Now a convenient store currently occupied by a tall, jewish closeted transformers nerd, and an ultra-shy untra-invert girl about to have a psychotic break? Yeah, that’s closer to the scope of Sal’s imagination. 😛
More often than not for the insured, even. A lot of insurance agencies like to claim nearly everything as not a “bona fide medical emergency”, stuff like kidney stones or heart palpitations that might freak people out and get them to call an ambulance but aren’t ultimately life-threatening.
Privatized insurance can go suck my wangalang.
smashman42
Here in Australia with supposedly universal health care, there’s no dental coverage & depending on the state you have to buy ambulance insurance too. I’m in a lucky state that covers ambulances.
Agemegos
I had an ambulance ride the week before last that would have cost A$416 if I were not insured. On the other hand, in states where ambulances are free enough people abuse them (e.g. call an ambulance to get a ride to the hospital for a routine appointment) to be an expensive nuisance. Perhaps there is some sensible middle ground, such as ambulances costing twice as much as a taxi.
Alanari
In my country, ambulance is free if it was needed. If not, you pay for it. The medical personnel decides whether calling the ambulance was the right thing to do, not the insurer.
Trying to use the ambulance as a taxi actually costs you a fine, in addition to the ambulance costs.
Agemegos
Very sensible.
Emily
Wow, that takes a special kind of complete disregard for the health and safety of others.
Kryss LaBryn
And here I am in Canada where ambulance rides are not covered and depending on the province cost between a hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars. >< And if you don't pay they send you a few polite reminders and then give up.
Two thousand dollars to get your badly-injured kid to the hospital in in a timely manner while undergoing emergency medical care is fucking inhuman.
Tom T.
The large charges one sees in the US are rare; searching over this issue produces the same three or four incidents reported over and over. Most of the time, the charges are waived (i.e., absorbed into what others pay).
Kinoko
I’m curious if you have any data supporting that?
I know someone personally who had to pay $2k for an ambulance ride after the fact when she was having an extreme asthma attack due to inhaling mold, that couldn’t be treated with her inhaler alone. The fees were not waived. I know my sample size for data is just limited to people I know, but from other folks I’ve talked to, her experience seems to be the norm.
Apostate
I’ve personally been charged stupid amounts of money for a necessary ambulance ride on a couple occasions.
Chrissy
I know it is too late now but in case anyone else reads this: I was an EMT for a private ambulance company in America and I know we did not waive fees… that’s just not the case. Public ambulance services (fire departments) may waive fees—though I doubt it—but you have no control over public vs private… it just depends on what contracts your municipalities have made as well as population density. Volunteer ambulance services may have more leeway to waive but they are the absolute minority of ambulance services, only covering very rural (read: low population) areas.
Annonymouse
Well statistics say that the percentage of active complaints to incidents is similar to that of advertising flyers – about 2-4%.
Mind you if one hits the news and you have never ever heard of similar happening through the grapevine it is pretty sure it is a one off – if not then there is a problem.
Surrealfixx
When I dislocated my knee back in Alberta the ambulance ride was $400. Don’t get hurt in Alberta.
Here in Ontario, it’s either $45 or $250, depending on whether it’s considered necessary or not. (And there are a bunch of situations where it’s covered.) (The handful of times I’ve taken one it’s been the $45.)
Surrealfixx
Well Ontario is where I am now, but the difference is here I’m getting screwed on the big stuff instead of the smaller stuff…
I think I prefer the ambulance bill to round peg I’ve been trying to square off… ><
Anyway, story for another time and place, haha
BBCC
Really? I nearly had a seizure when I was 14 and I don’t recall anything being said about a bill for the ambulance. I guess that would have been considered necessary? My mom stopped it just before I started seizing and we didn’t know what it was.
Jim
It’s the luck of the draw, at least in some towns in the US… If
you’re lucky enough that the local First Aid Squad is available
and picks you up, the cost will be between free and relatively
inexpensive; if, however the First Aid Squad ambulances are all
busy, you are dispatched a private (For profit) ambulance, and
it costs thousands of dollars, more if they use any of their supplies.
lise
Ambulance insurance in Victoria, Aus, at least is only 40 dollars per year for a single person. If you have a low income health care card you get ambulance insurance covered through that. It’s not all that bad (especially compared to the mess in the USA) but I can’t wait until teeth are considered part of the rest of the body for sure.
Agemegos
It will be a glorious day.
My ambulance cover in NSW costs A$47 per year.
