Over the past week I’ve been kind of sick. At work, they’ve started calling me Patient Zero, because I’ve infected nearly all of my co-workers. It was a pretty decent bug that knocked me out for several days. I think really it was just a bad cold coupled with a sinus infection.
As far as the cold is concerned, I would normally just drink a lot of DayQuil and wait it out, however, I’ve had plenty of sinus infections before and I know that the only way to truly get rid of one is to go to the doctor for some antibiotics. Now, this presents a problem for me because I do not have health insurance.
If you are over the age of 30 and reading this, you probably automatically started thinking how irresponsible that is and worrying for my safety. If you are under the age of 30, you probably sympathized. But, for me at this time in my life, health insurance is just not an option. I have a decent job that pays ok, but between all the bills I have it’s gone pretty quickly and there’s just no way I could afford an extra couple hundred dollars a month for health.
Knowing that I needed to see a doctor however, I called up the Asheville Health Department to make an appointment. I informed the lady who answered the phone that I needed to schedule a time to see a doctor. She informed me that they only take new patients at the Health Department once a month and that I could come in on the 14th {2 weeks away} if I wanted to fill out the paper work. Instead of telling her how ridiculous and impractical a system that is, I just said, “I don’t think that’s going to work.” She then told me about another place that I could go called 3 Streams over in West Asheville and gave me their number.
I called 3 Streams and no one answered so I left them a voicemail.
I knew there was an Urgent Care Clinic just down the road from my house, so I decided I would just give them a shot. I knew that places like that sometimes offer financial assistance, so I grabbed a couple of old pay stubs as proof of my income and headed out the door.
When I got to Sisters of Mercy, the guy at the counter was kind of a jerk. He gave me some paperwork to fill out and I took a seat. When I went to turn in the paperwork, I thought I’d better go ahead and ask how much it’s going to be and see about the financial assistance stuff. This time there was a really nice lady at the counter and she informed me that I would need three current pay stubs, depending on how much I made I would pay a small amount at the time of visit and they would assess my bill and send me the rest later. Honestly, this didn’t sound like a terrible deal, but I only had two pay stubs and therefor would have to go back home and search for another.
Without insurance or any assistance, the bill would be a minimum of $200 she said.
I was clearly frustrated. There was no way I was going to pay a doctor $200 to tell me what I already knew and scribble on a paper – even though I really needed that scribble. I think the lady could tell and she tried to reassure me by telling me to come back anytime and giving me some information to take with me. It’s been several days, and even though I finally found a third pay stub, I haven’t had the time to get back over there.
Just imagine if I had something more serious than a sinus infection.
The point of this insanely long story is that our healthcare system is a mess. There are several reasons that human beings live within groups and at the very top of that list is health and safety. If the society that I am a contributing member of does not provide assistance to me when I need it, then why am I contributing?
There are countries where any tax paying citizen can walk into any doctors office anytime that they are sick and expect to receive treatment. Why is this not our system?
In my opinion, Obamacare is great and once it fully kicks in it will do a lot of good, but it doesn’t go far enough. The argument I seem to hear most against universal healthcare is that it will cause our taxes to go up and certain members of our society don’t want their money to go towards helping others.
I know that I’m still young, but even I know that taxes are always going to go up. That is an inevitable fact of life. But in my opinion, if they are going up so that I and anyone else that needs it can have access to medicine or treatment that they need, I’m ok with that. If people got as upset about their tax money going to support a war as they do about it going to literally heal the sick, we would live in a much more peaceful world.
See you next time!
kyle.
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Sorry you had to deal with that
And I hope you feel better soon. I agree with everything you said…it seems to me that the only people who are mad about universal health care are the ones who already have health care…what’s the deal with that? I’m no finance expert, but I feel like the money to pay for this is floating around in the form of Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare, CHIPS, WIC, disability, etc…if we just umbrella-ed all of those programs into one healthcare plan from birth to death, I really don’t see how we couldn’t pay for it. Think of all the money wasted in the bureaucracy and red tape in those programs. And hello…if you have a group plan at work, you are paying part of a premium based on the average age and health of the employees. So anyone who thinks they shouldn’t have to pay for anyone else’s healthcare is deluded at best. Newsflash, you already are! At least if everyone had access to preventative care, the overall cost of healthcare would go down. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Health insurance should be like car insurance. Everyone participates, so the cost is lower. I don’t care if the state wants to handle it, the feds want to handle it, or employers want to handle it. JUST GET IT DONE! Preventative care should be the focus, like good driving. We are Americans, so obviously we need to be bribed with rewards. Go to a gym 3 days a week? Discount! Get a physical every year? Discount! I could go on and on, this makes me angry to no end. There are so many problems starting with crappy school food and no PE, basically reinforcing the fact that there is ZERO incentive to take care of yourself…then even if you do take it upon yourself to do so, you still get screwed for catching a freaking cold that you have no control over! And why should you pay hundreds of dollars in premiums every month to be self-insured for the one or two times you might need a doctor every year. [my head just exploded]