InsaneJournal

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bitterfig (bitterfig) wrote,
@ 2009-10-26 18:27:00

Entry tags:

medication, politics

healthcare crisis

I’ve come to expect that if something can go wrong with health insurance it will and it apparently has in the case of my COBRA plan. I found out today when I was trying to refill my antidepressant prescriptions that it’ll be about two weeks till my coverage kicks in. In the meantime I have to decide if I’m going to shell out around $800 for meds or go without.

This situation is mainly my fault—I apparently misunderstood something in the 20 page COBRA starter packet—but still it seems like a really bad state of affairs that people have to face choices like this. I’d like to see a world where you could get the medication you needed without going through huge bureaucratic hassles and/or spending a fortune. I’m lucky of course. Withdrawal from my cocktail of psycho-active drugs isn’t going to be pleasant and it’s certainly not medically advisable but I don’t know that anyone has ever died from going off Cymbalta, Prozac and Abilify. I know there are people out there who face life and death choice with regards to medication.

I know there are many people who consider socialized medicine a terrible thing and are against President Obama’s proposed Healthcare reforms (my father is of this opinion as are several of my high school friends who I communicate with through Facebook). I don’t want to belittle their views but However from my perspective, that of an individual who doesn’t have a lot of money and suffers from a chronic medical condition, healthcare reform seems necessary and socialized medicine seems like a really great thing.

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tribal_tiger
2009-10-27 06:21 pm UTC (link)

i just read an article about how easy it is to lose your insurance, if you have it. wish i could find the damn thing now. coming up with plenty of other articles though...

anyway, the article said there's about 12 diseases that make someone uninsurable. if you contract one of these diseases, you cannot get a new insurance plan. top that off with the insurance company charging your employer an extra million dollars for covering someone with one of these diseases... the company has little choice but to fire you, or your spouse, cut you off from insurance, or go bankrupt. once you're unemployed, you'll lose your insurance, and not only will you be unable to get new insurance, but you'll be unable to work because every single one of those diseases is either chronic, or increases risk for other diseases, so you'll more than likely be too sick to work.

sounds a hell of a lot like the situation i'm in, only i'm not actually uninsurable. i just have no way to get the money to get insurance.

on the other hand, if you live in canada? you still have to pay for your meds, but because you're automatically covered by the government plan, there's no reason why you couldn't afford meds, and there's no way you can be blackbooked out of insurance coverage. you also can't get into a catch-22 where you're too poor to get healthcare and too sick to work.

the healthcare reform proposals for america are somewhere inbetween those two. the public option isn't going to be as good as canada's, but if you have the money, you'll have private insurance companies to turn to.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

bitterfig
2009-10-27 07:35 pm UTC (link)

I'd like to read that article if you can find it. What state do you live in? Do they offer any kind of low income insurance option? I was talking to my primary care provider and she suggested I try New York's version of this when my COBRA coverage lapses if I don't have a job by than (I desperately hope I do have a job by then, I'm extremely lucky in that I've never gotten too sick to work).

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	tribal_tiger 2009-10-28 12:37 am UTC (link)
	there's no low income insurance option. there's the indigent program, but it's not actually insurance. that's how i'm getting my meds and stuff now. found it. http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/in-the-news/2009/july/how-i-lost-my-health-insurance-at-the-hairstylist-s.html (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bitterfig 2009-11-01 01:16 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks for the article, I'll read it over. (Reply to this) (Parent)