Khyrin
My grandmother insists on an ambulance ride whenever she self-diagnoses that she needs to go to the hospital. Apparently they aren’t allowed to send her home the same day if she arrives on a loudmobile rather than us driving her in.
in her defense, the most recent time, she had cracked a rib coughing. Also, while the police still show up, they have figured out we’re doing as she wishes, and are not engaged in elder abuse, even if there have been three calls in two weeks.
They are genuinely helpful.
If you live in a sane European country with free (but more basic) healthcare and have some chronic problems. It saves a lot of money, as the national healthcare provides only for the bare minimum of tests, and the waiting times are always long. If you have additional, private healthcare, you are generally able to find better doctors with more free schedules, while you’re still able to rely on the national healthcare system when the private company decides to be an ass. That’s what capitalism does when you are no longer constrained by literally NEEDING the product in order to live. It provides for a better product.
Oz
I live in Brazil, a third world country, and we never have to pay for ambulance (it’s a public emergency system like police or firefighters) and the public healthcare system is sometimes even better than the private hospitals o.o Well, the wait times are suuper long and there’s a general lack of … everything… in smaller, more remote towns, but in bigger cities it’s great, and almost everyone believes the government has a responsability of proving free, quality healthcare for the population.
I find it baffling that in richer countries like the US that belief is not there.
Kinoko
The US is an anomaly there, and is currently backsliding into being a developing nation due to such. Most 1st world countries have free universal healthcare.
Really interesting to learn more about Brazil! Thanks for that info. 🙂
I find it odd that every time somebody takes an ambulance ride they have to pay for 1/10th the cost of the truck they took a ride in. If you go to the hospital 10 times do they give you the ambulance?
ahecht
Ambulances cost ~$150,000 unequipped, and $250,000 fully equipped.
Paradoxius
Cool, just gotta go 115 more times to get my free ambulance!
Everyman, FF/EMT
It really depends on the station. My volunteer company is one of the last two in our state that doesn’t charge for ambulance rides. We survive entirely on grants and donations (the latter far more than the former).
But yeah, apparatus are expensive to build, outfit, and maintain; they aren’t mass-produced in the traditional sense: they have to be built from the chassis up, which tends to take about a year. Ambos cost around a quarter million; engines can run between a half and a full mil; ladders and quints can reach one-and-a-half.
The sheer amount of cash required to run a respectable company is mind-boggling.
thejeff
Plus, you’re paying for a couple of skilled professionals, who might not have done anything for you, but have to be ready to handle the next guy, who might be bleeding out from a gunshot wound or have spinal trauma or damn near anything. That’s what you’re paying for.
It’s essentially the same reason emergency room care is crazy expensive compared to other kinds of medical care, even if you wind up having the same things done.
If all you need is the ride, call a taxi.
Just for perspective: In Ontario, Canada it’s only $45 ($35 US). In Yukon it’s free.
Kryss LaBryn
Yeah, here in Nova Scotia, Canada it’s ridiculously expensive. At $150.
ischemgeek
Depends if you are in province or not. Few years back, I had to live on raman and food bank donations for a couple months when an out of province severe asthma attack resulted ina $700 bill.
I did the math and at that rate at even the highest priced rate in Canada at that cost you cold get an ambulance ride from Washington DC to a hospital outside of Chicago. In Ontario that ride would have cost $45 and the surgery would have been free.
Yeah, stalking or no, rapist or no, that is not the sort of promise you break right in front of someone at their job like that.
(If Marcie knew the ‘no I’m being stalked and have been followed off campus’ thing, she would probably still not say ‘fight the mysterious stalker’ but at the very least that’s something the rent-a-cops can act as separation of the two for.)
Marcie knew she was being stalked – she was there the first time, when AG was stalking her off campus. And the rent a cops (aside from marcie) did jack all.
Regardless, though, yeah. Marcie was NEVER going to not be pissed off at this.
Stupid useless rent-a-cops. Can’t you at least be meat shields?
Certainly a bad choice of Inevitable Throwdown Venue on Sal’s part. She stops having good ways to deal with it once ‘seeking authorities’ is out (I don’t think AG would have stopped for anything short of what she did and things probably would have escalated further, that period of time was SCARY,) and even if Sal trusted authorities she didn’t have a whole ton of evidence after the initial parking lot fight. (Though I bet if she had said ‘the campus vigilante appears to be stalking me’ a lot of authorities would have been Interested. Moot point because Sal would never, but there we go.) So, throwdown. But it’s harmful to Marcie two ways over when it’s right in front of her, at her work.
thejeff
Rent-a-cops aren’t paid enough to be meat shields.
