Unless something extraordinary occurs, we have today and eight others remaining in this house. Then we're out. Forever. The demise will have entered its next phase.
I would like to say the downward trend has been stopped, if not reversed, but that would not be true. We've just lost our current place to stay. Estimates are we will have four months at the apartment/flat. Then we lose that. Where we go then I don't know.
Was at the digestive doctor this past week. He's a very nice man. Been going to him since the early 1990s. He gives me free medicine. It only lasts a few weeks, but hey, that's like putting money in my pocket.
Generally, he's an upbeat kind of person, but this time he was low. You see, I'm not his only patient who has crumbled under the current economic collapse. He has dozens of them. Literally. And because there are so many people he knows personally who are in trouble, he favors the current health care reforms being proposed in Washington. I didn't go into details with him about them. I'm not sure I am.
It's not that I don't acknowledge the current system of health care in the United States s*cks so bad it's nearly incomprehensible as it is I just don't trust anyone to do it right. I don't trust politicians and I don't trust insurance carriers. I would trust the doctors and nurses, but they have no real power to make decisions. They can treat patients, but only within the limits set by government, insurance, and administrators.
The concept of requiring people to buy health insurance bothers me. People like me just cannot afford it. So what will government do when we don't buy it? Fine us. Brilliant thinking. Like the banks who punish people who can't afford to pay credit card bills. They raise the interest rate, thereby increasing the payments. It's just another way to torture the poor and say it's their own fault.
The theory is that for those who cannot really afford to pay for health care, subsidies will be provided. Right. I know what kind of health care that is. I've got it now. I simply don't believe in it. It will not work, but it will make a lot of people feel self-satisfied that they did something and now don't have to do anything else.
My attitude is you don't have to do anything anyway. Just leave us the h*ll alone. Life's bad enough without you a*sholes making it worse with laws that serve you and not us.
People with money b*itch and complain how people like me cost them so much money with our poor health and no health insurance. Bullsh*t! The free medicine my doctor gives me? The pharmaceutical companies get huge tax write-offs for donating the medicine. It says right on the package it cannot be sold. That it's solely for doctors to give away. And doctors don't just give it away to the poor. Back when I had money and insurance and all kinds of good things I still got free medicine every time I saw this doctor. My being poor and not having insurance did not change anything.
The insurance I "enjoyed" over the past year served two purposes: it paid a good portion of my medicine, and it was there should I have been hospitalized. But the co-pays were so high I still could not have procedures done which my doctors were demanding. I had no money to pay my portion. And so I had no procedures.
The lie is purported that people like me go to the doctor anyway and don't pay. That's a lie! The truth is, we don't go to the doctor when we can't pay. Yes, we get worse. And then we don't go to the doctor because we can't afford that. I went this time because I needed a new prescription. Don't know what it cost me, but the plan is to use some of our housing money to pay for it.
I went two years with four broken teeth because I had no insurance or money to get them fixed. When I got insurance I went. Higher insurance premiums for everyone else? Why? Turns out insurance hardly covered anything at all and I wound up spending the entire spring tax return on my teeth. Bad insurance does not save poor people anything. It gives them a false sense of hope which is dashed when they get their bill.
Life in America is about money. If you have it, you will do well. If you don't, you become a tool for the Democrats and a burden to Republicans. I resent being a tool, but it is the Republicans who truly offend me. They claim they are "God's party" because they are anti-abortion. But this is what God says "his people", regardless of race, creed, or religion, are like:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.
That is from Galatians, chapter five. Be honest now. Does any of that remind you of Republicans, or Democrats, or any other political group? It doesn't me. I see none of that in the Republican Party. They show hate, anger, strife, impatience, meanness, cruelty, disloyalty, harshness, reckless abandon. And all they want are more laws.
They're certainly not god-like. Which leaves who to resemble?
No matter. In just over a week I enter the next phase of my demise.
4 comments:
Oh dear, Bevie. I'm so sorry.
What's interesting is the contrast between my reaction and Spouse's and Son's. Night and day.
I know right where you're coming from there... I know I should see a doctor, at the very least for a physical, but who can afford it (even if I had insurance)? A few years back I had strep throat and went to the public health clinic where they told me all I had to pay was $10. A few weeks later I got a bill for over $100. When I called to ask about it the woman said, "Well, not all services are covered." So basically they lied to me! Like you said, I'd sooner have the health care business run by doctors & nurses - they're the ones who see patients as people instead of open wallets - but there's no chance.
And yet people with money are convinced these services cost us little or nothing. We are lied to all the time. That's what happened with me and my teeth. After having my broken teeth repaired the insurance refused to pay. Said it was cosmetic. Kind of like telling a burn victim their skin graft is for appearances only.
We are criminalizing the poor, and there is nothing the poor can do to stop it.
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