I finally found a doctor who knows what to do about Lyme disease in September of 2009. He treated me and I've pretty much fully recovered from the infection, so much so that he cut me loose two weeks ago.
Unfortunately I have some long term damage to my adrenal glands due to the Lyme and I need hormone replacement therapy in order to be functional. The cost is only $100/month, but the barrier to getting a doctor to sign off is impossibly high for me.
There is literally no sensible path for me to get treated, even with the socialist Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan of Illinois.
So here's the deal - I had Lyme, it damaged my adrenal glands, and I was already primed for trouble because I have a genetic condition known as polycystic kidney disease.
This statement from the CHIP site applies to me - traditional issuers won't touch someone with PKD.
The Traditional Plan is a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plan available only to eligible persons who qualify for coverage because they have been denied major medical coverage due to their health by private insurers and are not eligible for Medicare. To receive maximum benefits under the plan, a designated PPO provider must be used. The Traditional Plan has five standard deductible options to choose from: $500, $1,000, $1,500, $2,500 and $5,000.
And here's the death panel itself - I need $500 for the deductible, $481 a month for coverage, and you have to pay two months up front. That's $1,462 to get to the point where I have the chance to begin the process to get care.
This might be a path to receiving care ... or it might be a complex, expensive, slow moving game that will rob me, insult me, and make it impossible for me to get access anywhere else. Let's review how this stuff works ...
I got sick in Nebraska, moved back in with my mom in Iowa, and qualified for Iowa's equivalent program. The only doctor for me was 275 miles away across deadly ice and snow packed Iowa roads. I could have died in the spring of 2008, a story recorded here under the name One Brave Kossack, a label that nyceve applied to me. The jackoff responsible for my care Mabra "Glenn" Abernathy, labeled me a 'suspicious malingerer' in addition to failing to do anything useful to resolve my problem. I was so pleased with his care I tried to have the state investigate how he handled my treatment. Good luck getting a shitty doctor disciplined when you're indigent ...
I moved to Massachusetts, worked enough to qualify for MassHealth, and after wasting time and money with a few more jackoffs I got a guy in Boston who dealt with my Lyme infection enough that I could go back to work at the beginning of 2009. Oh, but I got booted from this program - I was living right outside Springfield, spending a lot of time in the hilltowns, and it was convenient for me to keep a mailbox in Brattleboro, Vermont. I was ejected from this program solely on the basis of this mailbox right before I moved to Illinois and I suspect they've labeled me some sort of fraud artist.
So here we go again. The only path seems to be coming up with $962 right now, then waiting four to six weeks for them to process the application. Maybe I'll get in, maybe the state of Massachusetts has fucked me forever. That would be the administrative portion of the death panel.
Assuming that part works I have to get a doctor to stop looking at my eye contact patterns, which are unusual since I'm a mildly autistic adult, and instead focus on my adrenal glands. Maybe I'll get someone to actually treat me, or maybe they'll treat me like I'm lazy or a drug addict or something, just because I'm a little different and I don't have a traditional job. This is the medical portion of the death panel.
So that's that. I have to come up with about a thousand dollars, screw around being partially disabled for the next three freakin' months, and then maybe I'll get a doctor who isn't an incompetent asswipe and I'll get to stop feeling sick every day. UNLESS all this piddle fucking around and wasting a third of our health care dollars on administrative overhead means I slide into kidney failure.
I could very well end up like Kitsap River, awaiting a kidney transplant, on disability, and all for want of $100 in prescriptions monthly that I can easily afford.
We gave the Democratic party a solid majority in the House, the Senate, and we put Barack Obama in the White House. Things are better in many ways, but the aggressive housecleaning our nation needs has not even begun. Some of us don't have a lot of time left out here if things remain as they are ...