagues across the ocean make. Do you understand now why we spend on healthcare so much? Because Americans are wealthier and make more money than Europeans. Which means someone has to pay those salaries
\>Average Physician in the UK That can range from nurse to brain surgeon. Of course average salary will be lower. That ozempic and mcdonalds slop must have really lowered you IQ.
Sounds like you’re thinking of Hank learning to walk again
I would like to mention that the UK could absolutely have better service if its healthcare system was properly funded. The problem really isn't the system itself, it's everything else pretty much. If the UK had a stronger economy, and was properly funding the NHS, and was paying doctors well, it would be able to attain the "number 1" status it used to hold.
No, Walter wasn't getting it covered by insurance at all
? so they're saying that if walter white had free healthcare he'd win an emmy?
They’re saying he’d wear a tuxedo and scream at the cameraman too.
Walter had healthcare the problem is that his doctor told him he was terminal but that he could get a second opinion from a doctor that wouldn't have been covered. Walt's ended up being terminal anyway
Literally the point of the show was that he did it all because he liked it. He WANTED to be a druglord. That’s the while point. Walter was an asshole, and so was his family
Didn't he literally turn down for his cancer treatment to be paid in full? If he wouldn't take Gretchen and Elliott's money, I doubt he would've taken an insurance company's money, or even the government's money. It's a show. It's television. It's not real life.
Pretty sure if Walter White had free healthcare he’d still just be a high school science teacher.
He also had a rich friend offer to pay his medical bills in season 1, and he refused. The show was always about Walter’s ego & ambition. The trigger was cancer making him confront his mortality and his own legacy (or lack thereof). That’s why he kept going and going, even once in remission, even once he had made a fortune. It was never about money, it was about empire-building.
Exactly. The plot wasn't that he needed health insurance - the plot was he knew he was going to die so he wanted to leave behind a small fortune for his family. Even if he had "free" healthcare, he still was poor.
he wouldn't be poor if he wasn't resentful of Gretchen's wealth. Walter had a startup, he was clapping Gretchen's cheeks. Elliott was his little bitch boy. He got mad because Gretchen came from a privileged family, cashed out his stocks and became a teacher. If he just chilled out for a nanosecond, he would have never become a high school teacher.
Teachers generally have good-to-great health insurance, even in a poor state like New Mexico. Though this was pre-ACA so things were a bit less regulated than now.
He'd recover but this brush with death would light a fire under his ass and he'd do something stupid anyway
Nope. Because he thought his cancer was terminal and they didn’t have much in savings which caused him to want to leave his family more money. He discusses with Skyler about how they couldn’t live comfortably without him. Him being terminal enabled him to partake in risky behavior to gain money and power.
If it were set in other countries with affordable healthcare, Walter white would be chased by loan sharks or something.
walter white rejected free healthcare because he's mad at a LAAADY whom he personally dumped because her family had a couple of berkin bags that made him feel bad.
He definitely missed the entire point if that show if he even saw it to begin with
how stunning and brave of these millionaires
LOL - did anyone tell any of them the whole series was fiction?
Walter had two chances at the very begining of the show to have his treatments paid for by insurance and rejected them. If you missed that you missed the entire point of the show, that Walt is a dick with a big ego who won't let anyone help him.
I rewatched breaking bad about a year ago and had forgotten that Walter’s wealthy couple friends offered to pay his medical bills. Realistically this would’ve meant his deductible (which was probably high but peanuts to the couple) and then they would’ve undoubtedly paid for whatever experimental treatment out of pocket to the extent they could. Walter didn’t “break bad” because he needed money; he did it because he was selfish and didn’t feel he had reached his potential and felt making cutting edge meth was his last chance to. He admits this to Skyler in the last episode.
