What is the average life expectancy? 400 years.
How does this differ between different regions, races or ethnicities? Life is much shorter in the slums due to a much higher incidence of violence combined with an extreme difference in the physical strength of its classes. We have no races or ethnicities; we are all simply Decepticons.
What access do people have to clean drinking water (at home or in public)? Water creates rust - we certainly wouldn't want to DRINK it! So, none.
What access do people have to proper sanitation (at home or in public)? Every household has some sort of tank for their used oil, anti-freeze/anti-boil, transmission fluid, and the like. In public, facilities equipped for fluid changes can be found at most mechanics' shops.
Do houses or public buildings have plumbing? Most have a pipe that goes to their used-fluid storage tank, but that's it. Only the very wealthy have hot and cold running Energon, piped in right from the refinery. Cold and warm water? There you go with that "water" bit again. Water causes rust and shorts out circuits! No one would pipe that stuff into their homes!!
Describe any public or private bathing or latrine facilities. There aren't any. Visitors who would need a latrine have to either do it on their ship, or very sneakily dump it on some less-populated street and hope no one sees them. We're not at all set up for handling waste from biologicals. As for washing, you're still out of luck. If you're a bit dusty, you'll be looked down on, but seriously - you can wait until you get home to wash it off.
How is healthcare delivered in this society; what are its foundations? If your mind is in proper condition, you can read your body manual and fix your mechanical problems yourself. If it isn't capable of figuring out how, you go to the local Debugging Center to get that fixed, and then you can fix your other problems on your own.
Are there hospitals or sanitaria where many forms of health care are concentrated; or are practitioners more diffuse within the community? Each town has at least one Debugging Center, where coding glitches, mind-hardware failures, and upgrade patches are provided to the public. The first two types of repairs are tax-funded, but upgrade patches are charged-for since they are non-essential. The number of Debugging Centers an area has depends on its population - large cities can have 50 or more, while a small town typically has just one.
Do people have access to any form of medical aid for emergencies or for less urgent problems? Breakdowns aren't emergencies for robots, even if they cause complete shutdown. OUR bodies don't start corroding on us just from ceasing operation! Therefore, there are no emergency health services. If someone shuts down completely, he can be repaired and brought back online later, assuming nobody opportunistically sells his body to a foundry before that happens. If he does get sent to the foundry, it's all over for him. Melted metal does not reactivate.
What kinds of ailments or injuries are treatable in the locality using available supplies and expertise? Almost everything. Debugging Centers have experts that are assigned by the government, and they can fix almost all glitches. A few longstanding and highly ingrained glitches may require the services of the top experts from the Main Debugging Center in the capital. Rarely, someone is declared too glitched to fix by these experts, and in that case, euthanasia is an option.
Mechanically, every problem short of the complete destruction of the body can be repaired. Parts and tool stores are plentiful, and every body comes with a manual so everyone knows how to fix themselves. Even the smallest town will also have at least a couple of mechanic's shops, too, so people aren't out of luck if their engine, transmission, or other part vital to physical motion goes out.
What does typical healthcare cost? Debugging - nothing. It's one of very few things that are funded by tax. Mechanical - It depends on what's wrong! Parts prices, however, are reasonable. Coding upgrades - upgrade patches are usually quite reasonable, but if you want a highly extensive patch that isn't considered essential, it can be very expensive. Mechanical upgrades - THESE will set you back a whole lot of money if you want something truly unique, badass, or otherwise truly special. They can involve custom engineering, full-body load rebalancing, engine upgrades, suspension system upgrades, and more. Expect to invest at least 100,000 Cubes in a mechanical upgrade that's special enough to impress people, and up to millions of Cubes for one that requires a full re-engineering of your body. It is said that Leader Megatron's body has over 1 billion Cubes' worth of upgrades, and that's a fairly old figure.
How do this societys doctors try to treat wounds and sickness? Outside of the Military, they don't. You should be carrying a repair kit in one of your leg's storage panels, and your Standard Educational Data Pack (SEDP) has the information on how to use it.
