There’s a lot of talk going on about health care issues, and the people talking the loudest are the conservatives who think nothing of spending trillions of dollars on endless wars, but the thought of contributing to a health care plan for America sends them into fits of rage…
…anyway, here’s my story.
I’m 46, separated with three kids, 9,7 and 4. I bust my ass in a restaurant making 11 dollars an hour. I pay 100 dollars a week for child support and whatever is left is just enough to get by. That’s fine with me, I don’t need much. It doesn’t leave enough for health insurance though. That was ok. I never really got sick anyway. The last four years, I started drinking. By the time I got sick, I was drinking half a fifth of Bacardi 151 about 4 nights a week. I have a tooth that gets infected every few months, No biggie, antibiotics are easy to bum off of friends and family.
Somewhere around the last week of July my tooth got infected, so I got some Ceflex that was in the medicine cabinet from when my GF had a cyst. So I took them for a week, but it kept getting worse. I was feeling pretty bad as well. I couldn’t eat and I wasn’t getting much sleep. Finally I went to the emergency room. They drained the puss from my tooth infection and gave me Amoxicillin and sent me on my way. That was on a Monday, the first week of August. I worked Tuesday and had Wednesday and Thursday off. I started taking the antibiotics Monday afternoon, but by Thursday night, I still wasn’t feeling better. In fact, I was feeling worse. I called off Friday, and let me digress by saying I NEVER call off. The last time I called off was about 4 years ago when I had Bronchitis and didn’t want to cough all over the food.
Anyway…Saturday morning I was feeling worse, but I decided to go to work in hopes that I would feel better as I got moving. I was there about a half hour when I realized…“hey I’m REALLY sick” I told the boss I needed to go to the Emergency Room, and waited for my Girlfriend to pick me up. I really thought I was dying. My boss told me later that she didn’t think she was ever going to see me again.
So I go to the hospital, and two hours later they gave me a urine test. About an hour later, the ER Doctor informs me that I’m having problems with my liver They order a CAT Scan, and a few hours later the ER Doctor tells me that “It doesn’t look good” and that my liver looked like it was failing and I would be turning yellow soon" I never did turn yellow, but I was scared. I figured I killed my liver with alcohol.
They admitted me, and over the next four days I had two ultrasounds, an MRI, an upper GI, countless blood tests, a few x-rays, a liver biopsy and probably a test or two that I’m forgetting about. I had a GP, a Kidney Doctor (because my sodium level was/is low.) and a Gastro-intestinal Doctor working on my case. The general consensus was that I had “Drug Induced non infectious Hepatitis” due to overuse of antibiotics. The Alcohol apparently had nothing to do with it. They also said it was a possibility that I had CMV, a virus related to Shingles, Mono, chicken pox… I really think they had no idea what exactly was wrong. They all pointed out how interesting my case was though. I’m not to thrilled about having “drug induced hepatitis” on my medical record. I still never got a definitive answer as to what’s wrong with me.
So I stayed in the hospital for 8 days, and got discharged feeling slightly better than when I was admitted, although I was still very sick, weak and feverish. I still couldn’t eat very much either. I had lost 30 pounds by that point. So I went home, and over the next few weeks slowly got stronger and my appetite increased to where I was eating like a pig. I went from under 160 lb in the middle of August to 178 lb now.
They also gave me a handfull of follow-up doctors appointments. Nice, I thought since I didn’t have insurance and I was way too sick to go back to work. I went to the welfare office and applied for medical and food stamps. I didn’t apply for cash because my girlfriend was taking care of my bills while I was sick. I was eligible for benefits, 200 dollars a month in food stamps and a medical card that covered doctors appointments but NOT prescriptions or Dental. They also paid my hospital bills.
Its been two months and I’m almost back to my normal self now. I still get a little dizzy and lightheaded at times, but I’m starting back to work on Friday. I’m kind of nervous about overdoing it, but ya gotta do what you gotta do.
I also quit smoking and drinking. The drinking is easy. I was never an alcoholic, just a drunk lol, but man, even though its been two months, and my nicotine addiction is long past, there are times when I REALLY want a cigarette lol
I guess my whole point of this post is to tell the story of an uninsured working class guy who had to use the system. If it were up to the teabagging assholes I would have been left for dead. I bust my ass over 40 hours a week and I cant afford insurance. I live in central PA, so unless I work for the Railroad or construction, I’m not going to make much more than I make now so I’m pretty much screwed.
It pisses me off that rich republicans and senior citizen medicaid and S.S. collecting teabaggers have the “I got mine so screw you” attitude toward Universal Health care. The working uninsured are a silent majority that needs to rise up and have their voices heard.
