My Health: Your Problem

Here’s a little story I’d like to tell called

I have no fucking health insurance!

I have had no fucking health insurance for the past 6 years. I know a LOT of people who have had no fucking health insurance since turning 22 and been booted off their parents’ programs. (I’m 27 by-the-by… My parents’ plan was a bunch of fucking over-achievers and booted me a year early.)

I have gotten used to this story, I tell it a lot.

In the beginning I was spiritual about it… Buddhist even.

If you get health insurance, you are inviting accidents into your life.

You obviously WANT to be hurt if you are siphoning money away from your present needs to "store" up funds to help you IF you get hurt.

I don’t carry health insurance (the ‘fucking’ was to come later) because I live in the Now.

It turns out that the Now was happy to put my ass in the hospital twice with viral infections that swelled my lymph glands to the size of my testicles.

The first trip came right out of YOUR pocket.

Some of you may not know this trick. Allow me to enlighten you. Most states have what they call "grace patients." These "gracies" are people without health insurance who report to the hospital with bona fide emergencies and can’t pay for it. The state sets aside a certain amount of dollars, which are then turned into figures representing how many gracies a given hospital can admit on any given day.

The real trick is to be smart enough to drive out to the ‘burbs where EVERY MOTHERFUCKER HAS HEALTH COVERAGE and go to their pristine white hospitals and get admitted.

These gracies are, of course, paid for by your tax money.

The second time, I felt guilty (trust me, I’m getting over it), so the visit came out of my pocket and my parents’.

But as soon as we (my ‘rents and I) realized that the only thing these bastard doctors were doing was prescribing Zithromax©, I just had my penicillin swilling mother stock up and send me a bunch in the mail.

My mom has a pipeline to this stuff.

She has been in and out of the hospital so much that she just drops a dime on her "sources," and they send it out by the busloads… Either that, or they are selling penicillin in mass quantities on The Home Shopping Network.

So then it settles in. Maybe I aughtta’ look into this health care coverage thing.

And then, like an angel out of the sky (the TV), Blue Cross and Blue Balls, ahem, Shield, runs a commercial for people just like me.

Int. Day Bikeshop

Close up:

A sincere looking guy who has left his six figure income to open up a bike shop because, by golly, it just makes him FEEL better to have no income and grease under his nails. And now he has thrown out his back.

But wait!

He has no health care coverage… Whatever will he do?

He turns to Blue Cross who has a $60 a month plan. He needs this plan because he spent all his millions on whores and coke BUT NO MORE!

He has a bikeshop!

And all this good American can spend is 60 greenbacks a month on this VERY IMPORTANT, CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT, YOU’RE FUCKIN’ NUTS IF YOU DON’T CARRY, health coverage.

It’s a plan for the self-employed.

Now, I’m not REALLY self-employed at this time.

I’m hanging lights, choreographing fights, and busy working my ass off to start a theatre company that has MEANING GOD-DAMN IT!

I am also working as a temp, bouncing from cube to cube keeping my head down and dodging "perm" offers like the lethal bullets I know them to be.

I know what you’re thinking…

"Doesn’t the temporary agency have a plan you can get on?"

The bastard temp people won’t give me insurance until I work 8,765,900,876 hours in a row completely uninterrupted by…

gigs

deaths in the family

sunspots or

the occasional hospital visit which I can’t pay for until they give me my fucking health coverage!

So I call, and I’m turned down.

Why?

Because some job I had 6 years ago thinks I filed a workman’s comp claim, and their insurance was carried by Blue Cross Blue Shield, and BCBS couldn’t find me to give me my checks (which I wasn’t supposed to be getting in the first place) because I had moved and they blacklisted me.

I love it.

They can’t be bothered to locate me to give me some life saving cash.

BUT

they can put me on a nation-wide blacklist

that any

two-bit-high-school-diploma-wielding-customer-service-rep

can call up in the blink of an eye to deny me coverage.

So I didn’t get the fucking plan.

And you know what?

I think YOU should pay for it.

That’s right. Send me your cash, so I can get some fucking health care because I’m too friggin’ busy chasing my dream to get a decent job that is humane enough to cover its employees.

Wouldja’ do that?

Screw Habitat for Humanity, and all the people suffering from 9/11. Screw all those other so-called "Charities." Forget ‘em!

Send me some ducats!

Or just send over a doctor for God’s sake! I don’t even remember what they look like. Are women allowed to be doctors now? If so, send over a good lookin’ one will ya?

Because I ache. I have pains, goddamn it!

I have a finger that’s been dislocated for the last 3 years!

And I think I’m getting Hemorrhoids, big nasty, pulsating, bleeding Hemorrhoids (I’ve even named one Sal).

HEY! If you don’t want to hear about it

PAY FOR MY HEALTH CARE COVERAGE!!!