Thread by @HebanonGCal

Economic Horror (Isssue 999+): Hey, I just became a self-employed writer of middling success. Here’s why, in the US, I’m literally afraid to go pick up the prescription medication I already paid for #contentwarning #economictrauma #medicaldebt #mentalhealth

I’m very lucky and well-supported by a wonderful community of friends, readers, and players. That means I can afford a decent enough plan — which means monthly co-pays in the $400 range.

Keep in mind, this number is based on rebates calculated by my tax predictions (good thing we don’t hold elections or change legslation anymore! Otherwise that would be a terrible system!).

So this plan, which at least doesn’t have deductibles better expressed in scientific notation (unlike many “options” on the market. HSA’s anyone?), only gives me that price provided I didn’t screw up my tax predictions, at which point they can retroactively charge me…anything.

Anyway, my employer-provided healthcare runs out in a couple days. Good thing I’m a responsible American small-business owner! I began my healthcare.gov application and made the first payment on the first day of summer! Ready to go!

Except…the plan I’ve been purchasing (double-purchasing really, because I’m covered by my old plan until the end of the month) has yet to send me any proof of insurance. Despite accepting my payment. I have a plan name, but no individual plan number.

Which means my upcoming refills for my anti-depressants will not be billed until next month (no old plan), but also that the pharmacy doesn’t have any new insurance to bill the drugs to.

If drug prices stayed the same since the first time I went on this script (and I’d fucking laugh if you guessed the price went down), I’d be out about $850 every two weeks for my don’t-kill-myself-pills. I know because the old insurance would pay unless …

…(Deep breath) I sent a PHYSICAL LETTER to a mail-in prescription service that I never signed up for, telling them I didn’t want to sign up for it. After that first bill, the price came down to like $20 once I attached the cease-and-desist message to the owl or whatever the fuck

So, I know I can’t afford this shit without insurance, but the insurance plan I’m paying for now won’t acknowledge they’ve accepted my application, even though the .gov site says it has. I gotta get this taken care of. Emails get nothing. Site says I don’t have an account (I do).

There is no choice. I must call the voice hotline.

Called their hotline. Not in business hours. No hours listed. Called “emergency” 24 hour nurse line. Disconnected thrice. Finally got through to an operator with “no ability to answer any questions of a insurance nature.” She takes my info and says they’ll call back.

In three more days, my pharmacy cancels the refill. Then I have to find a new doctor to rewrite the old prescription. One in-network for…whatever network I paid for. Last time I looked for a primary care physician, it only took me eight months to get off the waiting list.

Now, I’ll be fine. While the side-effect of going off your don’t-kill-yourself drugs is a sharp rise in killing-yourself, I’ve recently discovered far more effective…wholistic treatments. I’m as happy as I’ve ever been, and confident in the care of my loved ones.

I’m also not responsible for much. I’m not in danger of losing any of that property I can never afford to own. My wonderfully Millennial domestic partnership is equitably two income, and we’ve budgeted our lives around the care of a single cat.

But birth control? Pain meds? Heart Medication? Insulin? Having a family to support and risking a sudden extra 2K+ added to your monthly finances? Saying to yourself…”Sure, I’d like to not die…but I have to make sure my kids don’t first.”

I’d name and shame, but what’s the point? There’s no one at the wheel of this shit anymore. Even if you acknowledge the right-wing ideology of “deserving it” — if you think this ordeal is necessary “market discipline” to combat the assumed sloth at the core of human nature —…

What, exactly, did I do wrong here? I’m not just employed; I HAVE MULTIPLE JOBS. I’m a white, cis-gendered, male “American small business-owner” — a conservative mythic construction that an alien viewing C-PAC would have to assume was being worshipped as a god.

I “love” healthcare so much that I BOUGHT MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF IT AT THE SAME TIME. So, what, exactly, is the market disciplining me for? Where did I ask for this? How is this economic system rational? Or even Randian?

This isn’t to say that any justification for universal healthcare beyond “you shouldn’t let people suffer and die” is necessary. It’s not. Morally, philosophically, and even economically (i.e. “ah yes, allow me to compare hospital rates as I die of sepsis), it’s the only answer.

But even the rationale of the staunchest defenders doesn’t make sense. The system doesn’t even serve them. I should know — despite my best efforts, I look exactly like those assholes in every way they think matters.

I doesn’t matter, though. Grind until you’re dust. Gig-economy your bootstraps until you ascend to godhood. That disinterested automated, computer voice message — as accurate a personification of Capitalism as there ever was — can always smell the poor on you.

By merit of having to call for help, the algorithm brands you as not only unworthy of pity: unworthy of basic reciprocity. Homo Sacer. You lost their rights the second the algorithm named them a losing bet. The blood and tears of every American — summed as a bad ROI.

All this is to say, my policy moving forward is to trust nothing, expect nothing, and feel nothing that comes from a insurance company.

The same goes for employees. I know everyone’s got to make that bread, but the infection runs deep. How could you say your have free will when you work for that…thing? Their bodies are subsumed into the cancerous mass so that it might continue to feed, through them and OFF them

It amazes there isn’t more active hostility to this apparatus already. I’m too much of a pansy to do anything, obviously, but you got Karen’s out there shooting at busboys for asking them to mask at Applebees. You telling me no ones been driven buggy by this shit yet?

Can’t say I’ll be feeling very humane when it happens. At least an insurance building burning down isn’t a goddamn forest. At least that dead CEO maybe freed up a bed for somebody actually contributing to society. Catching a bullet in the revolution sucks, but faster than cancer.

If there is anyone on the other side of this nightmare — anyone with the power to stop it — know this. When your time comes, you’ll die like the rest of us: with half the country thinking you did something to fucking deserve it.