Well, thats really all I have to say. Sorry if its a little rambling but I just finished off a pot of coffee haha.
If you’re so poor, why did you choose to get sick?
…or…
I don’t understand the shot at Republicans; you got healthcare, didn’t you?
…or…
Maybe if you gave up coffee you could afford health insurance.
I bet I’m missing several…
If you’re so poor, why did you choose to get sick?
…or…
I don’t understand the shot at Republicans; you got healthcare, didn’t you?
My sister went through something similar with a similar root cause - in her case it was alcoholism. Fortunately for her, she ended up with my sister, who is an RN, in a small community that stepped up. Her family (sister, parents, myself) paid her prescriptions and lab work, and everyone working on her case didn’t bill. She wasn’t hospitalized (she ended up with an under the table “home hospice” with my sister and her husband as the hospice care nurses).
The prescriptions were still pricey, though.
You’re missing: Why did you decide to have three kids? Why did you not know, in advance, you were going to get sick, and PREPARE?
The coffee could stave off Alzheimer’s, possibly. But it also raises the B.P.
You can’t win.
Maybe I’m misguided, but this part disturbed me more than the rest. It means that:
-When your friends and family receive a prescription for a course of antibiotics, they aren’t finishing the whole course, and
-you in turn are necessarily receiving an incomplete course of antibiotics.
Medical professionals these days are reeeeeeeally nervous about the arrival of drug-resistant strains of bacteria (see, for example, MRSA and VRSA). Misusing antibiotics in the way you describe contributes to this problem for everyone. If that doesn’t bother you, then you should at least be concerned that antibiotic misuse may compromise your own safety. Case in point:
It’s entirely possible that your chronic misuse of antibiotics, in addition to punishing your liver, may be responsible for your latest infection’s lack of response to Keflex.
Congratulations on making health care more expensive by failing to treat the problem (a tooth infection) properly in the first place (by taking a complete, prescribed course of antibiotics exactly according to the instructions).
And how do you propose that he get that complete prescribed course of antibiotics?
A pharmacy in town where I live is offering free antibiotics with Rx for 10 day courses or shorter. Don’t know if it’s restricted to certain antibiotics, but the idea is to minimize the abuses the OP describes.
It’s more nuanced generally than “I got mine, so screw you”.
The thinking would go something like this:
[INDENT]
Obviously a series of poor decisions on your part have caused you to be 46, have 3 kids and make a paltry $11 per hour. What did you do, screw around in high school with no plan for a career and then knock some woman up?
To compound that, you seriously abuse alcohol and misuse prescription antibiotics.
Why should the tax money that I work hard for go to bail your sorry ass out of the problems your poor choices put you in?[/INDENT]
I’m not saying that’s necessarily the compassionate way to think about it, but there is some merit there.
Most of the people I know who vote Republican aren’t particularly wealthy, but rather spent a lot of time and effort trying to make the right decisions for their families and their futures, and tend to REALLY resent the government providing benefits for people they perceive as having not planned for the future, or put any effort into avoiding the easily avoidable (teenage pregnancy, etc…)
The OP could admit that maybe he needs more than his current job will provide:
He claims not to need much, but apparently he does, in fact, need much. If he were to admit to himself that he needs more than he can currently afford, he might be motivated to better his lot in life. If he had had enough money around for a doctor’s visit and a full course of antibiotics, he could have avoided a whopping 8-day hospital stay, which presumably included a lot of days off of work and a lot of misery for the OP.
Apart from that, inability to obtain a full course of antibiotics does not mean that a partial course of antibiotics a good idea.
I will accept all that you say EXCEPT the people who really suffer are the OP’s children. They did nothing to be in this position but people who yank support rarely think about the innocents caught in the mesh.
I think the point is that taking half a course of antibiotics is just making the problem worse. He’d have been better off by not taking any antibiotics. I don’t know if that’s true, but the theory is that he killed off the antibiotic susceptible bacteria, but failed to get rid of them all. Thus the infection is still there and now made up of more antibiotic resistant bacteria than before, making it harder to treat.
To the OP’s more general point, you kind of make it hard to generate much sympathy when you are spending ~40 bucks a week on booze plus an undetermined amount on cigarettes. That’s enough money to at least get some health insurance and a basic level of care. Instead, your irresponsible drinking and smoking (likely, obviously I’m guessing a bit here):
(1) Turned a small problem (infected tooth) into a big problem because you didn’t seek effective treatment early.
(2) Used up expensive ER resources, instead of going to a GP in an office setting.
(3) Turned a bigger problem (reaction with antibiotics) into an even bigger one (pre-weakened liver due to alcohol)
(4) And stuck the larger public with the bill.
