I’ve figured out some of the reasons I’m having so much trouble reading political stuff these days, but I’ll only talk about the one.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a poor person. And chronically ill. In August, the state set up insurance for poor people, so Daughter and I signed up.
If I buy them, my prescriptions run between $600 and $700 a month. One I still get through the pharmaceutical company’s program, but the others I can now get down at my local drugstore, for a fin a shot. Rather than hoping that the paperwork didn’t get screwed up, and that it didn’t get lost in the mail, and the clerk at the doctor’s office didn’t put it someplace (true story – twice! some people DO NOT learn, even when you tell them they are idiots – I’m still ashamed of that day), and that I can get to the post office before it closes, I can call in the order to the local pharmacy and pick it up the next day. This might not sound like a big deal, but when you’re working with an illness that gets stirred up like the coals in a banked fire by stress, it is a big deal. Huge.
And I’ve been sick. Had a cold, saw the nurse practitioner, got antibiotics, felt great. Got sick again, went to the emergency room, saw a doctor, had a chest x-ray, had a nebulizer treatment, was handed prescriptions, had them filled. Went to urgent care the next day, had a nebulizer treatment, got samples and a machine and more prescriptions, went home. Cost? There might be a $50 co-pay for the emergency room visit. I think I spent $20 dollars on prescriptions.
Long story short? I didn’t wait to get treatment, which would have forced a hospital stay, which would have pushed me into bankruptcy. I can still afford Thanksgiving dinner. I got to dance around in my living room last night.
I panic when I read about Health Care Reform, because I am afraid it will take away what I have now. I feel guilty, because I can go to a doctor. I worry about looking for a different job, because what if I make too much? What if they offer me health insurance? Stupid, stupid, stupid shit.
So, I’m disengaging from obsessively following the national scene, and thinking more local. I invited a friend to dinner Thursday, a friend who is treasurer of the next-county-down’s Democratic party. Little steps. Little dance steps, that is.
Because. “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”