I just hung up on a friend who was spouting off about how anybody could always buy health insurance, and how he should not have to pay taxes for those slackers to buy what he was always buying due to his hard work for Mobile Oil, and that now that he is on Medicare, he has to actually pay for it, and blah blah...
I may have just lost a damn friend over Fox News crap.
Again.
Continuing below the orange thing that resembles a really pretty artist's doodle...
I was born sick. I was properly diagnosed at age 17. I was able to get treatment on my parent's insurance until I married. My Dad was a civil servant, union, so I could have stayed single forever with top notch BCBS.
But, I got into that remission/cure thing at age 30. I was working a horrible job with decent insurance.
I got laid off. I went to law school. I was still on my parent's insurance.
And then I married. I gave up live saving insurance for love. No regrets.
I went from 35 years of age until age 60 with no insurance.
I attempted to buy a policy over and over.
I tried to buy policies that had monthly premiums that exceeded my monthly income.
I had my applications denied, and even had my checks returned.
During the years I could not obtain insurance at any price, I suffered from a food poisoning episode determined to be e-coli. Instead of going to the hospital for treatment, I was given several days of IV infusions on a bed placed in a clinic's storage room. I stared at the toilet paper, the garbage bags, got my infusion, called it good.
I had a heart episode. Before the er would allow me into their inner health sanctum, I had to write out a check for $750.00 to get back into a bed to get an ekg. How other people get into an er bed without paying is beyond me. I paid. As a condition for er treatment.
I did have a heart attack. I got no treatment, and haven't to this day. I instead asked every heath care giver I saw since to take notice of my heart attack, but never put it on my medical records, because I was constantly trying to buy insurance.
I had an eye infection. The eye doctor it might me a cancer. I told him if he wrote that down, I would never get insurance, as I had always kept trying to get a policy.
When I was 60 years old, pre-existing condition insurance became available. It was not easy to pay for it. But, I needed it to treat a dreadful virus I had contracted, and still suffer from now, and likely always will.
Then, I got ACA insurance. Cheaper by $80.00 than the PCIC premium, and which is superior in numerous ways. It is very hard for me, self-employed, to pay the premium. But I have insurance. I can get on Medicare in 38 months.
I can now fully disclose to any doctor that I was born with a failed liver, that I have also had a heart attack, that I now suffer from Parvo B-19 that can kill you, and put them on notice, can have them BE SURE to put it all into my official notes that heretofore were going to keep BCBS from insuring me, sick and costly me.
And I think I have lost a friend over this, a great and good friend, and have gained at least a foot in the door to an er or a hospital without writing a fucking check.