We applied for Medicaid based on the expectancy of my wife. Thankfully rules here in this state allow your income level to count as plus one once pregnant. We applied but had not gotten approved till this week. Even then it seems surreal once we got the call of our acceptance, and I still fretted nightly and worried about the coming future and our financial health. Such is life without health insurance.
More below for a description of my relief and my statement to the republicans
When the medicaid card finally came the other day, I cannot begin to describe to you the incredible weight that I feel has been lifted off my shoulders. Every day was a constant worry with this looming financial burden hanging above you.
I felt as if I was on a ship at sea. I could feel the waves beginning to roll up and gain both momentum and size. Still small enough to navigate easily however on the horizon lurked trouble. Dark rolling and roiling grey, black and blue storm clouds on the horizon, for as far as the eye could see virtually encompassing my entire vision. No way to go back and knowing that stormy seas were inevitable, but that you must trudge on and attempt to motor through as best you can.
It having seem only yesterday that we finally got this ship sea worthy, that not even yesterday it was damn near sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Despite seeming like it was yesterday, I still remember all the hard work that it took to get it to float back to the surface. At times seeming like any number of the tools we had at our disposal would give way and the entire thing crash to the bottom, worse off than it had been. But we did it, and finally we were setting sail. It had seemed nothing but smooth waters and good sailing. A gentle wind at our backs, it had seemed that we were making progress on this ocean called life.
Sure there were still some nagging issues.
The bilge pump didn’t work all the time, which made it necessary to work a little hard to keep her afloat. The sails might have been just a little tattered, but it kept us moving forward. Yeah, this little boat of ours was moving us towards and making progress. I still had no idea where we might go. Perhaps a better land where we could rest and not worry about the seas, or at least maybe a chance at a better and sturdier boat. We had no idea of the storm coming though.
See without health insurance there is always that nagging feeling that you are at peril every single day of your life, that but in one instant you could be destitute or even dead. You try to suppress it all the time though, because to worry about it would drive a person insane. Indeed it might have already to some degree.
With this unexpected and totally unplanned pregnancy came, we could see the storm in the distance, far off but still visible. This coming financial hurricane was then just a hazy murky grey blob. However now, 4 months in, it was starting to get very real.
Doctors ensured us that prenatal visits would be covered and to just keep coming. Even an ER visit was told to us that not to worry, once accepted it would be covered.
To someone who’s filed bankruptcy due to medical dept already once before, all the assurances in the world meant exactly jack squat. At least that was until this week.
And with that simple card from above, immediately the storm clouds have begun to abate. In what would seem to a sailor to be a shear miracle, what was whipping the waves slowly up and up just decided to shift winds and direction out of sailor's path. Gone for good and destined elsewhere, it is as if someone had removed a 200lb weight around my neck.
Paul Ryan and the Republican Party would have no part of my journey to this moment. They want to eliminate the system entirely, strangle the entire thing in a tub and hack off the legs of Medicare while they are at it. You want to know what the Paul Ryan for Prosperity for me is if they enact any portion of that turd they call a bill.
They want my wife to lack access to prenatal care
They want my family to go into medical debt
Because I would be in medical debt, invariably because of inability to pay I would be sent to collections
Collections would then eventually garnish my wages
Unable to pay the mortgage and having been to close to a previous bankruptcy I would likely lose my home
That same home I assisted in building with my own two god damn hands, my blood sweat and tears are in that home.
I could go on, but you get the idea. So that’s the republican plan for me. That is what they want for my family. Well you will have to excuse my language here; little ones cover your ears.
‘Fuck them and the horse they rode in on’.