Or to throw down with super-heroes.
BBCC
They definitely are not, and if they’d said ‘Dude, you don’t pay me anywhere NEAR enough to do this’ or ‘Don’t get involved, we called the police’ I’d respect that a lot more than just saying ‘I’unno, Amazi-Girl’.
Marcie got fired over the fight with Ryan and his bros. Sadly she didn’t see that Sal only got involved because they were about to kick the shit out of Amazi-Girl :C
Inahc
well, sal was trying to fight amazi-girl before that, despite marcie trying to stop her. that part was pretty shitty.
No, you have that backwards. Amazi-Girl was trying to fight Sal. Sal was rightly pissed off about being stalked and harassed, but she wasn’t the one who started that shit
CJ
If I remember correctly, Sal grabbed Amazi-Girls arm and pulled her out of hiding (above a door or something?)
thejeff
On the stairway above her, IIRC. Where she was crouched, stalking Sal. Given her previous attack and that she’d been stalking her for awhile, Sal was justified, but she did start the fight, such as it was.
After that first move though, they were both basically posturing, trying to get the other to attack to justify the fight they wanted.
Sal wanted AG to get whatever she was going to do over with. She didn’t want a fight specifically. She was READY to fight if that’s where things were headed, but she WANTED answers and for AG to fuck off.
What do they do if you simply can’t afford the payment, last time I checked debtors prison was no longer a thing.
Regalli
Wage garnishment, for one thing, and holds on their bank accounts. Repossession and sale of things to pay the debt. All that assuming they can deal with the invasive questions and such. (Assuming for a moment at least one member of the Diaz family is undocumented, a distinct LACK of known pay sources or bank account would be one of those things a debt collector would find and probably be very suspicious of.) Terrifying phone calls and general ‘We can and will make your life a living hell.’
Austyn
you get collectors harassing you for Years and the bills ruin your credit so it’s extremely difficult to get loans or apartments, and if you can you get exorbitant rates on them
nlips
Bankruptcy.
In the end, the cost is passed along to other customers of the health care system in the guise of higher medical costs and higher insurance premiums.
woobie
To my knowledge, it can be less of an issue when you or your family snuck in (to the USA) because you are renting, your job(s) pay cash, and you are using an assumed name anyway.
This did not include my mom years ago; we did lose our house.
thejeff
Well these days, Marcie’s folks would likely be met at the hospital by ICE and deported, maybe along with Marcie.
She’s lucky this is a flashback.
King Daniel
To say nothing of “luck” when the timeline advances to the point where the flashback is now flashbacking to 2017/2018…right now it’s just flashbacking to 2012-ish.
thejeff
Hopefully we can just avoid having any flashbacks to this time.
King Daniel
Unless someone develops a working Time Stop spell with a permanent duration, that moment is inexorably drawing nearer – within 6-12 years or so, every flashback already in the comic will be (or have been) set during the current-now. :/
thejeff
Well, yeah, but only retroactively.
As long as we don’t have any flashbacks to this time, while they’re taking place, I’ll be okay.
BBCC
I believe Willis has Word of God’ed that Trump doesn’t exist in the Dumbiverse. So he can’t be president.
I’m 99% sure he was kidding, but let me pretend.
ischemgeek
In dsome places they can sue, get a cpurt order, whereupon the court may jail you for contempt. ACLU fights de facto debtor’s prisons all the time.
thejeff
Check again.
Not debtor’s prison as such, but people are regularly imprisoned for not being able to pay various court fees and the like.
219 thoughts on “Fights”
Ana Chronistic
“I’m sure banks don’t need ALL that money”
…it was Leland, wasn’t it
Batman
fucking leland and his overwhelming charisma
Hinoron
Yeah… bank robbery is a bit out of Sal’s reach.
Now a convenient store currently occupied by a tall, jewish closeted transformers nerd, and an ultra-shy untra-invert girl about to have a psychotic break? Yeah, that’s closer to the scope of Sal’s imagination. 😛
Durandal_1707
Oh jeez, she didn’t even rob it to get money for a surgery, she was just trying to pay for the friggin’ *ambulance ride*
AutobotDen
Such is the state of “health care” in the US for the uninsured, and sometimes for the insured as well.
threePwny
More often than not for the insured, even. A lot of insurance agencies like to claim nearly everything as not a “bona fide medical emergency”, stuff like kidney stones or heart palpitations that might freak people out and get them to call an ambulance but aren’t ultimately life-threatening.
