and people ask, "why the icon?"

[venividivicious]

i was born in the wealthiest, most advanced civilization to walk the earth in at least thousands of years.
i am young.
i earn > $50k/yr.
i am intelligent.
i work harder than 95% of the people i know.

SO WHY DO I NOT HAVE HEALTH COVERAGE?i have dresden for tonsils

Comments

[meenk]

If I don't have healthcare, I will die. Literally.

This is a really fucked up position to be stuck in, just because of politics. I can see why, with their silver spoons, the politicians don't care, I mean, if it wasn't ME or someone I cared about personally, I probably wouldn't either. It must be nice to be so removed from the status quo, that you don't even KNOW any of us who have to struggle to get a job with decent health benefits, and have to FIGHT to keep them from eroding away during your tenure.

I am sure, if they knew my circumstances, they would tout their wonderful HIPAA, because it at least gives me the illusion of being able to go and get another job with medical coverage, without them being able to deny me because of my cancer, as long as I have been covered the previous year, but this small concession doesn't mean shit in a society where a job with good coverage can be hard to land, for most people, and many companies make you wait for months before they'll insure you. In the meantime, even if I COULD pay the $2800 a month for the pills that KEEP ME ALIVE, out of pocket, I couldn't meet the requirements of HIPAA, and would be denied insurance anyway.

Don't even get me started on the fact that my expensive, but necessary (to MY life, anyway) medical treatment is the reason insurance companies are making it harder for everyone to afford insurance, simply because the drug company knows they are holding a handful of us ransom, making us pay out heavily (in one way or another) for their brand name drug, which they refuse to allow to be made generic. It is enough to make me want to save up all my empty pill bottles, in the case that, for some reason, I can no longer afford to take them, so I can carry them, along with the trite "We are sorry but.." letter from the insurance company, to Washington and splatter my brains all over their manicured ($2800 a month?) lawns.

GRR!

[venividivicious]

hah! well, comparitively i have nothing to complain about. i just went to the urgent care joint up the street and had them shoot me in the ass with some antibiotics. oh the look of horror on the chicks face when i told her i was paying with CASH. $85 bucks later i can barely feel below my waist. i was expecting worse; maybe that's the sickest part.

that's exactly what it is: ransom. i can't believe taht these people aren't being hung from streetlights over that shit. people are DYING and they're standing there with the pills they need and they're not giving them to them over CASH. i could MAAAAYBE understand if it was some super rare mineral that is only found in some frozen tundra somewhere only occuring naturally where a mastadon took a shit in a pile of banana peels on a thursday 47,422 years ago, and if that was the case, the motherfucking CEO had better be out there with a little spoon scraping it up. otherwise it's just plain robbery and they WILL pay.

sadly, the type of protest you described is probably the only way shit will ever gain the momentum to change. even sadder is the realization that the Rx companies probably have the pull in the media to muffle the story.

sick bastards.

[meenk]

Honestly, it would probably have to be 100 people doing it (but not all at once.. that's just mass hysteria, not a sadistic, cash-driven system at fault) for them to even care. Even then, it would be lip service for months, a few poorly worded reactionary laws to stop the high-profile deaths from happening, and nothing done to fix the problem at its source. Just like school shootings.

[venividivicious]

oh! and happy fucking birthday.

[meenk]

Thanks!