Last November, after the elections, I wrote a piece about their outcome that I called “Grappling,” where I explored the idea of how scary it is to hang on when you don’t know what is going to come next.
Well, HERE WE ARE.
Or, at least I can say for myself; Here I am. And I am not really doing a good job of grappling. I feel like I am slipping and falling through the cracks and fissures that are opening up wider and wider beneath me, beneath us all as each day passes and some part of what we took for granted as right and true is pulled out from under us.
The vast undoing of our federal government and its takeover by an unelected tyrant is really worse than anything I had ever imagined. I am frightened for my family, my community and my country as a whole.
I am deeply embarassed to live in a country that does not care for the hungry, the war torn, the asylum seeker, the immigrant, or basically anyone who is not a billionaire. This is the American nightmare and none of us knows how it will go down or if and how it will end. How many will die when they go off of the rolls of Medicaid? How many have already died when USAID was pulled from their country?
It all hits very close to home. I am vulnerable.
I am on disability due to my chronic illnesses and a year ago I decided to go on Medicare; even though I am still in my 50’s. This year I chose, with the advice of an agent, a supplemental policy from United healthcare.
I have been fighting them for 10 weeks already to try and get my infusion medication. They are supposed to supply it because I have a diagnosis that means it is to be covered automatically under medicare part b.
They have no intentions of supplying this expensive medication that keeps me alive. In fact, me being alive and consuming their profits is not in their best interest. So they throw up obstacle after obstacle in the hopes I will go away.
They have also denied other medications that I take for things like sleep.
But, sleep is small beans compared to keeping my immunity strong enough that I can resist infections.
I have cultivated relationships with some people at the company that manufactures the medication I infuse and have signed up for (this is not the first time) free doses of the medication. However, this is just a stop gap measure.
Today I found out I had been turned down by the insurance company yet again because my doctor, when she filed the prior authorization form, checked a box that had nothing to do with my medication, it was a question about a pump, with a question mark.
That is exactly what was on the bullet casing of the bullet fired by Luigi Mangioni at the United executive: “Delay, Deny, Depose.”
It’s the truth.
And you know what? No one cares. There are no checks and balances. The multi billion dollar insurance company can screw around with me all it wants. It can brush me off of the cliff and into a hole I can’t climb out of.
I am an ant.
I am just collateral.
But you know what? I am a loud and bitchy and persistent little ant. And I will climb back up the cliff and scream at them in my squeaky little voice and demand my medication over and over and over and over until they are so sick of me that they fucking give in.
Or, at least that is the plan.
My stinger might not cause them any real damage but it is bound to be annoying if I sting them over and over again. And, I have learned to enlist the help of as many others as I can.
So, I may be falling off the cliff but I have sticky little legs. I can carry way more weight than I should be able to if you consider my size. And I am determined to get what I need.
I think determination is something the insurance folks are hoping is in short supply with people like me. I might get frustrated and cry but I don’t give up so my message to United and to those who would undermine the social net that protects the weak, the hungry and the young is, I may be small but
I sting.
Post Script:
This was written in early March. It is now mid April and today I received my first shipment of medication. I began working with United on this in late December and did not relent. I could fill pages with the obstacles and stupidity I have dealt with but in the end; I won.