S07.E01: Common People

[QQQQ]

Amanda (Rashida Jones) and Mike (Chris O’Dowd) are a working-class couple looking to start a family. But when Amanda falls into a coma, her grieving husband moves forward with a life-saving procedure that seems too good to be true. 

[libgirl2]

This episode was really gutting. I kept thinking about it all night.... 

[wmdekooning]

Either nobody knows the show is back, or nobody is giving a darn with all the hiatuses between seasons.

 

So, the episode was one of the better ones, one of the best of the new season, having the proper mix of comedy and tragedy. At the end of the episode, I thought to myself,  “Deng. That’s dark…”

[yesferatu]

It sure was sad but the whole time I couldn't understand why they didn't sell their house instead the guy was pulling and swallowing his teeth/drinking his urine online. 

[QQQQ]

33 minutes ago, yesferatu said:

It sure was sad but the whole time I couldn't understand why they didn't sell their house instead the guy was pulling and swallowing his teeth/drinking his urine online. 

Yeah, there were a few financial things that didn't make sense. The surgery was free in the hopes the money would be recouped via the monthly subscription fees? That seems unlikely (especially when the patient is middle-aged to start out with).

[Paloma]

2 hours ago, yesferatu said:

It sure was sad but the whole time I couldn't understand why they didn't sell their house instead the guy was pulling and swallowing his teeth/drinking his urine online. 

If they sold their house, then they'd have to pay rent to live somewhere, so selling wouldn't necessarily offset the subscription cost for long.

I was confused at the end about what was supposed to happen when she said it was time. First I assumed she wanted to die, but I didn't think she wanted him to kill her, since he presumably would have to live with the guilt. So I expected her to take an overdose of pills to die peacefully. But after he smothered her I wasn't sure why he went in the other room with the knife with the apparent intention of killing himself on camera. Was his original intention to kill himself on camera in order to earn enough to pay for her subscription to last for years? Or was his last act (suicide on camera) payment for giving her 30 minutes of Lux serenity?  

Up to that ending, it was an excellent episode, a perfect commentary on the frustrations of dealing with cable, streaming, and phone services as well as commercialism in general.

[Ingrin]

2 hours ago, QQQQ said:

Yeah, there were a few financial things that didn't make sense. The surgery was free in the hopes the money would be recouped via the monthly subscription fees? That seems unlikely (especially when the patient is middle-aged to start out with).

While I also questioned some financial things, the free surgery/subscription was the MOST realistic aspect to me.

Classic Loss Leader (think free iPhone with 2 years of cell service) plus Enshitification (get everyone to use your service by setting a low barrier of entry and enticing features then once you dominate the market, serve ads, increase prices and add tiered service levels).  On average, you can expect 30 years of service at $3600 a year, so $108k over lifetime(and sell ads and timeshare processing), they already upgraded to Standard in less than a year, and would be on the hook for 14k a year and half a mil over lifetime. That isn't including the Lux boosters which is essentially legal drug dealing for crazy profit, and likely addicting ... If they could afford Lux, that's close to 1 million over the average recipients lifetime.

 I only had an issue with the gig-work humiliation site, which seems like an idea for its own, lesser episode that didn't add much to this one.

Edited April 13 by Ingrin

[QQQQ]

I get that's where they were going with it (with an extra jab at streaming services who offer introductory rates and then hike up prices, offer packages without commercials for more money, etc.). But brain surgery and the ensuing hospital stay would have been several hundred thousand $$. Starting out at only $300/month is really playing the long game 😂

[Amarsir]

3 hours ago, yesferatu said:

It sure was sad but the whole time I couldn't understand why they didn't sell their house instead the guy was pulling and swallowing his teeth/drinking his urine online. 

The math doesn't work at all. And if I'm unkind I'd say the writers wanted to steal the emotion of living paycheck-to-paycheck but never actively pictured it.

