She gave me the big shot this morning, with the big needle, right into the joint (ow); also a bottle of pain drugs. (Yay!) Which this post is not about, how much I love Vicodin. Y'all know that already.
Nope, it's about this guy standing in front of me while I'm waiting to pick up the Vicodin. His kid has a drug-resistant staph infection. The meds to handle that cost, and I kid you not, two thousand dollars for eight pills. His insurance covers eight hundred of it.
Luckily the guy is rich as shit, and only blinks a little before whipping out his AmX. My kid would have had to die, frankly.
Nor am I joking. Last week that was mr delagar, who is borderline diabetic, -- the doctor, the same one who gave me the big shot, after trying other things for a month, wanted to put him on a drug which is meant to coax his pancreas back into action. Biata, I think it's called? Only our insurance won't cover it, and it's $270/month, which, as broke as we are, that might as well be two thousand dollars.
So we had to do without the meds. The doctor is currently arguing with our insurance over whether they should pay for the medication or let his pancreas die (and then they can pay for all the really expensive care that will come from him being a diabetic, which, hey, that makes plenty of sense) and meanwhile he's on meds that don't work, but are really really cheap.
Someone tell me again why socialized medicine is a bad idea. I keep forgetting.
5 comments:
Two things get me really riled up:
(the lack of) adequate universal education,
(the lack of) adequate universal health care.
There are many heroic teachers, but little respect or support for them. The US society seems to distrust anyone that is actually smart.
Especially distressing is the grossly abusive entity called "healthcare". It seems to me that it is being run almost totally for the benefit of drug makers and insurance companies. If our government (either party) had any brains or guts, we could have a far healthier nation and much lower total cost. The lack of preventive treatment as you point out is especially hurtful since it needlessly causes suffering and sometimes shorter productive lives.
Oh girl, I feel your pain. We ended up filing bankruptcy because of the 350 thousand dollars in medical bills that our insurance refused to pay. Some of it was because the treatment was not FDA approved and some of it was that my treatment was outpatient and as such coverage was minimal. Anyways, here we are feeling like the economic freaks and worrying how this thing will impact our futures and realizing how vulnerable we, like others, are to the healthcare industry.
Evil fucks. Evil, evil, evil fucks.
I hate the health care system (ha! that would imply something moderately functional exists) in this country.
Have you looked into Canada Drug (which is what my mother has to use to get the medicine that keeps her heart functioning) for mr. delagar's meds?
I really hate reading this. I mean, I'm grateful you are sharing it, but it pisses me off. How can we just attempt to treat people this way?
The issue on preventives really gets to me, since I've had this up close and personal. No, no, please die or get seriously ill first...wtf?
This is my non-coherent way of saying, GRRRRRR.
My name is Robert Fraser and i would like to show you my personal experience with Vicodin.
I am 27 years old. Have been on Vicodin for 1 day now. Found a few pills. I'm currently not an addict though I have taken vicodin in the past and I am certainly playing with the devil because I do like the feeling it gives me. Biggest problem, besides the addiction, is Insomnia. Tossed and turned for two hours before I decided to research it.
I have experienced some of these side effects -
Constipation and insomnia.
I hope this information will be useful to others,
Robert Fraser
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