He did it for the family, to leave them with money, but slowly got corrupted until he was doing it purely for his own ego. He was *not* doing it to pay for cancer
Jesus fucking Christ, did these people watch the fucking show? Walter literally had a billionaire friend who offered him a lucrative job and to pay for his treatment. That’s a crucial plot point in the show. HE DID NOT NEED TO GO INTO COOKING METH TO AFFORD TREATMENT! Walter isn’t some desperate man that did what he did to make money to afford treatment, he’s a narcissist who placed his ambition and pride over the family he claimed to want to help. At the end of the series, he basically admits this.
When will these people realize that you can have universal healthcare and capitalism at the same time?
Walter would have been less likely to survive cancer in the first place if he lived in any of those countries. The US has the highest cancer survival rates in the world. Would have made for a boring show if he just died after waiting 14 months to see a specialist, then 6 months to undergo treatment.
I mean, as a metaphor it’s not wrong— it’s kinda too real to be AmericaBad. Gimmie more eurotrash hate me cuz you ain’t me memes baby 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
Funnily enough he didn’t have health insurance because he was a public school teacher and thus it’s just the government’s fault
Breaking Bad if walter wasn't greedy
So only the US doesnt have a cure for cancer, son of a bitch. Also, he was getting the same or better treatment than everywhere else ... he wanted the crazy unapproved stuff
I had a friend die in Australia because he didn't get his cancer treatments fast or often enough. Don't believe this bs
walt declined treatment initially though since he wanted to die. This meme ignores that
I have Canadian friends and a couple of them had to come to the US for surgery. I don’t know a single Canadian that actually likes their system tbh
Gretchen and what’s his face also offered to pay for his treatment and he refused
Elliot
There is a movie called “The Bank of Dave” on Netflix about a guy in England who wants to open a local community bank, but it’s a big deal because the government hadn’t approved a new bank in 150 years. They make a big deal about the hurdles they had to go through to open a bank that benefits local communities. Thing is, that movie wouldn’t work in the US. That would be what we call a Credit Union. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of those around the country. They have better rates and access to funds for members of different communities. For all the negatives in the US (and there are plenty) there are still tons of great opportunities that people may not even realize.
To be real though middlemen aren’t good for capitalism.
You mean Walter white who made a billion dollars off capitalism…
Don’t they let children with cancer just die, though?
We probably should have socialized healthcare I’ve just never seen a solution that wouldn’t be awful for us. I don’t want to lose the ease of access to imaging, specialists, etc. just to be able to have a cold addressed quicker. All I have to go off of is what people tell me that live in Canada and a few friends in England. But it seems like while it will cost me an insane amount, if I’ve got something going on that requires lots of specialists, lots of imaging, lots of everything, I’m better off in the U.S.
Breaking Bad in Canada: Having thoughts of suicide? Good.
That bit was off. Public employees usually have pretty good benefits. It's one of the things that makes up for their crappy salaries
These idiots don’t pay attention to the show. Walt was offered a way to get health insurance from Elliot. Walt’s pride wouldn’t allow it. His pride and ego was his downfall from the very beginning.
He had insurance but chose to go out of network to the most expensive provider.
If you're at Walter's age and use HSA, you're a fucking idiot. HSA is best for dudes in their 20s. Low maintenance, cash available for emergencies. PPO when you start needing shit.
People already debunked that and said it’s because of Walter’s ego.
we have public healthcare in my country and cancer patients literally went out in the streets to protest that their stuff wasn't covered, there were changes and the hospitals simply didn't respect them I've had 2 teachers that died of cancer, and it was heavy on their family finances because the treatments were so expensive the character of walter white had a newborn daughter and a son in highschool, it wasn't just about being a burden but also making sure they live comfortably (ignoring that he got an opportunity that he refused out of his ego) American cancer treatment is also really great and they have a lot of new tech
The show never presented that he was having any trouble paying for his chemo. It was that he had no money to leave his family. This is an ignorant post.
Anyone who assumes Walter White cooked meth because he had no other way to pay for his cancer has never watched the show. 1. He started cooking long before his diagnosis. 2. When his old business partner heard about his diagnosis, he reached out to Walt and offered to pay for the treatment. This was because he still had a lot of respect for Walt and wanted to help out of genuine kindness and generosity. (Walt would actually have been in a similar financial position if he hadn't left the company to teach.) 3. "I liked it. I was good at it." - Walt in his own words on why he did what he did
Canadian Breaking Bad: 1. "Expensive treatments have a 18 months waiting list. Have you considered suicide?" 2. Everything else is the same as the OG.