Privatized insurance can go suck my wangalang.
smashman42
Here in Australia with supposedly universal health care, there’s no dental coverage & depending on the state you have to buy ambulance insurance too. I’m in a lucky state that covers ambulances.
Agemegos
I had an ambulance ride the week before last that would have cost A$416 if I were not insured. On the other hand, in states where ambulances are free enough people abuse them (e.g. call an ambulance to get a ride to the hospital for a routine appointment) to be an expensive nuisance. Perhaps there is some sensible middle ground, such as ambulances costing twice as much as a taxi.
Alanari
In my country, ambulance is free if it was needed. If not, you pay for it. The medical personnel decides whether calling the ambulance was the right thing to do, not the insurer.
Trying to use the ambulance as a taxi actually costs you a fine, in addition to the ambulance costs.
Agemegos
Very sensible.
Emily
Wow, that takes a special kind of complete disregard for the health and safety of others.
Kryss LaBryn
And here I am in Canada where ambulance rides are not covered and depending on the province cost between a hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars. >< And if you don't pay they send you a few polite reminders and then give up.
Two thousand dollars to get your badly-injured kid to the hospital in in a timely manner while undergoing emergency medical care is fucking inhuman.
Tom T.
The large charges one sees in the US are rare; searching over this issue produces the same three or four incidents reported over and over. Most of the time, the charges are waived (i.e., absorbed into what others pay).
Kinoko
I’m curious if you have any data supporting that?
I know someone personally who had to pay $2k for an ambulance ride after the fact when she was having an extreme asthma attack due to inhaling mold, that couldn’t be treated with her inhaler alone. The fees were not waived. I know my sample size for data is just limited to people I know, but from other folks I’ve talked to, her experience seems to be the norm.
Apostate
I’ve personally been charged stupid amounts of money for a necessary ambulance ride on a couple occasions.
Chrissy
I know it is too late now but in case anyone else reads this: I was an EMT for a private ambulance company in America and I know we did not waive fees… that’s just not the case. Public ambulance services (fire departments) may waive fees—though I doubt it—but you have no control over public vs private… it just depends on what contracts your municipalities have made as well as population density. Volunteer ambulance services may have more leeway to waive but they are the absolute minority of ambulance services, only covering very rural (read: low population) areas.
Annonymouse
Well statistics say that the percentage of active complaints to incidents is similar to that of advertising flyers – about 2-4%.
Mind you if one hits the news and you have never ever heard of similar happening through the grapevine it is pretty sure it is a one off – if not then there is a problem.
Surrealfixx
When I dislocated my knee back in Alberta the ambulance ride was $400. Don’t get hurt in Alberta.
Kamino Neko
Here in Ontario, it’s either $45 or $250, depending on whether it’s considered necessary or not. (And there are a bunch of situations where it’s covered.) (The handful of times I’ve taken one it’s been the $45.)
Surrealfixx
Well Ontario is where I am now, but the difference is here I’m getting screwed on the big stuff instead of the smaller stuff…
I think I prefer the ambulance bill to round peg I’ve been trying to square off… ><
Anyway, story for another time and place, haha
BBCC
Really? I nearly had a seizure when I was 14 and I don’t recall anything being said about a bill for the ambulance. I guess that would have been considered necessary? My mom stopped it just before I started seizing and we didn’t know what it was.
Jim
It’s the luck of the draw, at least in some towns in the US… If
you’re lucky enough that the local First Aid Squad is available
and picks you up, the cost will be between free and relatively
inexpensive; if, however the First Aid Squad ambulances are all
busy, you are dispatched a private (For profit) ambulance, and
it costs thousands of dollars, more if they use any of their supplies.
lise
Ambulance insurance in Victoria, Aus, at least is only 40 dollars per year for a single person. If you have a low income health care card you get ambulance insurance covered through that. It’s not all that bad (especially compared to the mess in the USA) but I can’t wait until teeth are considered part of the rest of the body for sure.
Agemegos
It will be a glorious day.
My ambulance cover in NSW costs A$47 per year.
Khyrin
My grandmother insists on an ambulance ride whenever she self-diagnoses that she needs to go to the hospital. Apparently they aren’t allowed to send her home the same day if she arrives on a loudmobile rather than us driving her in.
in her defense, the most recent time, she had cracked a rib coughing. Also, while the police still show up, they have figured out we’re doing as she wishes, and are not engaged in elder abuse, even if there have been three calls in two weeks.
erejnion
They are genuinely helpful.