Basically, you turned a $100-200 problem into one that cost tens of thousands or even a hundred Gs. You really shouldn’t be looking for sympathy here. The correct posture would be repentance and acknowledgement of guilt. I’m nowhere near cruel enough to think that we should have just let you die. That doesn’t mean I’m particularly thrilled about picking up your bill for drinking, smoking, and irresponsible behavior. I’m for nationalized health care simply due to the economic benefits, but this isn’t the sort of feel good story I’d use to make the case.
I’ve never seen an offer like that that didn’t restrict the list. However, there’s usually 6-12 on the list.
That still leaves the problem of getting prescription when you have no insurance. A doctor visit in my area runs around $110. What do you suggest he do, not pay child support for a week? (Of course I DON’T recommend that - it’s not legal for one. Not fair to the kids, either. And sure to piss off the ex.)
What I’d suggest is telling the doc/dentist “I have no insurance, can I make an arrangement to pay this off at X dollars per unit of time (week, month, whatever)”. This can work if you ask for it when you make the appointment. Some folks will also give you a discount if you pay cash, though not all. Doesn’t hurt to ask.
Regardless, you can’t just go up to a pharmacy and say “I’d like a course of antibiotics, please”. You have to have the Rx. If you can’t afford the doctor visit to get the Rx then, well, that’s when we have people “saving” the last half of a course of antibiotics and passing it on to someone else. I don’t approve, but I understand what leads people to do these things.
If everyone had access to basic medical care for infections like these, access that wouldn’t bankrupt them, we’d have less sharing of medications and people like the OP might get it properly taken care of before he winds up in the hospital (either from infection or self-medicating or what) and/or loses employment or worse.
I’m not suggesting anything. I was responding to the question of free anitbiotics.
Or, maybe, if you are poor why the hell are you drinking Bacardi 151 about 4 nights a week? If you are poor, why did you have four kids you cannot support*?
When someone blames their poor life choices on others I have little sympathy. He complains about the ‘I have mine screw you’ mentality he believes that republicans have, yet his attitude is ‘I’m sick so give me everything I need even though I am 47 years old, make 11 bucks an hour, have 4 kids and never thought enough to provide for myself’* even though his hospital bills were paid by someone else*.
Guess what? Each person owns the choices they make in life.
jon138, I am glad you are better. However, the lesson you ought to learn from this isn’t that republicans are evil, it is that you need to do something so you can take care of yourself**.
Slee
*4 kids on 22,000 a year?!?
** I did restaurant work making about the same a long time ago. Then I figured out I didn’t want to be poor. So I worked on how to make more than 11 bucks an hour.
Per Bevmo:
"Bacardi Rum 151 Proof (750 ML)
Price: $23.99 "
Wasn’t our OP spending about $200/month on booze?
To be fair, at the time he had four children, he presumably had a spouse who also was making an income. (I don’t know that; I’m just assuming based on the divorce.) So perhaps he wasn’t as poor married as he is divorced–that’s usually the case, in the situations I’ve seen.
At any rate, it always strikes me as ungenerous, and usually unrealistic as well, when people ask why I (or whoever) had children if we couldn’t support them. I supported them on a much larger income when I had them. I support them(well, two of them now that the older ones have moved out) now, and on not much more than our OP makes. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s what I have to do for now.
I think it’s really easy to look at someone else’s life and say, well, they should just buck up and make more money. Get a new job, move to a cheaper place, go back to school! But when you’re dealing constantly with the daily small-to-large crises generated by not having any wiggle room in your budget, it’s really hard to do some of those things that would result in a higher income; in fact, it may be well-nigh impossible.
All that aside, I’m glad that you’re okay, and I hope that your new lifestyle (no booze or tobacco) will help you get and stay on your feet both physically and financially. You’ll be surprised at how much of a difference that amount of money will make if you hang in there and keep with it.
True. And with good insurance he’d have been able to get a full course.
The last time I looked the insurance you could buy for that amount of money had huge deductibles, and would have not worked at all in this situation.
Which he would been more likely to do if he had insurance, and would not have had to spend a good portion of his income on a doctor visit.
Ditto. Remember, it appears he had seldom been sick, so I suspect other problem cured themselves without spending money on doctors or emergency rooms.
It looks like he didn’t stick the public with the bill.
It sounds like you agree that national health care would have saved a ton of money in this case. I think a lot of the savings would come from people making bad decisions. I’m sure apple-cheeked five-year-old girls are better poster children than the OP, but if you are thinking about where the savings would come from the OP is a better example.
Oh, and one more conservative response:
He should have shopped around for the cheapest emergency room before going.