IN the Military, a field mechanic will tend to you if he's around, mainly because that way, you can get back to fighting faster. If he isn't around, use your field repair kit.
A good repair kit will contain some sheet metal, a couple of lengths of common hose types, a few lengths of cable, some blank computer chips, some solder, and other associated "universal" parts. Knowing what to do with it is considered essential data for a Decepticon, so it's in your SEDP data. Unlike biologicals, you never forget your SEDP data, though you may have zipped it up into a fairly inaccessible file at some point. If so, just unzip the FIELD REPAIRS module, and you'll have instant, full access to all you need to know to fix your damage.
Decepticons do not get "sick" at any point. Mechanical parts just don't work that way.
Which medical assumptions of this society are wrong? That biologicals can be repaired as easily as we can, and that when they grow old and die, they intentionally allowed that to happen.
Do people seek care on an as-needed or emergency basis; or is health care seen as a preventative endeavour. Mechanical work is done on an as-needed basis, while Debugging is a preventative endeavor.
How often do people see their doctor, dentist or other healthcare provider? It is recommended that Decepticons get checked by Debugging every 3 months, but many only go every 6 months or a year. Those who try to avoid going at all often end up being dragged in after they accumulate enough glitches to be obviously off the beam.
Is a distinction made between physical and nonphysical ailments? Yes. Mental errors are usually the result of coding errors that accumulate due to inefficiencies in the generation of adaptive scripting. Therefore, they are handled by experts in programming.
Physical errors usually affect parts that have nothing to do with the mind. Therefore, those who get them can almost always think clearly enough to fix them themselves. Because of this, people with physical problems do not normally get sympathy. Instead, they are jeered at and rudely told to get their wrenches out instead of letting themselves become "piles of reject parts."
Some errors are combinations of the two. Problems with mind hardware - such as chips, power supplies, traces, memory modules, and the like - can corrupt the code of the sufferer. Therefore, the checking and replacement of this hardware is part of the job of the Debugging Center. It is also strongly suggested for people to have Debugging take care of any desired upgrades of such hardware, both to ensure that the parts are functional and to protect themselves from firmware-based hacking.
What happens to those suffering from extreme mental illness? Spiritual illness? Other? To the Debugging Center with them, whether they want to go or not! We do not understand the meaning of "spiritual illness," so cannot comment on that part.
How do people react to physical deformity (both congenital and acquired)? There should be no such thing as "congenital" deformity in a robot! Nothing about our design is accidental or up to chance! Therefore, if any such thing is seen, the Coder (who is also the builder) of that offspring will face the death penalty for intentionally building a defective youngster. The offspring will then be taken in by the government, rebuilt in a way that meets or exceeds the Minimum Design Specification of the Decepticon Body, and raised at a government Raising Center until adulthood.
Acquired physical deformity draws loathing because it is easily repaired. Someone who doesn't repair their damage is therefore considered to be intentionally weak. To be WEAK is disgusting to a Decepticon, and to be intentionally so is literal treason since weak members of society also weaken the nation. Anyone who has acquired visible damage should go home and fix it as soon as is physically possible. If he has to steal parts because he can't afford to buy them, he should try to do so even though that means risking being energy-blasted to death by the shopkeeper and/or loss prevention staff.
Those who remain obviously damaged for prolonged periods will invariably draw the unwanted attention of Scroungers, who will try to overpower the person in order to sell him to a foundry as "whole-body scrap." Foundries will buy "junkers" without any problems or qualms, so it is very much in a person's best interest to fix themselves as soon as possible, by whatever means possible, even if that means jumping someone who's even weaker and stealing the needed parts right off of their body.
Another cause of acquired physical deformity is poor self-engineering. This is a problem that afflicts those who make their own modification parts. In that case, the intention is to UPgrade - but a lack of engineering skill can cause FUBARred results instead. When this happens, the person is to re-install their old, actually-working parts right away so nobody ever knows that they screwed up their project.
