Contemplating healthcare is one of my favourite things. Like my nagging cough, or the chronic aches in my right ankle & knee, or my pronounced & worrisome memory gaps, or the tinnitus, or the migratory transitory "spikey-stabby" pains that pray on my hands. It's fun, thinking about deducting wages from my not-considerable paycheque so as to pay for a Service that doesn't really Serve.
I haven't had insurance in a year. Since gaining a new scar on my scalp, actually. I went to the emergency room and they told me Aetna wasn't in their network. Since the insurance wasn't any good, apparently, I allowed it to lapse. It didn't make any difference to my bill, which would have been slightly exorbitant whether I had insurance or not, and clearly that worked in my favour since the hospital decided to not directly bill me and pass it off to a debt collection agency instead.
Look, I just don't care. Tell me why I should care. Because it's my health? It's a system of scams.
I avoided having health insurance for over two decades because I was a teenage runaway, hiding from people who did me harm. I handled my own medicine. And then at some point the Obama admin decided to do everyone a solid negative and force an entire society to engage with an industry built around subtracting net income from our meagre accounts. I didn't have insurance for most of the existence of Obamacare, and I paid an annual penalty for not engaging in the bullshit. I only gave in and got insurance because, curiously, after the skull fracture, someone had to pay for my MRI scans.
I had just gotten done paying my not-inconsiderable emergency room visit, and hospital room, and weird Cronenberg bed that wouldn't let me sleep, when the radiology department decided to hit me up for ten grand I didn't have handy. As we were negotiating that we found out the hospital was being declared bankrupt, and they decided, reasonably enough, to call it a wash. "You're in poverty, and someone else is buying our debts, so we'll just say none of it ever happened."
Which, hey, great. I have no complaints there.
But it does underline the greater incoherence of the thing itself. The economy of it all. Like, what is the paying of insurance? I still don't understand the principle. I just want to pay for stitches, sometimes, and maybe someone with training & accreditation to do the sewing. It doesn't have to be professional, cosmetic-grade work. Just keep it from getting infected. Try not to leave any equipment in the incisions before sealing them up. The bare minimum.
I know, I complain a lot. But the complaints are valid enough, methinks. The systems don't make any practical sense and are prohibitively difficult for an artfag with cognitive issues and a pronounced allergy to dumb paperwork. I don't know what a "co-pay" is. I don't understand deductibles. None of these things directly relate to the experience of pain, nor to the cessation of it. If I get a bad cut and want a band-aid, the response should not be "Please don't gout on the form?"
But it always has been. I have a lot of scars. Some of them healed okay. I don't believe insurance was a crucial factor in treating any of it. To my backwards ass, insurance is this thing everyone talks about like a minor deity which must be placated with virgin sacrifices and also rubies.
My husband tried to explain it to me again, tonight, and the only thing I really understood was the part where he said if my employer garnished my cheque to pay insurance it would be put my income on the other side of the poverty line. That maybe Medicaid would cover me. We don't know yet because Medicaid has to review my "case" to determine if I'm eligible to ask for assistance, or something.
No, I don't want insurance. But I guess I'm getting some? Because what's the alternative. Waiting for all this shit to magically resolve itself into a single-payer system? Where's Doctor Pill? Are they consulting with Doctor Tarr and Professor Feather about whether Doctor Manhattan can clean Schrodinger's catbox before their waveform collapses my marketplace?
Listen, just give me the epoxy and I'll glue the skin myself.
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