Journal mcgrew's Journal: Ask Slashdot: Do you have health care? 15
The phone rang ten minutes after I got up this morning. I hadn't even finished my first cup of coffee.
The display said "Memorial Hospital" so I assumed it was Linda, my friend and roommate who's dying of cancer of the intestine and gall bladder. But it wasn't Linda.
"Hi Steve, it's Annie. I'm in the emergency room at Memorial and I don't want to be here by myself. I want to die. Can you come up here? Please?"
"OK, let me get dressed and I'll be right up."
I expected her to be in the waiting room, but as soon as I walked in a lady behind a desk asked "can I help you?"
I told her I was looking for Annie. She gave me directions to a room in ER.
Annie is a recovering alcoholic crackwhore. She's been trying to turn her life around for a year now, but often relapses. I hadn't seen her in weeks; she and one of her "tricks" (a guy who bought blow jobs from her) had fallen in love and she'd moved in with him.
I know two other women whose "tricks" fell for them. I can't understand how a guy could fall in love with a hooker. After all, no man wants to even think about another man having sex with his woman.
Annie's dad was in the hospital dying. He'd tried to rape her five years earlier. Her eighteen year old daughter had just given birth and had disowned Ann.
Ann had lived a pretty bad life; one I and probably you as well can't even imagine. Her mother was a hooker (yes, prostitution is often generational) and her biological father was a drug addict, and she was mostly raised in foster homes. She'd been molested as a child and raped as a teenager. She married an abusive man and divorced him, then met another man who was addicted to cocaine, and who got her addicted before he committed suicide. Her powder cocaine habit turned into a crack habit.
She had been prescribed Zoloft. No other treatment. In the US you can't get mental health treatment without lots of money, as most insurance won't cover it for the middle class and Medicaid won't cover it for the poor.
A nurse came in, saying that someone from some agency or another wanted to talk to her. Ann got angry. "No I do NOT want to see that goddamned fucking bitch", she said. "They won't do nothin'. I relapsed yesterday after a bad fight with my boyfriend and the Department of Mental Health won't help you if you're addicted, they say you have to go to rehab. But Triangle won't take you unless you have insurance, are a needle junkie, or have a Judge order it because you got busted for dope, or are on parole."
The nurse left.
"Any time a person with clinical depression uses drugs, they blame the depression on drugs. But Steve, I've had depression since I was thirteen!"
"I think they've got it backwards," I said. "They blame the depression on drug use, but I think without the depression you would have never gotten hooked on the drugs."
"You're right," she said.
Does your country have health care? Here in the US, the poor, like Annie, only have the ER as their "primary care physician". Many middle class folks are in the same boat too, as their employers don't offer health insurance.
Does you insurance or government health care cover mental health?
"Um, Annie, I'm going to have to go to work."
"I'm a waste," she said. "My own daughter doesn't want to see me, my boyfriend is an asshole and if he finds out why I'm here he'll throw it in my face, I'm useless. Nobody would care if I died."
"I'd care," I said. "And you have other friends, too." I listed a few people who would be hurt if she killed herself. "Damn it, Annie, I'm losing too many friends. I lost Ralph, Rocky just died of a heart attack on Veteran's day..."
"Who's Rocky?"
"He went to Felber's all the time, and before that we drank together at George Ranks. And Linda's upstairs dying of cancer. Damn it, Annie, don't die on me!"
She promised me she wouldn't kill herself, and I promised her that if she got out today I'd give her a ride.
Why do the rich get bailed out while welfare for the poor ended in 1996?
Why do mental health profesionals think a person is depressed because of drugs when the depression started years or decades before the drug use? Has the whole world become mentally retarded?
No wonder the poor girl wants to kill herself. Life isn't fair - especially in the USA.
Yep (Score:2)
Questions without answers. You have all my sympathies - and Annie, too.
At the risk (Score:2)
of being labeled a Star Wars nerd (I actually don't care for it that much), there was one great line in "The Phantom Menace" that always pops in my head when I think of these things: "It is clear to me now that the Republic no longer functions."
I am an extremely lucky guy. I have an awesome health care plan provided by my employer that includes mental health and substance abuse programs. It's about 360 dollars a month pre-tax for me, and I pay 25% of the total cost. It covers me, my wife, and my son. The c
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Of course it is. The rich, not the poor, run the country.
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while i have always been COMPLETELY against the bailout, its not giving money to the rich, its giving money to giant shitty companies to protect thousands of jobs, some of which belong to those 'poor' union workers that are helping sink their employer.
if the government didnt save their jobs by bailing out their screwed-up employers, who would have? (sarcasm)
themselves? thats a laughable idea in this age of entitlement. sometimes shit happens. it sucks, and for a lot it is completely undeserved, but thats th
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oh, and yes i do have health care (from my employer).
there is no simple answer to 'nationalized health care or no nationalized health care', someone loses either way.
on one hand you have people who cant afford health care, and on the other hand you have people who apparently dont deserve their earnings as much as another person does.
i make a decent amount of money through my job, but i also have large medical expenses due to a sports injury. am i exempt from paying for other people when im struggling myself
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The companies getting the bailouts are still shedding jobs. The incompetent but incomprehendingly wealthy leaders of those industries are the ones who are benefitting from the bailout.
Giving money to rich people does nothing for the economy. Bush raised my taxes and lowered Larry Ellison's, look where the economy is. Of course, the root of the banking collapse is insanely high gasoline prices. Thank God THAT bubble burst!
Reagan had alzheimer's, so he may be forgiven for believeing that wealth trickles down
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people are buried in debt, this whole mess we're in is being compounded by the fact that so many americans live in debt and off their credit cards. give people $3000 and some will pay off some debt and have a fancy dinner, most will buy a bigger tv and rims for their escalade and continue to live in squalor surrounded by their treasures.
this is america right now, where people arent buying things because their credit cards are maxed out.
and see, you want the government's help for some things and i want it fo
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this is a pc vs mac, republican vs democrat
I'm dual boot -- I want to boot both parties out.
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yeah i hear you there. my short-term plan is to get out of of the country for a few years. it wont fix anything (i voted third party, didnt seem to matter), but at least i wont have to smell the USA rotting from within until i get back.
its a sad state of affairs and im not optimistic, especially with congress to eager to throw around money they probably wont even bother printing at this point.
soon we'll all be millionaires because a loaf of bread will cost $1000. at least mcgrew diaries will be free.
Ask Slashdot: Do you have health care? (Score:2)
Yes.
Sort of... (Score:2)
I can only speak for what goes on here in Australia.
We are in the process or, or just have, allowing pschologist visits to be covered by our national health scheme medicare. There is some support available for mental illness.
It is depressing to hear your stories of the abomnible state of health care in the US.
My sympathy to your friends who are suffering.
Dave
I have Medical insurance (Score:1)
Heath Care != Medical Insurance
Though to be fair it's hard to get the former without the latter.
I self-medicate (booze) due to the fact that even if we had nationalized Medical Insurance (call it what it is, after all it's going to be the Insurance companies that administer the program if it happens) I still wouldn't go to a doctor unless i was bleeding or unable to move.
Most are arrogant, quite a few are quacks and very few of them really care.
I've watched various members of my family with GOOD Medical Ins
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I'd like to see the insurance industry compleyely GONE from health care. They are the leeches who cause the US to have the most expensive health care in the world while being nowhere #1 in any metric of healthiness, from longevity to infant mortality.
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Amen!