I don’t have health insurance. I haven’t had it for well over a year. Like most Americans without insurance, I had it when I had a job. I was paying over $300 a month for coverage for myself and my spouse. We are both over 50 and have a variety of ailments that we need regular medical care for and we take a few prescriptions.
I lost my job a little over two years ago. For a while, COBRA payments were affordable, but as I struggled to live on less than half the regular salary I was earning, it became difficult. My unemployment payment was barely enough to cover my rent and the cable and utilities that I usually paid. I struggled to keep it up, but it was apparent that I wasn’t going to be able to afford it for long.
I went looking for an alternative and realized what a boondoggle it can be to try to shop for it. Every scam artist and desperate sales person must have been just waiting for a dope like me to fill out some questions online because soon, my cell phone was blowing up and I was getting half a dozen emails a day trying to convince me that they were all looking out for my best interest with the plan that was going to work for a couple of middle aged folks like us.
I settled for one and soon regretted my decision. When I was insured, my doctor visits cost me $30. You know how it goes. You have to give those folks your insurance card and pay before you even see a nurse. Somehow that all seems so very cold, but it’s how it is. If you are going to a specialist, it cost $50 a visit. That doesn’t count the tests they say you need or the medications they shove at you. Prescriptions are a huge expense.
This new fangled plan I was shelling out over $200 a month for only covered $50 of my visit and I had to pay the whole lump and get the $50 back later. So if a visit to my doctor cost $250, I had to pay the whole thing and wait a few weeks for the $50. The cost of my prescriptions only dropped by a mere dollar and I was taking a few that cost me well over $40 a month.
My spouse had to have an MRI which about $1000 and the “insurance” company balked at paying it. They only covered $25 or some ridiculous amount like that. Where in America can you get an MRI for $25?? In somebody’s dreams, that’s where. His doctor charged $500 a visit and one of his prescriptions cost over $1000 a month! The agent I spoke to referred me to a mail order plan that would charge $15 a month for each prescription. That had nothing to do with the plan he sold me.
When I sat down and thought about it, I realized I’d been duped and decided to get my money back. I called to cancel the plan and promptly the next day, they deducted the payment out of my meager bank account. It took me nearly a month to get my money back.
What now?
A friend of mine was going to a free clinic and I decided to go too. The people there are kind and helpful and getting in was rather easy. Of course I had to fill out a lot of paperwork to prove I was nearly indigent and that I couldn’t afford to purchase insurance. I did that. When I told them I was stressed to the point that I could not sleep at night, that I lay in bed each night with my stomach twisted in knots worrying how I was going to pay my share of the rent, the cable bill, the gas bill and still eat AND get my prescriptions and perhaps a few personal items like lotion and deodorant, they referred me to the county hospital to see a psychiatrist.
I wasn’t suicidal or homicidal. I was just stressed and afraid. I’ve always been able to handle things and suddenly, I wasn’t able to do it. Every month, something had to wait and wondering what was going to get disconnected for non-payment was frightening. I knew my roommates were doing the best they could, but neither of them were working either.
My brother, my beautiful, proud and strong brother has glaucoma and is nearly blind. He has been suffering for years from a debilitating mystery ailment that has sapped his strength and energy to the point that a trip up the stairs leaves him breathless and he sits at the top of the stairs huffing and puffing like an old man. He’s 55. He has had numerous tests but no one can say what is wrong with him. He sits in his darkened room everyday and it rips my heart out to see it.
He’s unable to go out on the range, riding horses and doing wagon trains with troubled youth as he did for years. He can’t ride his motorcycle anymore. He gets disability but a scheming ex-wife figured out she could get all her back child support and went after him and now she gets half his disability check leaving him a whopping $600 to pay rent, eat and help with bills.
I am not talking about a man who weaseled out of his child support payments. He always made sure he was making payments when he was working, but when he got injured on the job and then lost most of his vision, he wasn’t able to work, but she still wanted her money and her payments are based on a job he lost years ago when his sight first began to go bad. So he fell behind and she did not bother to call and ask why. She demanded her money and so now she gets it. We, however, struggle from month to month on what’s left of his check.
My other roommate had also lost her job and had been getting by on long term temp positions that she has taken the past few years. But when she doesn’t have a job, she has to fall back on unemployment like I was. She’s always been a trooper and has worked hard to help everyone around her and she has always kept us smiling because she’s a walking ray of sunshine.
Not now.
The good times were gone for all three of us. We struggled to keep our cable/internet paid because it provided the only entertainment we could afford to have. We almost never have enough money to go out for fun and restaurants are out of the question. Once in a while, we could scrap up some change and use coupons to go to IHOP for breakfast but those times are few and far between. The last time we all went out to dinner, we came home and found that we had been robbed. All of our computers and software and a couple of cameras had been stolen.