If the food and other disposables she consumes add up to $400 per month, then the cost of living under the Plus package was $14,400 per year. (12*(4+8)). Her teaching job paid less than that?  If not, keeping her alive is not only the moral choice, it's the financial one. It's not like mortgage payment goes down when your spouse dies.

I'm not going to get hung up on that because the story they wanted was being unable to afford payments, and that's not an implausible premise. But it's telling they didn't think it through.

What does bother me is that they took a single, obvious path and just stood on it. There are so many different perspectives they could have explored with the same premise.

• What if instead if viewing it as an ongoing necessity they came to celebrate a short-term opportunity? Keep someone alive long enough to make peace and say goodbye? That's a gift not a burden.
• How about a twist where we're cursing the company for inserting ads, then we get a notice they're shutting down? Turns out the "excessive" prices were actually losing money, death is again inevitable, and the people we've been hating were actually allies in an impossible task?
• Explore the idea of being vegetative most of the time but switched on for special events and only living 5% of life.
• If you really want it a metaphor, how about they want to switch to a rival company but this one claims they won't transfer out the brain scans.

I just found myself saying "Yeah no I get it" way before the show wrapped up and really wanted something else.

[DrSpaceman73]

Really we done.  Better than anything last season.  

 

Funny. Thougt provoking.  Believable.  Heart breaking. 

 

You can get caught up in the financial math and yes it seemed a bit off but not focusing on the specifics of it. Don't view it that important. 

5 hours ago, yesferatu said:

It sure was sad but the whole time I couldn't understand why they didn't sell their house instead the guy was pulling and swallowing his teeth/drinking his urine online. 

I assumed that had little to no equity in the house. Plus they'd have you find somewhere else to live no guarantee its less. 

Edited April 13 by DrSpaceman73

[bilgistic]

The ads being "silently" introduced was such a great dig at Amazon Prime and Netflix itself, both of which for YEARS provided a standard service that all of a sudden became substandard with ads--but you can pay more to have a higher, better tier with no ads! I kept thinking how they should sue the brain harvesting service just like we should all sue all of these services that keep doing the same thing to all of us.

The only successful backlash against subscription services I've heard of was the BMW seat warmers. The rest of us poor folk just take our lumps and like it. I actually pay only for the lowest tier of Netflix with ads...which just went up a dollar last month.🥴

Edited April 15 by bilgistic

[Brn2bwild]

The bleak ending this had was probably best, but I couldn't help but wonder why Amanda didn't ask Tracy Ellis Ross's character how she came to work for the company and get access to such a high-level subscription.  It could have led to a darkly comic situation where we find out TER's character used to struggle to afford it like they did and was forced to essentially join the company and peddle the service to others like her, until she could find someone willing to be her replacement.  So once Amanda signed on, TER could live freely with a lifetime premium service (though for how long would it be premium?).  We would find Amanda and Mike in the role of TER's character in the end, promising miracles and joy to other sad couples, all the while knowing how bad it would really get.

Edited April 14 by Brn2bwild

[tennisgurl]

That was certainly a bleak start to the new season, very classic Black Mirror. Not only was it an absolute crushingly sad story, but we came in hot with a take that towards Netflix itself and its enshittofication practices. Chris O'Dowd and Rashida Jones both did a great job, I love seeing comedic actors in dramatic roles, and they did a great job at slowly breaking down over the years they spent dealing with this. 

The subscription frustration is so real, you get sold on this ad free very reasonable subscription service and then they start jacking up the prices when you get used to having it, they start showing ads unless you spend even more money then what you were promised. I also thought it was an interesting look at how an illness can drain a persons finances and energy, your too ill to work, the money for the treatments start adding up, your exhausted all of the time, etc. 

I can understand why some people can get caught up in the numbers game, but for me Black Mirror has never been particularly realistic when it comes to the details, its more about morality tales and science fiction takes on modern issues and the human experience, and that's why it works for me. 

