south end health care
Half the folks I know down here on the organic, antibiotic-free South Endzone are self-insured. Meaning: they don’t have health insurance, life insurance and possibly not even car insurance. They count on clean living, herbal remedies and a whole lotta luck to get them to old age without accidents or bankruptcy. When they DO get sick or their luck runs out, we collect donations and the bank calls in the mortgage. This is the state of health insurance these days. A half wit on meth could dream up a more sensible plan, it seems to me. Course, I’m not on meth….
I’m on the catastrophic plan. High monthly payments, high deductible, high probability my coverage will be denied anyway. One time long ago I had health insurance through my employer — and yes, way back when I actually had a job. Part time. Low pay. But it offered health insurance. Hot damn!! Since I’d never had coverage of any sort previously, I ran right out and bounced a double-bladed axe off a maple I was cutting down right into my leg about ankle high one 4th of July. Deep gash right through the ligament, fireworks in my brain. So I dropped the axe, tightened up a tourniquet and drove to the nearest emergency room which was 40 miles north. The ER doc put about 15 stitches in the ligament, then another 15 in the leg and declared me good as new, maybe in a few months. He declined any pain med prescription, fearing, I think, I might enjoy them. “Stop on your way home and buy yourself a six pack of something strong,” he advised, no doubt remembering his Hypocritical Oath. I asked would this wound hurt much and he assured me it would hurt like hell. “Roll a fat doobie,” he added, “you’ll be fine.” Medical marijuana four decades ahead of its time…. I wasn’t fine. I spent the summer on crutches after a week of pain and pogo-sticking on one leg. Which was bad enough, but then the other shoe dropped, metaphorically and literally, when my insurance policy refused to pay my ER bill, some clause that required my accident to have taken place NOT in the county of my residence.
Well, since 95% or more of accidents occur near home, this was a stroke of genius for my ‘insurers’. Insured them from the possibility of payments, I guess. Shortly after this, I left my place of employment and rejoined the ranks of my fellow South Enders. Semi-retired, self-employed and very vaguely entrepreneurial.
So when I hear my neighbors whose companies pay their health premiums complain about my friends who don’t carry insurance at all, I tell em what my ER doc recommended: just drink until the numbness hits. You still think health care works, roll a big fat one too.
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