1574 - "Dressed in purple shirts & lace/Smelling not of beer but flowers/And with no hair in face."
In which I am not particularly articulate, but I do make a longer post than usual.
First of all, I want to say how lucky and privileged I am to work a job where I can call in to work, say I am not coming in, not because I was injured but because someone else was injured and I spent a good portion of the night in the ER with them. That is amazing ( Read more... )
First of all, I want to say how lucky and privileged I am to work a job where I can call in to work, say I am not coming in, not because I was injured but because someone else was injured and I spent a good portion of the night in the ER with them. That is amazing ( Read more... )
As they are residents/citizens of the US and not Canada, they are in the position of paying for the hospital fees just the same as they would if they were in the US. I think some of it will be a little cheaper than the American equivalent, but some of it actually sounded more expensive than I recalled from past hospital visits.
For reference, my mother, who does not have insurance, is/has:
A) Diabetic. Not insulin dependent, but most likely going to be soon.
B) Bad rheumatoid arthritis
C) Polio
D) Obesity with the accompanying high blood pressure
That's just the tip of the ice berg with her. My father's in similarly bad condition, better in some ways, worse in others. He, at the very least, gets minimal medical support through the VA though.
The one big thing that Kat forgot when explaining exactly how they are an archetype of what is happening in the US is that my father recently lost his job. This was a job at an auto parts store... He had been a mechanic basically since he was in his teens in the fifties. About ten years, his position changed from mechanic to sales/management, where he has a severe reduction in pay. Mechanics, due to commission, can actually make okay money. Anyway, skip to more recent times, where he was laid off by the last auto repair store he was at. It was heavily suggested that his age was a big part of that... From then on, he has been incapable of getting hired on at any auto repair store, despite his huge amount of experience and long time participation in the local "community" of the work around here. He's one of those people who was in the industry so long that he sometimes seems like he knows everyone. Anyway, with auto repair stores not hiring, he ended up being at that stupid chain auto parts store. Shit happened, he was dropped. Now, his unemployment is even in question.
To top it all off, my older brother, David, who is fucking 39 and living with them, was laid off of his job this week as well.
Sorry. Obviously most of this was not particularly targeted at you. Kat's entry and the whole situation just brought it out of me. I guess I might as well link to this and call it a LJ post, as I never seen to make those things anymore.
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Billy
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