Are you at all familiar with those Tumblr posts that take a heartwarming news headline about how the combined efforts of a community allowed someone to access healthcare, and point out how it’s actually quite disgusting that the healthcare system has gotten so bad that these are the measures people have to take to afford to not die?
Well, we’re all about to join one such community, and while the occasion is a gross reminder of the aforementioned state of things, you’d best believe we’re all walking into this deed with a smile on our faces, because this mother and her babies deserve that and so much more.
After having no luck with getting insurance to pay for her baby son’s helmet, @twinmomtales took to TikTok in hopes of making a video go viral, and using the money to keep her family above the proverbial waterline. Her calculations are rock solid; so long as each view of the above video is five seconds long, it will count towards her viewership goal, and since the video is over one minute long, she will get paid for it when the time comes.
Judging by when the video was posted, that time probably already has come, but why would you ever not watch this video anyway? Look at these two whipper-snappers, reveling in their newfound acquaintanceship with destruction and gravity, all while their mother enables their fascinations with colorful, stackable plastic. Who knows what they’re in for next?
Sweet as the video may be, it bears repeating that it’s nothing short of insidious that the healthcare system is such that this mother needs to turn to TikTok in order to pay for her son’s medical needs. According to Investopedia, the four usual no-no’s for health insurance companies are cosmetic procedures, fertility treatments, off-label prescriptions, and new medical technology that doesn’t have enough data on its risks for the company to safely consider. By all appearances, the helmet in question is a part of the baby’s helmet therapy (which, according to HealthyChildren.org, is a treatment that helps mold a baby’s skull into a safe and healthy shape), so it’s hard to imagine why such a claim would be rejected. Such are the circus hoops that come with privatized healthcare.
But, even if relying on TikTok for the health of a baby isn’t an ideal situation, the mindset of “let’s take care of each other” is nevertheless one we’d all be wise to embrace going forward, if not for the good deeds that it spreads, then for the sake of embodying the antithesis of the greed that so many economic (and, by extension, livelihood) problems spring from.
