Look, the illnesses themselves are bad enough, but nobody thinks about the larger issues that come with subjecting yourself to an illness we have all the tools in the world to get the training to fight so you don’t end up getting sicker later. I won’t go too deeply into my own emotions about having mine, it’s been a bit of an evolution of sorts. I know my condition will kill me one day, we all hope later over sooner but there’s no guarantee. I have that mysterious artery splitting condition I kind of let my stress level exacerbate and manifest in some dangerous ways, but my struggles have been not just in dealing with the stresses of the disease itself, but what it’s done to aspects of a life many haven’t had to consider especially important because they had the freedom their good health gave them to wander, choose whatever path they encountered and really just have a freedom I’ve always understood was uniquely American, to do whatever you wanted, dipped your toes into whatever career or direction your heart might have taken you. This really isn’t possible when you have an illness without a lot of planning later-your goal is truly to take care of yourself because there is no guarantee anyone else will, and the more complicated your illness, the more care you might need to treat it. So my job, as I saw it, years ago, first realized in 1995, was to ensure I got employment with jobs that offered the best health insurance I could find. Jobs that did not offer it certainly weren’t jobs I could have on their own, so when I was bartending in NYC in the early aughts, I always had my day job to provide the health insurance and did the evening bartending work as my other job.
Now even with great health insurance, understand that deductible is generally considered the “best case scenario” and charges at least historically, have always exceeded the deductible cost. The last time a hospital went after me was a non-profit in Colorado who found itself in a position to have the CFO’s lawyer argue with my lawyer that he “had to charge people like me (with insurance) more to make up for those who did not have it.” Clearly he made the argument easy to turn back on him given I had worked on the books since I was 15 & had paid plenty into these programs to help people already. That was a $168k bill over the $98k paid by my insurance that my lawyer argued and won against. I still owe some creditors the hospital sold my debts off to some $8k even still. When I start working again I get to enjoy wage garnishment, generally speaking these creditors can buy your debt, get you in court, if you don’t show after they serve you, you get ruled against which means wage garnishment-though that’s just a double digit % coming out, no worries. No, but really when you fail your payment arrangement, this is what happens. My problem is I get so many payment arrangements I can’t keep up and I already own the product I bought service for (my own body), so it’s really hard to decide to work and get paid 30% less for however many months-the incentive comes in at a negative 30%, actually, then. And if your job is killing you as mine appeared to be, it becomes a lot easier to quit. Having an amazing husband who doesn’t want you to die from your job always helps, but we all have put money before our health and lives often enough it doesn’t seem weird to write.
That experience was the most recent incidence of suing me-before that I had plenty of hospitals that I had exceeded deductibles on I was unable to pay. Until the ACA came along, some had lifetime caps, so you could understand how that could be concerning, though I changed jobs and states enough it hasn’t been a problem for long when it did happen. Right now I have a few thousand in hospital bills from last year total but I did go to the ER twice and one time I was admitted for several days. Those go first. Then there’s the student loan I really can’t pay anything on as I have deferred it because I generally run into medical problems every few years that allow me to defer it and had I paid into it, I wouldn’t have made a dent anyways. So it sits. And surgery for me is likely within the next few years & should I survive it, won’t be paying once again.
Now beyond this, keep in mind life has been almost entirely directed by MY need to have health insurance. Even picking up and moving clear across the country, and literally cashing out both our 401ks was because I needed great health insurance ASAP-my husband got a job in DC and so we moved and had the money to get movers and get ourselves across the country and housed in 45 days. Had it not been painted such an urgent thing, this open heart surgery they want me to have, we would have stayed in CO and saved ourselves boatloads of grief. But preventative care, you know, like a planned open heart surgery, does require health insurance in America. As did every other surgery I had, 7 in total. Dialysis, which I had, requires health insurance or Medicaid. So does medication and an therapy you might need to give your kid counseling on how to deal with giving them a pre-existing condition sure to cause worse later on, let alone yourself. Once again, you all will be begging for healthcare for all to counter a lot of this nonsense people have rained down on their own lives, once again proving a point nobody cares about once you’re infected.
On top of the clear issues with ensuring I had health insurance and having bad credit due to all the payment plans failed, another limitation includes (once again you might be suffering physically but consequences extend beyond that) not being able to buy your own life insurance policy without employer sponsorship and even then you are usually limited to 2-3 times your salary MAX. You have to not get treatment for a time to be eligible for more (hard to do when you need medication)-and AFLAC also has the same issue. I think with them it’s 18 months not getting medication or treatment for your issue before your benefits kick in, also unreasonable. Now of course those of you who have it now, rejoice, you’re just stuck in your job if you want more or equal to.
Then there’s the obvious insecurity you have with money at all, knowing if you have any they will get it, and you certainly wouldn’t then be able to save enough to buy a house, because if you can afford to put down on a house you can clearly afford your medical bills. And you certainly can’t put children in the path of that kind of insecurity so it becomes a better reason not to adopt any kids with that kind of financial who-the-fuck-knows running things. Money becomes elusive and actually bad because you know you can’t keep it anyways. You don’t trust it, you trust people who have a lot even less because you wonder what the fuck they know about struggle. Eventually you might get out of that mindset and realize that the way the world works isn’t fair in the least-but it’s sometimes a long hard road getting there sometimes, trust me. Many kids are going to have a lot of anger later at their parents for doing this to them in the name of politics-and they will wonder how they could have been so easy to sacrifice. By then we might have cures for many ailments & this might be the first in a new spawn of preventative treatments and they’d be right to be angry that their parents didn’t think about the consequences to their kids’ lives doing that.
Final thought-it’s funny, I saw something Bill Maher had posted about some millennial suggesting it was a crime against the youth to continue to try and force mitigation on the spread of COVID, that we should just accept it, and people are killing themselves from the isolation. Trust me I am not overly social here because why would anyone, but I leave the house daily. I go inside grocery stores. I see the dentist, my doctors, I’ve been in ER’s not far from COVID patients and I haven’t gotten it.
Again, I have enough problems, but whatever scrap of good health I have I am not going to trade in by giving up. I also think people need to think again, two more inches in front of their noses to consider that if we can’t cooperate enough to wear masks and get vaccinated, how TF are we going to survive climate change, when actual personal sacrifice is beyond the basics? Guess we aren’t is the answer there, because this is a shoddy display of people giving up to embrace sickness as a new normal instead of realizing we would be ignorant to not embrace the tools we were given to avoid it.
So it appears ignorance is winning with 20% seeming all in to extinguish any chance for normalcy in an increasingly hostile world. I have all the words for that, but I have to ask–when did we become such instant gratification junkies that we can’t stand dealing with anything too long that doesn’t feel good??Once again let’s view my Spanish flu favorite. William Sardo. Let’s also slap ourselves repeatedly in the face for how absolutely weak we have chosen to be about all of this. During Mr. Sardo’s time, no school, work, church or gatherings of any kind. No telephone, email, zoom, cell phone, computer, VR, online ordering, no online anything, no people seeing people except those in their own house and did they all give up so they couldn’t give birth to your parents and grandparents? NO. They did not. Now it’s not to say they loved it, of course some protested, but enough were smart enough to avoid it that many of us exist because of those simple decisions. Some people are extinguishing family lines entirely–for an absurd desire to pretend things are normal when they clearly are not.
Click here to see who I am talking about: WILLIAM SARDO SPANISH FLU