3.06.2006

Kicking & Screaming: One Girl's Quest for Health Insurance

-a novel by RoarSavage

When I met you, I told you I had been flying without a net for a while. It's now been another two months without Health Insurance.

I've come to ignore the dread that must still be lurking in the back of my mind. It's been an unseasonably healthy winter for me. I've been uncommonly vehicularly lucky, as my vehicular luck tends to go. My face has even taught itself to clear up on its own.

Now, I could never prove that my skin decided to act its age, my speeding became more calculated and my immune system has hung tough this winter all simultaneously because I don't have health insurance. G-d knows, my skin has no idea its being deprived of its usual PPO dermos, my driving remains staunchly more offensive than defensive and it's not like I've been resting up and sucking down the Golden Seal. No: I have no idea why I have been able to go so long without health insurance without my usual hiccups. It's as if the road, my skin and the rest of my body took a meeting and all decided to chill the fuck out 'til conditions improved. I should send them each a fruitcake.

It's not like I haven't tried. I have. Job #2 offers insurance but because everyone there smokes, drinks and has whatever else, the rates are ridiculous. As for Job #1, if you find a permanent temp job with bennies, please: lemme know.

Though repressed, the worry has begun to get to me- albeit slightly. And I promised I would take care of this in my first post. I don't want to be a blog-welcher. I applied by myself to Blue Cross Blue Shield. Still waiting. I would doggedly follow-up, but that seems like a lot of work when I'm already sending fuitcakes because I'm so problem-free right now.

It's a symptom of a larger whole, anyway. More on that tomorrow.

7 comments:

I-66 said...

See, I hardly ever got sick or injured until I had health insurance. Since I've had it:

1 onset of strep throat, 2 of the flu (that's after having gotten flu shots), and one fracture of a bone in my left foot.

And right in the middle of soccer season. And I'm left footed.

Nicole said...

I too, am without health insurance. Job #1 contributes very little toward the rates, and for job #2's rates are also sky high. However, I have the fortune of a) working for a doctor and b) an uncanny track record for being healthy. The only current glaring downside (whatifs excepted) is paying full price for prescriptions - one benefit of not being with long term boyfriend anymore...

Anyway, I guess your body likes the way you've been treating it lately, so keep on?

I-66 said...

what do you call that... teal?

HomeImprovementNinja said...

Well, luckily you are young enough for it to be unlikely that you would come down with something serious.

As a 22 year old, you are much more likely to get ill or die from getting drunk and walking into a bus in Georgetown than you are to suffer from carpal tunnel or lung disease. I mean smoking is a great way to give yourself lung disease, but you kinda have to work at it for years before you perfect it.

Marci said...

I rode the non-insured bus for 4 years. The only thing that sucked and cost me a fortune later, was missing 4 years worth of dental appointments.

Here's to good health!

Anonymous said...

It sucks when you don't have insurance! I've been there.

Did you watch the 60 minutes on Sunday where they were talking about how hospitals jack up the prices for the uninsured while giving deep discounts to people with insurance? For example, if you have something done, they will charge the insurance only $30,000 but if you had the same procedure but didn't have insurance...it would cost you $250,000. Yep, you would have to pay that out of your own damn pocket!! Fuckers!

Roar Savage said...

I had no idea so many people are riding or had ridden the same "bus" for so long. This gives me hope. Thanks, guys! lol.

Nic- Yeah, I hear the prescriptions thing. But then you (eventually, after all this ex stuff subsides) have to deal with the utter shock on other guys' faces: "You're not on THE PILL?" Fave response: "Well that's good to know..."

66- Seafoam or Ocean Mist. And by your logic, I should NEVER get insured, lol.

HIN- I try never to drink in Georgetown, aka: WASP Central. Hypocritical, I know.

Nanner- Damn teeth.

Chase- Thank G-d for people like you that can watch TV for me. Cable is on the ever-growing list of "Next Purchases."

Daddy- I hear you. Though perhaps you just spent too many years going to the UMD Health Center. They tested me for Mono 6 times during my college career- they erroneously told countless of my sorority sisters they were pregnant- and I've heard enema horror stories. Perhaps some can do things for the "common stuff" when their medical licenses are put to good use...