After putting together mounds of paperwork, over and over again, and submitting them to the County, State, local welfare offices, and financial advisor - and sitting for hours on end in every local welfare office - I am denied repeatedly and then referred back once again to offices I've already visited. It's like the great shell game. There are three nuts being scrambled and one has a marble under it. If I'm lucky enough to get the marble, I get the prize. But instead Nut #3, the actual prize, keeps referring me back to Nut #1 and Nut #2, which hold nothing except things to make you go nuts.
It's not nice to tease someone. I've taught all my children and grandbabies that. Teasing is not nice! But that's what these offices do to me. They tease me by telling me there is help out there. All I have to do is fill out several mountains of paperwork and then stand in line, and then sit for hours, and then complete an interview. You don't get your answer right then. That's just the fish hook they dangle in front of you while they tell you that you are probably eligible. Once you've done all that, they will not tell you the results. Instead they tell you your answer will come in the mail. I got the answers! Denied! Denied! Denied! Doctors are as ignorant about this as everyone else. When I told my doctor I was denied for everything except $61 in food stamps for the baby, he said, "I thought terminal cancer was a given. You have cancer, then you get medical benefits."
Here's how the scam to keep you hopeful works: The actual truth of the matter is, the first person they send you to is the Financial Officer. When she finds out your greatest desire is to just check out (suicide) so you don't leave your family struggling to survive while you are draining their every resource - she tells you, "Don't you worry about it. Even if you have no ability to pay at all, we will not deny you treatment. Plus we will help you find the money you need to survive." Well, that's partially true, but not the whole truth. They prevent suicide by running you "literally" to death with the tease of welfare assistance. If you go do everything they tell you while you are as sick as I am, and you keep going back over and over again, until they have exhausted you to complete bed rest - then they can just wait for you to die on your own, too weak to accomplish it through suicide, and then they cannot be blamed. I'm on to their game now. And yes, they will continue to treat you, but that comes with a price, too - a literal price. They continue to add up all the money you owe, over $125,000 monthly for me with an outstanding bill of over $250,000, and tell you, your significant other can come in and sign a very reasonable payment plan of several hundred a month (for the rest of his life). Well, of course this is reasonable *sarcasm intended* they explain: because they did provide treatment and because you are thankful for that and because you are a responsible person who wants to pay their bills, so you shouldn’t have a problem making a commitment to this bill that will last for so many years it’s hardly conceivable. My husband can just pay it out of his meager unemployment and then go live on the street with the baby after I’m gone. This is the crap that stresses me out the most and makes me suicidal. If they had a brain cell in their head, they would know this. Or maybe they do and just don’t care. After all, they are not people living off unemployment, too lazy to go get a job. They have a job! And if they have one, why don’t you?
One agency worker actually had the nerve to tell me that if I could wait in line for four hours for my initial interview, then I could constructively use that time to find a job. DO YOU BELIEVE THAT?! I stood and sat and moved through the line with my walker and puke bag. I was so sick, and all these interview requirements and outings just made me sicker. It took me two full months to complete all the paperwork and attend in-person interviews at these agencies because I was so sick. It took me days on end to get all the paperwork together and get it copied, and I had to space out interviews because each one made me sicker and weaker. My walker is the type with four wheels and seat in the middle. I sit down between each time the line moves. Movement makes me sicker, so I puke repeatedly into my medical puke bag – mostly dry heaves, thankfully. I guess it’s a blessing that handicapped get a separate line. But that line does not differentiate between handicaps, we are all equal. And each personal interview can take up to half an hour or longer. So, if there are six people ahead of you, that’s about a two hour wait. There are usually 15 to 50 people in line. I can get a better, closer to the front spot in line by showing up two hours early and standing in line outside the building waiting for it to open. * just push the gun closer*
But you know what? The agency worker is partially right. Why waste my time and tiny bit of energies standing, sitting and puking in line for denials of help! I can use that time to beg for crappy, pay by the day jobs, and then lose the jobs due to my health. Or I can pass out flyers like my husband does, until I pass out? Or I can stand on the street and beg for handouts until I pass out and the ambulance comes? Hey, at least I make a few bucks for my family before I kill myself further, and then the charity hospital has to try to recoup my minimal health for a few more days or hasten my death so they don’t have to deal with me. I call that a win-win situation! You’ve heard of “suicide by cop?” Well this is “suicide by hospital.” I just let myself end up in the incompetent, no caring, charity hospitals that needs to get rid of the indigents who are costing them too much.
That’s what I am now – an indigent! I can’t pay for health care. They cannot turn me away when I need emergency care, but they don’t have to provide any real type of medical care, either. They can just give me fluids and put me back on the street. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Poor patients have a greater number of negative outcomes than patients of higher socioeconomic status. Indigent patients have shorter hospital stays than patients with private insurance, and they are less likely to undergo high-cost procedures when hospitalized. Circumstances such as unemployment, homelessness, or lack of means to pay for basic needs may lead clinicians to form negative judgments about patients' social worth and may also reduce patients' chances of benefiting from certain kinds of treatment.” (Full article http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/291/1/121.full)
This goes back to my doctors’ office. Neither the doctors nor the nurses can understand my lack of ability to go to appointments several times a week, or even once a week. They do not understand my inability to pay for the gas to get there (90 minutes round trip), or babysitters when my husband has a job interview that coincides with a treatment, or my husband using two days a week to drop off resumes which uses up our fuel for the week. How can someone who makes $250,000 a year understand living on $150 a week or nothing at all?
What are we going to do? I’m completely lost now!
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