A few weeks ago, I was debating on whether or not to renew health care with my company. Today, I'm sorry I didn't. I now officially verbalize my hate for United Health Care, my quack Doctor, and the American Health Care System.
For instance. Right now... I'm sick. I
should be able to see a doctor right? I live in America, not Canada where you have to wait 3 months on a waiting list? Right? I shell out $50 a week for health insurance, on the most expensive plan my fortune 500 company offers. When can I go see a doctor? The day before thanksgiving.
Here's the thing. I started to get sick last week. I toyed with the idea of going to see the doctor then, but being I work 7-6 and my doctor is only open 8-5, finding an opportunity to go, presented some problems. Well then I really got sick. But I still was going to go to work because I couldn't afford the time off or the wages lost. This of course is when my car broke down, and only then was I forced to actually take time to care for my own health. My employer who graciously gives me 3 days to get better ends today. It's just bloody freaking amazing that my employer has my cold down to a time line of 3 days. The truth is I feel like crap still. The idea that I'm going to have to work tomorrow, when I spent the evening vomiting yesterdays meals seems hardly enjoyable. But what can I do?
I mean, afterall this is wonderful freaking American. Blessed be it's name, our privatized health-care system is the best in the world. I only have to wait 3 weeks to go see a freaking doctor, at a cost of $225.00 a month. Sure I could show up at the emergency room and pay 4 times the usual co-pay, and sit in an emergency room all day, and then have a doctor tell me to take a cough suppressant and take a few days off work which my employer won't give me anyways. If I'm lucky he'd give me some antibiotics, but if he's like the last quack I had, he'll kindly state that I should just give it time.
What's worse is I come from a family where the idea of taking a sick day is looked down upon. Even in school my mom and dad would only let me stay home if I had the minimum of a fever and vomiting. Even then it was strictly to be in bed. I recall one time, mom yelling at me because the school had called her to come get me after passing out at a assembly. I was yelled at almost all the way home because she of course thought I had faked it, even though I had never done such a thing in the past. There on the lawn of the Baptist church I began vomiting, repetitively. But that's the American way? Isn't it. We're all too strong to get sick. We can work through it.
On Sunday, Dad even offered to drive me to work, knowing full well I was too incapacitated to drive the car.
I've sat through multiple days at work coughing, hacking, barely being able to talk to the customer. I'm sneezing on co-workers, and I've even asked my boss if there was some sort of work I could complete which would involve the constant use of my aching throat, chapped lips, and runny nose. Nothing ever comes of it. I sit there and fight it out through the day. Does that make me weak? Should I feel Guilty for even asking?
I don't think so. Personally I think if American Health care was so great, then I wouldn't be still sick. Isn't that the point? I eat right, I have an active lifestyle, I work non-stop; shouldn't I as a great and wonderful citizen of the greatest country on earth be allowed to see a doctor when I'm sick, be given some lee-way by an employer when I'm obviously sick, and be given time to heal?
While some of you might disagree, no doubt, you're probably the ones who also have ingrained it in your psyche this "American Bravado of Health" and likely you too have spoken phrases like "I can't get sick" or "I can't afford to get sick".
That's the American way of Health Care.
How are you ever supposed to get better when you health is based on a dollar value? Even when you walk into a doctors office, you don't see doctors. You see a receptionist and her staff of insurance billing specialist ready to take your insurance card and co-pay. The American way is about money, our health is only as valuable as the amount of money we're willing to give up. That's sort of sad.
I've got the 8 dollar benadryl, the 3 dollar cough drops, the 8 dollar Afrin, and the 10 dollar Zycam, the 3 dollar OJ, the 3 dollar Kleenex, and the 5 dollar bottle of Vitamin C. I'm still sick, but screw it, American Health insurance covered none of it.
In America, those with the most money find it easier to get health care. Heck if you have enough money, you don't even need to go to where your insurance tells you too. It's not as much of a risk, if you have money in the bank and don't rely on a weekly paycheck to keep the lights on. And lets not even mention the fact, that while I'm struggling.... atleast I have health care. So many people, including many people I work with, can't afford the $200.00 a month. Can't afford the $20.00 co-pay. Can't afford the days off from work, or the gas to get to the doctors. They can't afford the co-pay on the medication, or the deductible if things turn worse and you really do end up in a hospital. What does that say about our countries morals and ethics? How is this even remotely acceptable. How is it that snooty France has figured it out, and we the country who thinks we are so darn smart, can't get it's head out of it's ass for two seconds to recognize how horrible we actually treat one another?
It's this mindset that leads us to ignore common problems. To overlook being sick, and in turn we are so pig headed, so pompous that we end up dying from health issues that if where caught earlier, may have been curable. How many of our relatives, friends, and family have died. How many of them from Cancer, other diseases, that if perhaps we had caught earlier, we could have healed them? "But I don't need no damn doctor" my grandfather used to exclaim. I too have inherited this machismo cowboy attitude, as have most of the women and men in my same financial class. We think we're being brave, we're being stupid is what we're being... and we will pay for it because we live in America.