[Kel Varnsen]

This one was good and I liked how it was a nice twist on the usual Black Mirror -brain download into a computer thing they love. But like a lot of BM episodes it leaves me with some questions. Like what happens if you just stop paying? Do you die or do you go into a permanent sleep mode? So why couldn't they use that as a way to kill her instead of smothering her. It seems like it would be a more peaceful way to go.

Also was Mike going to kill himself on camera or was it just that the basement was the room where he does things he is ashamed of?

Also after the 12 hour lux package I really thought they were going to go down the path where she got addicted to the 100% pleasure setting and basically became a junkie who would do whatever it took to get back to that high. Because that would also fit with the subscription model where you get hooked on the good thing and how it is basically like a drug. Especially since someone who looked like Rashida Jones could probably make more money on the Internet than someone who looked like Chris O'Dowd.

Edited April 15 by Kel Varnsen

[cmfran]

 

9 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

This one was good and I liked how it was a nice twist on the usual Black Mirror -brain download into a computer thing they love. But like a lot of BM episodes it leaves me with some questions. Like what happens if you just stop paying? Do you die or do you go into a permanent sleep mode? So why couldn't they use that as a way to kill her instead of smothering her. It seems like it would be a more peaceful way to go.

Also was Mike going to kill himself on camera or was it just that the basement was the room where he does things he is ashamed of?

Also after the 12 hour lux package I really thought they were going to go down the path where she got addicted to the 100% pleasure setting and basically became a junkie who would do whatever it took to get back to that high. Because that would also fit with the subscription model where you get hooked on the good thing and how it is basically like a drug. Especially since someone who looked like Rashida Jones could probably make more money on the Internet than someone who looked like Chris O'Dowd.

I thought it would end with them letting the subscription payment lapse, resulting in her being back in the same state she was in before. She wasn't technically dead in the hospital, but they said she may never regain consciousness. It made me wonder what the legal ramifications of that would be.

Lots to unpack in this one, but it was well done. A scathing indictment of our health care system as well as tiered subscription services. As usual in BM, it's not hard to see things eventually ending up this way.

 

[shrewd.buddha]

On 4/12/2025 at 10:31 PM, Amarsir said:

What does bother me is that they took a single, obvious path and just stood on it. There are so many different perspectives they could have explored with the same premise.

Classic Black Mirror: start out happily then nosedive towards devastation and ruin. Other options and any "Hey, what about..?" considerations are not allowed to take things off course.

This was a well done episode, with established actors that really delivered. 
Our household can only deal with one episode per day, though.  This stuff is thought provoking - but way too bleak to binge.

[Kel Varnsen]

1 hour ago, cmfran said:

Lots to unpack in this one, but it was well done. A scathing indictment of our health care system as well as tiered subscription services. As usual in BM, it's not hard to see things eventually ending up this way.

 

The only other thing I really questioned was how the story took place over several years. But from the beginning Rivermind, which seemed like a start-up, was already leaning on working class people. It seems like if that was their customer base then after a couple of years stories of how shitty the arrangement is would come out and tank the company. Since it seems like unless you were super rich, everyone using it would be going through the same issues as Amanda. And with how connected people are to social media on BM, those kind of stories would go viral fast.

[cmfran]

48 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

The only other thing I really questioned was how the story took place over several years. But from the beginning Rivermind, which seemed like a start-up, was already leaning on working class people. It seems like if that was their customer base then after a couple of years stories of how shitty the arrangement is would come out and tank the company. Since it seems like unless you were super rich, everyone using it would be going through the same issues as Amanda. And with how connected people are to social media on BM, those kind of stories would go viral fast.

Very fair, but I try to keep in mind that we don't know what else exists in each episode's universe (social media, other tech, etc). Although there was a callback to the drone bees from "Hated In The Nation," and there was a LOT of social media in that ep.

[mirandroid]

This one messed me up. It probably wasn't a great episode to start with although it's the first of the new season. I sat on the couch and had a 30-minute existential crisis after it was over. D:

[Kel Varnsen]

38 minutes ago, cmfran said:

Very fair, but I try to keep in mind that we don't know what else exists in each episode's universe (social media, other tech, etc). Although there was a callback to the drone bees from "Hated In The Nation," and there was a LOT of social media in that ep.