I am a writer, and I use my laptop to work. My roommate is a graphic artist/designer and she had just bought her computer not a month before. The thieves even took every bit of her expensive software. Oh, yeah, and they broke in and stole our lawn mower too.
So in the midst of all this, yes, I was having a difficult time. I had fallen into a deep depression and I knew I needed help. I went to the county hospital and found that also is a tricky thing. I had to be at the clinic before 7 a.m. because they only see so many people each day and if I am late, I have to come back and stand in line again. I finally got in and saw a doctor and told her that I wasn’t going to hurt myself or anyone else, but that I wanted to go to sleep and not worry. She gave me a couple of prescriptions and sent me home.
I no longer have the luxury of making my own appointments when I go to the county hospital. They tell me when I have to be there. She told me to get an appointment with another doctor to try to find a way to handle another ailment I have and I dutifully took the charge sheet she gave me and gave it to the nurse as directed.
The nurse was busy and looked at me like I had two heads when I relayed what the doctor told me. She said to write my name and address on a piece of paper and she would send me a letter and tell me when my appointment would be. Four months later, I got the letter and she had made the appointment with the wrong doctor for the wrong ailment, so I wasted two more trips with that doctor and now, nine months later, I still have not seen the doctor I was supposed to see and this is after the second doctor also attempted to get an appointment. That is my reality now.
I still go to the clinic for the rest of my care. The place is crowded now when I go and I have to wait longer. There are a lot of people like me who cannot afford health care. I needed to have my prescriptions written again and I waited more than an hour to see a doctor who promptly forgot to write one of them. I asked to be signed up for prescription assistance because in all this time, Congress graciously decided that people like me didn’t need unemployment anymore and my benefits were discontinued. Now I have no money coming in, but those bills are still coming.
I now know how those elderly on Medicare feel. There are times I can’t get my prescriptions because I can’t afford them. I am lucky that I got a bit of assistance with food stamps, but when I applied for state medical aid, they denied me because I am “employable.” Tell that to the jobs I have applied for over these two years that haven’t even bothered to tell me to go take a flying leap. I’m too old to get a job it seems. But I’m also too young to get Social Security or disability. So I’m sitting here terrified and mortified again because I can’t pay my part of the bills.
This nightmare that we are living in is no joke. I wonder what the elected officials are thinking when they slash the benefits for the elderly and the disadvantaged. Do they really believe we are living the high life on $300 a week? My brother got a letter today saying that his medical assistance from the state of Illinois is going to be discontinued after this month. Luckily he bought an insurance plan to cover his prescriptions because he has a few that cost $200 a month without insurance or any kind of assistance.
How can they in good conscience make decisions that so deeply affect people like us? Do they sleep at night? Do they look in the mirror and say “There by the Grace of God go I” and realize that they could very well be in the same circumstances that we are?
We are educated people who have always had good jobs. We’ve always worked hard and never had to ask for assistance. We have worked in service to help others and though we have never earned a huge salary like some, we have always been able to live and have some pleasures in life. Now we sit down to the dinner table and look at each other like frightened deer. The house we live in is in foreclosure and we are behind in rent. Not badly. We managed to keep it up as long as we could, and she worked with us, but it has gotten a bit harder now. She is underwater and is struggling too.
What has happened? When we go for a drive, which is rare, with the price of gas and parking, we see these huge houses and folks walking around their big expensive cars and taking little Suzie into American Girl to buy her a doll that is so expensive it would pay our electric bill. They are all smiling and happy and seemingly don’t have a care in the world.
Where did we go wrong? Did we not work hard enough? Did we not get our education? We have been good citizens. We have never been in trouble, we always paid our bills, we vote in every election. We have volunteered and worked in community service and we are good hard working people. When did it get so hard to be just regular folks? And how long will this last?
And everybody is fighting and scrapping for every dime we have. It seems that everywhere you look there are ads. You can’t look at a news story, or even a music video on You Tube without sitting through an ad or two. Don’t these folks realize we are broke???
I was especially outdone with the ads that ran during Christmas. It seems there are a lot of folks who can afford to buy their mates expensive cars and put big bows on them for Christmas presents. Wow. I don’t know anyone who can do that.
I don’t know what is to become of us. How can we even consider ourselves a great nation when we cannot keep our people fed and clothed and in decent housing? When they cannot get the medicine to remain in relatively good health? What happens if they fall gravely ill or have an accident and require extensive medical care?
How long will this madness last?
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