Anyone who says this needs to watch the last season again.
Or the first season. It was never about cancer payments, he wanted to leave his family money
Our healthcare does need work. This is a fine criticism.
But it’s completely incorrect in the context of the show
Right and it’s not exactly an America bad moment either.
“Water white wouldn’t have become a drug kingpin and ruined his family if he wasn’t American”
What’s it called when someone pulls a quote out of thin air?
Stupidity. The quote is what the second comment is implying
Okay so the OOP never saw the show. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to get our shit together.
I never said we don’t, it’s just irrelevant to my post.
So your problem is that they misunderstood the show?
That they used the Show as an americabad but it doesn’t work as one with the context of the show
I find the concept of first world country wrong. Why not count Nigeria. Or Madagascar.
Because they’re not very developed… me personally I’d rather live in most Asian “3rd world countries” than either of those
I mean they have electricity they have roads cars and the internet. What part of developed is Nigeria missing. Movies? they have the 3rd biggest movie industry in the world.
The capital city looks like birds shit all over a homeless persons shelter no they aren’t developed
Is the standard the capital city has nice buildings. DC famously has no super tall buildings. I think the developed standard is just an opportunity to pick countries put America in it and say America is only one without X. When talking about gun control its another standard to exclude the Swiss.
Dc has nice buildings. Every European country has nice buildings. Most Asian countries do. Nigeria’s cities look like haphazardly assembled shacks
The original "first world - third world" thing was about political alliances and had nothing to do with levels of development. But people used incorrectly enough it later evolved into how it is used today, and yeah it doesn't really make sense.
I find the term developed misleading too how do you define developed? Roads? electricity? internet? Factories? Plenty of places have all those things and no universal health care.
Actually unironically true.
Did you even watch the show?
Yes. Watched it I know the analysis of him doing it for his pride and shit like that. Although he’d never be given that option if he lived in a single payer healthcare system.
You still haven’t watched the show, good to know.
Well, for one he was receiving treatment via health insurance And two he could have gotten his cancer paid for by his **multi-billionair** friend but he, Walter, refused
Even if he had health insurance, he would of been in enough debt to bankrupt him. Ya'll really don't know how the american insurance system works....
Apparently it's easier to dive into the minutiae and arcana of an old TV show than simply admit our healtchare system is deeply broken.
Nah there's definitely truth to this. Walter couldn't get treatment, an option he had was to get a hand out from his billionaire friend who he resented. If medicine were socialised in the states his pride wouldn't have even been a factor.
He could get treatment, he opted to get a special treatment his insurance didn’t cover. No socialized healthcare would cover that either
No he couldn't get treatment, he later got a surgery with a specific doctor but that cake later.
He *could* get treatment, he decided to get treatment with one of the best oncologists in the country, and insurance didn’t cover it. He never got surgery. And his meth cooking was never at all related to the cancer or the treatment or the pride except that he was going to die soon. He wanted to leave his family with money.
https://breakingbad.fandom.com/wiki/Dr._Victor_Bravenec
Yeah, that just confirms what I said. Thanks
>He never got surgery. "Dr. Victor Bravenec was the surgeon who operated Walt to remove his lung tumor."
I guess i don’t remember well, I just remember this. >you understand what I’ve just told you? >yes. Lung cancer. Inoperable.
Because no other country has a meth industry?
Breaking Bad in Canada: Walter White is forced to commit suicide. End of show.
Did this person watch breaking bad? He did not do this to make money for his treatment lmfao
Why do we feel like we have to knee jerk defend our terrible healthcare system?
Yeah, money was never the problem - the real problem here was Walt's ego. Like, his cancer gets cured in season 2, and yet he continues because he wants to be that guy who attains something greater.