If you live in a sane European country with free (but more basic) healthcare and have some chronic problems. It saves a lot of money, as the national healthcare provides only for the bare minimum of tests, and the waiting times are always long. If you have additional, private healthcare, you are generally able to find better doctors with more free schedules, while you’re still able to rely on the national healthcare system when the private company decides to be an ass. That’s what capitalism does when you are no longer constrained by literally NEEDING the product in order to live. It provides for a better product.
Oz
I live in Brazil, a third world country, and we never have to pay for ambulance (it’s a public emergency system like police or firefighters) and the public healthcare system is sometimes even better than the private hospitals o.o Well, the wait times are suuper long and there’s a general lack of … everything… in smaller, more remote towns, but in bigger cities it’s great, and almost everyone believes the government has a responsability of proving free, quality healthcare for the population.
I find it baffling that in richer countries like the US that belief is not there.
Kinoko
The US is an anomaly there, and is currently backsliding into being a developing nation due to such. Most 1st world countries have free universal healthcare.
Really interesting to learn more about Brazil! Thanks for that info. 🙂
Kamino Neko
Don’t say free. It convinces supporters of the American system that you don’t know what taxes are. :p
Arawn
I find it odd that every time somebody takes an ambulance ride they have to pay for 1/10th the cost of the truck they took a ride in. If you go to the hospital 10 times do they give you the ambulance?
ahecht
Ambulances cost ~$150,000 unequipped, and $250,000 fully equipped.
Paradoxius
Cool, just gotta go 115 more times to get my free ambulance!
Everyman, FF/EMT
It really depends on the station. My volunteer company is one of the last two in our state that doesn’t charge for ambulance rides. We survive entirely on grants and donations (the latter far more than the former).
But yeah, apparatus are expensive to build, outfit, and maintain; they aren’t mass-produced in the traditional sense: they have to be built from the chassis up, which tends to take about a year. Ambos cost around a quarter million; engines can run between a half and a full mil; ladders and quints can reach one-and-a-half.
The sheer amount of cash required to run a respectable company is mind-boggling.
thejeff
Plus, you’re paying for a couple of skilled professionals, who might not have done anything for you, but have to be ready to handle the next guy, who might be bleeding out from a gunshot wound or have spinal trauma or damn near anything. That’s what you’re paying for.
It’s essentially the same reason emergency room care is crazy expensive compared to other kinds of medical care, even if you wind up having the same things done.
If all you need is the ride, call a taxi.
NaYa
Just for perspective: In Ontario, Canada it’s only $45 ($35 US). In Yukon it’s free.
Kryss LaBryn
Yeah, here in Nova Scotia, Canada it’s ridiculously expensive. At $150.
ischemgeek
Depends if you are in province or not. Few years back, I had to live on raman and food bank donations for a couple months when an out of province severe asthma attack resulted ina $700 bill.
Kyle Voltti
I did the math and at that rate at even the highest priced rate in Canada at that cost you cold get an ambulance ride from Washington DC to a hospital outside of Chicago. In Ontario that ride would have cost $45 and the surgery would have been free.
Oz
Jeez, I keep forgetting how absurd the US healthcare system is.
reed
gonna be a lotta bake sales
Austyn
oh no sal my heart
adjudicus
Welp, confirmation for robbery motive!
bhtooefr
That promise brings some new light to Marcie’s anger at Sal, for getting in a fight on her watch…
Austyn
oh no you’re right
DailyBrad
It does make that make a lot more sense, yeah.
Regalli
Yeah, stalking or no, rapist or no, that is not the sort of promise you break right in front of someone at their job like that.
(If Marcie knew the ‘no I’m being stalked and have been followed off campus’ thing, she would probably still not say ‘fight the mysterious stalker’ but at the very least that’s something the rent-a-cops can act as separation of the two for.)
BBCC
Marcie knew she was being stalked – she was there the first time, when AG was stalking her off campus. And the rent a cops (aside from marcie) did jack all.
Regardless, though, yeah. Marcie was NEVER going to not be pissed off at this.
Inahc
the rent-a-cops didn’t have much of a chance; the comic where they showed up is the one where amazi-girl spotted not-ryan and stopped trying to fight sal. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/alert/
BBCC
Where upon they stood around and did nothing because ‘Iunno, it’s Amazi-Girl’, so I’m not convinced they’d have done much anyways.
Inahc
ah, yes. uselessness confirmed, when sal and amazi-girl team up to fight the bros: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/paid-3/
Regalli
Stupid useless rent-a-cops. Can’t you at least be meat shields?