That's true, we don't really know how big a deal social media is in their world. But I feel like even regular media would be all over this company pretty quickly and once stories came out about the ads and the crappy sleep and the nickel and dining, no one would ever sign up.

[Paloma]

3 hours ago, cmfran said:

I thought it would end with them letting the subscription payment lapse, resulting in her being back in the same state she was in before.

Being back in the same state she was in before would not resolve the financial problem, because the cost of maintaining a person in essentially a vegetative state in a hospital or nursing home would probably be at least as expensive as maintaining the subscription. I suppose he could try to take care of her at home, but he'd still need a job that paid enough for housing, food, and medical maintenance. 

In any case, I'm sure she wouldn't want to live in a vegetative state. So death was really the only solution to the situation. Which raises the question: how would Rivermind stay in business if most people could not afford to keep the subscription and opted to die? There can't be enough wealthy people with the kind of brain damage suitable for the Rivermind "cure." But I guess that question is irrelevant to the point the episode is making.

 

[Kel Varnsen]

6 hours ago, Paloma said:

Being back in the same state she was in before would not resolve the financial problem, because the cost of maintaining a person in essentially a vegetative state in a hospital or nursing home would probably be at least as expensive as maintaining the subscription. I suppose he could try to take care of her at home, but he'd still need a job that paid enough for housing, food, and medical maintenance. 

That's true, although someone being in a vegetative state or on life support isn't uncommon and hospitals have ways to humanely deal with that sort of thing when people decide it's time to take their loved one off life support. So at least in that case there would be a system in place to help someone like Mike and someone like Amanda could die relatively peacefully. Not being smothered by a pillow while she spouts off and copy against her will.

[Which Tyler]

That was a return to form for BM.

Probably the most frustratingly plausible episode in the main (obviously not the tech)

 

You could see each step coming, but that's because it's so believable - like Dolores Umbridge - not the most evil, but hits so hard because of that plausibility!

[topanga]

On 4/15/2025 at 6:58 AM, cmfran said:

Lots to unpack in this one, but it was well done. A scathing indictment of our health care system as well as tiered subscription services.

I loved your entire post, but how was the episode an indictment of the health care system? Rashida Jones had an inoperable brain tumor, and there wasn't much to be done for her. The Rivermind insertion was experimental. Unless you're talking about the high cost of treating a chronic illness? 

 

On 4/14/2025 at 9:15 PM, Kel Varnsen said:

Also was Mike going to kill himself on camera or was it just that the basement was the room where he does things he is ashamed of?

That was vague, but I thought he'd become addicted to the self-inflicted pain and money he received from the website. And it seems like he couldn't get other work. Which I didn't understand. Dude's a welder, and there are plenty of jobs in that industry. 

The episode also was a tale about the loneliness and isolation of modern society. I know the husband's family was in Ireland, but where was Rashida's family? And do either of them have friends? I only saw them interact with co-workers. 

[Paloma]

3 hours ago, topanga said:

And it seems like he couldn't get other work. Which I didn't understand. Dude's a welder, and there are plenty of jobs in that industry. 

I assumed that he couldn't get another job as a welder because his fight with (or assault on) the coworker resulted in the guy being run over by heavy equipment. There may be plenty of welder jobs in the country, but maybe not so many in the limited geographic area where they had to live because of the coverage area of their Rivermind plan. And anyone hiring in that area would probably hear about the fight/assault and be reluctant to hire him. 

[jacehan]

On 4/12/2025 at 9:10 PM, Paloma said:

Or was his last act (suicide on camera) payment for giving her 30 minutes of Lux serenity?  

That was my assumption. He said it was a private client - someone ordering a snuff film.

