My rant about health insurance...
And the powerlessness of not being able to vaccinate your kid.
Even if you don’t believe in vaccinations or Covid, you can commiserate on the hell that is health insurance in America. When I was on a writing retreat in France in June, a fellow writer’s hip seized up. She was seen by a doctor for $20 Euro in three hours in a small Southern France town and was given cortisol shots. Here in the US you would have to call the main company that governs your plan, and then talk to the medical group who schedules doctors, and maybe, if you are lucky, get an appointment in two weeks. After holding for so long, they ask for your call back number, and then call you when you are on the toilet or trying to check out at the supermarket self-serve with thirteen sirens beeping at you for not putting the food on the right bagging tray.
If you are in too much pain, and can’t hold, and have to go to a clinic or emergency room, you will pay an astronomical fee for every service from the antibacterial wipes to the X-Ray technician. Essentially your out of pocket is over $6,000 which you will just reach, but not reach and in the start of the new year, reset back to its full amount.
Strike me down for saying this, but you almost want some $15k operation just to say “Fuck you health care in America, I wiped out my deducible mother fuckers.” I don’t want this, but look at what we are driven to contemplate?
While to some degree I have accepted my miserable costly health insurance as a fact for middle age, I am miffed at what I experienced with my daughter trying to get a Covid booster in her three days home from college. She has been on Medi-cal for a while. I won’t get into the details of why she is on poor people health insurance, but her dad had a dip in income, and it made sense for her to be on it in college. Medi-cal is in fact for people who have no money. So it is bad enough these folks have food insecurity, but now they try to get some actual medical services that are designed to not be quickly accessed, and they will potentially die before getting medical help.
We went to THREE pharmacies - CVS, CVS Minute Clinic and Walgreens - to try and get my daughter vaccinated in the short window she was home for college. Her college clinic had turned her down for a vaccination because she only has an emergency plan with them (again, poor plan of $75 a quarter so you get shit unless your eyeball is on the pavement and you have scooped it up and run it inside the clinic and even then, not sure they would help you…) so they turned her down. Each of these pharmacies had signs in the window that said “We vaccinate anyone” which I am here to tell you that is a crock of shit as exemplified by the asterisk in the corner of that statement. That asterisk means we are a conglomerate who gives nine shits about the health of the American consumer and instead we want to make sure we get paid for everything we do by Big Pharma, so if you are on anything but high level insurance plans (like corporations, unions etc) then you are shit out of luck.
Basically America would rather my daughter get sick with Covid and possibly need medical care, than vaccinate her so she is healthy at college and can’t infect anyone else.
We couldn’t find anywhere to get her vaccinated and four hours later, hungry and defeated by the flourescent pharmacy light and the rejection, we ate tacos in disbelief we had no where to take her. The CDC has abandoned us in this country… have you realized this yet? There are no more free clinics to get your shots anymore. It is every man for himself. Because my daughter’s insurance is now only available to be used in her pediatrician’s office, she can’t schedule an appointment because she lives in San Diego. In San Diego, she can’t get to a primary care doctor for a shot because she doesn’t have transportation.
So the CDC tells us we need to isolate with Covid for ten days, but I can assure you, there are more and more people out there who are no longer getting the Covid vaccine because there is no where to get it if you don’t have the right insurance. Basically the poor people of America.
Here is the other loop hole. RX benefits and being 18 versus 19. If your card doesn’t have RX Bin # on it, then a pharmacy cannot vaccinate you because they won’t get paid, and I have found no pharmacist who is one with the people to bunk the system because they feel bad for your unvaccinated kid. Also, Medi-Cal considers an adult age 19, not 18, so we were told when she turns 19 she can come in and vaccinate at a CVS, if she has an RX Bin #. She will not be 19 until next August. I wanted to pull a Rambo in the pharmacy by the second time I was told this fact.
We have the worst health care. We pay for it and we get shit. This whole experience was defeating for me as a mom and a citizen. Since, we have moved my daughters to a better health plan. I’ll just pay out the nose for it. I want them safe. But to have that be your only choice shocks me.
People are walking around out there with no insurance, no vaccinations, no flu shots, sick and ill with no help. I didn't see it until I, a privileged white woman, could not get my kid a shot (I could have paid $190 out of pocket but that was against principle at this point…)
We have a presidential election year coming. I am staring down health care as my decision making process. It’s got to change. We have to feel medically safe.