Certainly a bad choice of Inevitable Throwdown Venue on Sal’s part. She stops having good ways to deal with it once ‘seeking authorities’ is out (I don’t think AG would have stopped for anything short of what she did and things probably would have escalated further, that period of time was SCARY,) and even if Sal trusted authorities she didn’t have a whole ton of evidence after the initial parking lot fight. (Though I bet if she had said ‘the campus vigilante appears to be stalking me’ a lot of authorities would have been Interested. Moot point because Sal would never, but there we go.) So, throwdown. But it’s harmful to Marcie two ways over when it’s right in front of her, at her work.
thejeff
Rent-a-cops aren’t paid enough to be meat shields.
Or to throw down with super-heroes.
BBCC
They definitely are not, and if they’d said ‘Dude, you don’t pay me anywhere NEAR enough to do this’ or ‘Don’t get involved, we called the police’ I’d respect that a lot more than just saying ‘I’unno, Amazi-Girl’.
Fart Captor
Marcie got fired over the fight with Ryan and his bros. Sadly she didn’t see that Sal only got involved because they were about to kick the shit out of Amazi-Girl :C
Inahc
well, sal was trying to fight amazi-girl before that, despite marcie trying to stop her. that part was pretty shitty.
Fart Captor
No, you have that backwards. Amazi-Girl was trying to fight Sal. Sal was rightly pissed off about being stalked and harassed, but she wasn’t the one who started that shit
CJ
If I remember correctly, Sal grabbed Amazi-Girls arm and pulled her out of hiding (above a door or something?)
thejeff
On the stairway above her, IIRC. Where she was crouched, stalking Sal. Given her previous attack and that she’d been stalking her for awhile, Sal was justified, but she did start the fight, such as it was.
After that first move though, they were both basically posturing, trying to get the other to attack to justify the fight they wanted.
Fart Captor
Sal wanted AG to get whatever she was going to do over with. She didn’t want a fight specifically. She was READY to fight if that’s where things were headed, but she WANTED answers and for AG to fuck off.
LeslieBean4Shizzle
Yeahup.
Bonnabella
whoever theorized that she robbed the store to get money for the surgery, looks like you were right.
Tacos
Not even surgery. A friggin’ ambulance RIDE.
Some1
What do they do if you simply can’t afford the payment, last time I checked debtors prison was no longer a thing.
Regalli
Wage garnishment, for one thing, and holds on their bank accounts. Repossession and sale of things to pay the debt. All that assuming they can deal with the invasive questions and such. (Assuming for a moment at least one member of the Diaz family is undocumented, a distinct LACK of known pay sources or bank account would be one of those things a debt collector would find and probably be very suspicious of.) Terrifying phone calls and general ‘We can and will make your life a living hell.’
Austyn
you get collectors harassing you for Years and the bills ruin your credit so it’s extremely difficult to get loans or apartments, and if you can you get exorbitant rates on them
nlips
Bankruptcy.
In the end, the cost is passed along to other customers of the health care system in the guise of higher medical costs and higher insurance premiums.
woobie
To my knowledge, it can be less of an issue when you or your family snuck in (to the USA) because you are renting, your job(s) pay cash, and you are using an assumed name anyway.
This did not include my mom years ago; we did lose our house.
thejeff
Well these days, Marcie’s folks would likely be met at the hospital by ICE and deported, maybe along with Marcie.
She’s lucky this is a flashback.
King Daniel
To say nothing of “luck” when the timeline advances to the point where the flashback is now flashbacking to 2017/2018…right now it’s just flashbacking to 2012-ish.
thejeff
Hopefully we can just avoid having any flashbacks to this time.
King Daniel
Unless someone develops a working Time Stop spell with a permanent duration, that moment is inexorably drawing nearer – within 6-12 years or so, every flashback already in the comic will be (or have been) set during the current-now. :/
thejeff
Well, yeah, but only retroactively.
As long as we don’t have any flashbacks to this time, while they’re taking place, I’ll be okay.
BBCC
I believe Willis has Word of God’ed that Trump doesn’t exist in the Dumbiverse. So he can’t be president.
I’m 99% sure he was kidding, but let me pretend.
ischemgeek
In dsome places they can sue, get a cpurt order, whereupon the court may jail you for contempt. ACLU fights de facto debtor’s prisons all the time.
thejeff
Check again.
Not debtor’s prison as such, but people are regularly imprisoned for not being able to pay various court fees and the like.
Makkabee