[Chicago Redshirt]

13 hours ago, topanga said:

I loved your entire post, but how was the episode an indictment of the health care system? Rashida Jones had an inoperable brain tumor, and there wasn't much to be done for her. The Rivermind insertion was experimental. Unless you're talking about the high cost of treating a chronic illness? 

Rivermind was able to get its hooks into the couple because the doctor was willing to introduce the concept to a person at his most desperate. The doctor didn't exactly endorse the procedure but certainly did not give him enough of an objective analysis of what the potential ramifications of the procedure were. The medical establishment further facilitated matters by being willing to do the surgery for free or at least, at no cost to the family It's unclear how much the doctor knew, or should have known, about Rivermind's plans and its ability to pull of its promise in the first place. But I think looking at them in the best possible light they fell short of their ethical obligations to the husband, and in the worst light, they  are active participants in the scam Rivermind is running.

I could see being willing to do anything to keep a loved one close. But knowing, for example, that they could be made to spout commercials without any agency or knowledge would be a place a person might draw the line. 

[Amarsir]

19 hours ago, topanga said:

how was the episode an indictment of the health care system? Rashida Jones had an inoperable brain tumor, and there wasn't much to be done for her. The Rivermind insertion was experimental. Unless you're talking about the high cost of treating a chronic illness? 

I said upthread that I wish the episode had gone deeper on the philosophy, so I won't belabor it. But as technology arrives and advances our perspectives change. We go from:

1) There's nothing we can do for her.
2) I just pray this experimental procedure can buy her a little more time.
3) It's really expensive but we can keep her alive as long as we maintain it.
4) She needs this procedure to live and the fact that it's expensive is basically murder.

In present day there absolutely are things people see at level 4 - especially for someone lower income and uninsured. (Insulin is often held up as an example, although insulin itself is really cheap and what people are actually wanting is the patented injection needle. But I digress.) Even a one-time operation can cause burdensome debt and the difference is that you can't cancel the service and stop paying. 

It's an indictment of the healthcare system - if you want it to be - in that Rivermind is a metaphor for anything life-extending but expensive. The show quickly moved from 1-3 and I think they expected the audience to picture it as level 4. Whether you did or not is individual perspective.

But I think the point of good sci-fi is to let us re-examine how we think and experience a little cognitive dissonance. And that flip from "Thank God" to "How dare you" invokes a much deeper explanation than "Doesn't it suck when things cost money?"

[DrSpaceman73]

I thought he sold the crib to get her last 30 minutes.  

Makes it sadly poetic. Sell the crib of the baby you can't have to help your wife die peacefully. 

[stormy weather]

Overall I didn't dislike the episode, the plot had a few good ideas (although it reminded me a lot of Johnny Depp's movie The Brave) and I love Chris O'Dowd, but I couldn't thoroughly enjoy it because all the illogical stuff kept bothering me.

So, Amanda probably earns around 3-4k a month as an elementary school teacher and Mike makes more or less another 3k (just checked on google for average salaries in both professions), which means around 7,000 a month. Doesn't look like they live in Manhattan, so rent, bills and food can't be that expensive either. I mean, in a situation like theirs 300 dollars a month is not much at all! If they had made it more expensive it would definitely make much more sense for them to struggle a bit with the decision. For 300 bucks it was ridiculous he would think about it even for one minute.

2. why oh why would he choose to make some money on the side with that stupid website? 20 dollars for drinking your pee? You'd earn more flipping burgers on a night shift at MacDonald's! And then why on earth would you take off your mask if you know your co-worker is on that website every day and will for sure recognize you? What did he think would happen?

3. when he gets fired, why can't he just get another job somewhere else where they don't know him?

I know I should apply suspension of disbelief but these were things they could easily fix without the plot suffering for it.

