The Hazards of Writing for a Living

[image error]If you write for a living, be prepared to pay $400 dollars for a bottle of pills.

Actually, that happened to Hubot, and he is not a writer, but a poor law student.  Nevertheless, he and I find ourselves quite without health insurance these days, and it is opening our eyes to the way some part of the country lives.  We haven't had it since he went back to school.  I used to joke around that I married him for his health insurance, and it turns out I wasn't kidding.  We are two middle-aged adults, both very healthy.  We naively thought we'd just pay for health insurance like other poor schlubs who don't work for giant corporations…until we started pricing health insurance.  Yikes!  It is so expensive, and frankly, we can't afford it.  Even the catastrophic care is an ow-wie.  And we reasoned that if we were in a car wreck, our car insurance covered our dismemberment, so what was the worst that could happen?  One of us could fall down and break a leg.  Oh, hahahaha.

Seriously, we know we need it, and we're going to get right on that, we are.  But with every month that passes just like the previous one, without injury, without illness, we get kind of complacent and think, in a couple of months, we'll get it.  Well, then Hubot went and did it.  He didn't fall down and break his leg, but he got pneumonia.  Finally, that thing we had been risking  for the last seven months happened:  One of us got really sick.

At first, he wouldn't go to a doctor because we have no insurance and we were both frightened at how much it would be.  But I convinced him that a HOSPITAL STAY would be WAY MORE EXPENSIVE.  So he went.  He begged them not to do xrays.  The doctor said she didn't need to this time, really, because she knew what he had.  He begged them not to draw blood.  They said…oh, all right.  So he was really pleased that he got out of there for $200.  But then he went to the pharmacy, and holey moley!  Prescriptions without insurance are freaking expensive!  One of them was $400 for thirty pills.  Who can even say that with a straightface?   And of course there was no generic.  I said–no I screamed–"YOU DIDN'T GET IT DID YOU??!?!?"  But he did.  He  charged it.  I asked him if they were made from the urine of some extinct toad.  He said he didn't think so.

That's not right, $400 for a bottle of pills.  Worse, we can't qualify for any of those programs that help you, like Medicaid, because we aren't poor enough or old enough.  But then again, we aren't exactly rolling around in high cotton, either.  So what do we do?  We don't get pneumonia, that's what!  And I guess I start shopping for some basic coverage that we will have to figure out how to pay.  And I confess that sometimes I will look a little enviously at people schlepping off to their day jobs, knowing they have health insurance that doesn't require a second mortgage.

Any health insurance horror stories you want to share?  Any great ideas for where to get some cheap health insurance?  Anyone?