[Kel Varnsen]

5 hours ago, stormy weather said:

why oh why would he choose to make some money on the side with that stupid website? 20 dollars for drinking your pee? You'd earn more flipping burgers on a night shift at MacDonald's

The 20 dollars for drinking your own piss thing was weird. I get that they were trying to show how desperate he was but that seems like a thing you can only do once on the internet and make money from. And yea it seems like there would be way easier ways to make money. Even picking up cans on the side of the road. Plus I know she had to sleep a lot but why wasn't Amanda trying to make extra money while she was awake? Especially since if you want to make money doing degrading things on the internet, Amanda could make way more money doing porn than Mike could pulling out his teeth.

Edited April 20 by Kel Varnsen

[MCMLXXVII]

1 hour ago, Kel Varnsen said:

The 20 dollars for drinking your own piss thing was weird. I get that they were trying to show how desperate he was but that seems like a thing you can only do once on the internet and make money from. And yea it seems like there would be way easier ways to make money. Even picking up cans on the side of the road. Plus I know she had to sleep a lot but why wasn't Amanda trying to make extra money while she was awake? Especially since if you want to make money doing degrading things on the internet, Amanda could make way more money doing porn than Mike could pulling out his teeth.

I think that was a comment on Only Fans and the people who have lost their day jobs after been exposed and shamed for doing sex work.

This was a great episode! I chuckled when I realized they were slowing Amanda’s service speed and inserting ads- all the annoyance of subscription service, but then the medical debt leading to bankruptcy part became very dark and sad. I noticed there was no mention of Rivermind being covered by health insurance, but perhaps they didn’t want to directly address that can of worms. It was definitely interesting watching this right after Luigi Mangione was indicted.

 

 

 

[libgirl2]

1 hour ago, Kel Varnsen said:

The 20 dollars for drinking your own piss thing was weird. I get that they were trying to show how desperate he was but that seems like a thing you can only do once on the internet and make money from. And yea it seems like there would be way easier ways to make money. Even picking up cans on the side of the road. Plus I know she had to sleep a lot but why wasn't Amanda trying to make extra money while she was awake? Especially since if you want to make money doing degrading things on the internet, Amanda could make way more money doing porn than Mike could pulling out his teeth.

It probably wasn't just one person giving him $20 but multiple people doing so. He most likely made more money with that one act then working for a week flipping burgers. 

[Tango64]

Black Mirror has taught me that when a company comes out with a super cool service that only requires you to put a little electronic thing on your temple, just don't. It never ends well.

[DoctorAtomic]

I forgot that Black Mirror was back on because popular television series post covid take multiple years between seasons now. 

I enjoyed the subscription ad take, and I thought ads were funny because they were so clumsy. Jones seemed to relish doing the ads. 

I know they needed to hit the plot point of losing the job, but I don't think it was earned. Yes, he started the fight. But the other guys pulled him away and the little shit guy walked back into the truck. If that was a union job, no way he's fired literally on the spot. 

I think it might have been cleaner if the wife was doing porn and then got fired by the school. Although, I'm not sure doing porn full time wouldn't be profitable. I liked the idea mentioned up thread that she ended up addicted to Lux. 

This was more the husband's story because he was the one that sprung for the gift cards. 

I think they did leave a lot on the table. I would have liked to see how the ads worked in other jobs, other people in the service. 

Still, a good concept for the show

[PurpleTentacle]

Very good episode. Haven't seen the rest yet so I hope this sets the standard for the season.

In any other country this would be covered under socialised medicine and you'd likely get your brain on a hard drive instead of streaming it from a server constantly... But with how the US is, this tracks.

On 4/13/2025 at 1:14 AM, QQQQ said:

Yeah, there were a few financial things that didn't make sense. The surgery was free in the hopes the money would be recouped via the monthly subscription fees? That seems unlikely (especially when the patient is middle-aged to start out with).

Operations really aren't that expensive. Hospitals will just charge you an arm and a leg for it because they can. Maybe this company got a good deal.

Let's say it's actually 10k, which seems reasonable, with the equipment and all the saleries of the people invloved. They'd have that recouped after a bit over a year on the plus... excuse me, now standard, plan.

What seems less plausible than the operation being recouped pretty quickly is running that netword nation wide. I mean apart from the servers, you'd need cell towerd everywhere. That's going to cost an insane amount of money. And how many people are going to have traumatic brain injuries and opt into their service? How can you ever scale this enough to make it worth building out that network?

Maybe they could have contracts with existing cell providers? But streaming a brain would be insanely data intensive. One stream would probably put a tower close to capacity and then what are the people with cell phones on the network going to do?

Or is the streaming just a ruse? Is the brain actually still located inside the skull and it just constanly phones home to make sure it is still authorised to run? That you could do with very minimal data. If that was the case, could you jail break your brain? So many interesting questions...

On 4/13/2025 at 3:10 AM, Paloma said:

I was confused at the end about what was supposed to happen when she said it was time. First I assumed she wanted to die, but I didn't think she wanted him to kill her, since he presumably would have to live with the guilt. So I expected her to take an overdose of pills to die peacefully.

I thought he'd drive her over the border. I mean that seems the most peacefull death you can get. Well I guess she wouldn't be totally dead at that point, but a few days without water she sure would be...

On 4/15/2025 at 4:02 PM, Kel Varnsen said:

That's true, we don't really know how big a deal social media is in their world. But I feel like even regular media would be all over this company pretty quickly and once stories came out about the ads and the crappy sleep and the nickel and dining, no one would ever sign up.

I mean what choice do people have? Let a loved one die or sign up for this shitty company's shitty service? Not sure if many people would choose to let go.

On 4/21/2025 at 7:51 PM, Tango64 said:

Black Mirror has taught me that when a company comes out with a super cool service that only requires you to put a little electronic thing on your temple, just don't. It never ends well.

That is a very good lesson to have learned, especially since the guy doing it in real life is Elon Musk. I don't even want a car from that man, let alone something in my brain.

 

 

[QQQQ]

$10,000 for brain surgery in the US of A? Now THAT is some science fiction 😅😅😅

[PurpleTentacle]

27 minutes ago, QQQQ said:

$10,000 for brain surgery in the US of A? Now THAT is some science fiction 😅😅😅

Like I said, I know that's not what the hospital is charging you, but it's certainly more than it actually costs. There is no reason a company couldn't negotiate for a price that is somewhere around there.

I mean insurance companies do it all the time. You don't think they actually pay $30 for that Tylenol on your bill, do you?

[Kel Varnsen]

4 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

mean what choice do people have? Let a loved one die or sign up for this shitty company's shitty service? Not sure if many people would choose to let go.

I live in Canada so I am not really sure, but isn't people dying because they can't afford life saving medical treatment something that's not totally uncommon in the US? 

[PurpleTentacle]

2 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

I live in Canada so I am not really sure, but isn't people dying because they can't afford life saving medical treatment something that's not totally uncommon in the US? 

If they actually, really can't afford it, sure. Then they literally have no other choice. But you were talking about not doing business with the company because they have a bad reputation for price gauging and running ads. People don't even cancel their Netflix subscriptions because of these tactics. Would they opt out of a life saving procedure because of them? I think not.

[DoctorAtomic]

No, not totally uncommon. I totally bought it when the guy jumped at hearing the surgery was totally free. I mean, we know it's Black Mirror, but immersing yourself in the story, anyone in the US, blue collar families like that wouldn't say no. 

[QQQQ]

2 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

Like I said, I know that's not what the hospital is charging you, but it's certainly more than it actually costs. There is no reason a company couldn't negotiate for a price that is somewhere around there.

I mean insurance companies do it all the time. You don't think they actually pay $30 for that Tylenol on your bill, do you?

And the hospital's incentive for treating the for-profit corporation as a charity would be...? The days spent in the hospital recuperating from brain surgery, involving constant monitoring, therapy, medication, etc., would be more than $10,000. Unless you think the hospital would literally charge the same per night as a budget hotel plus some aspirin from Walgreen's.

I think this could have been resolved by making it a simpler implant or a medical center run solely by the company.

Edited 18 hours ago by QQQQ