#also got a new supervisor this year cos I reapplied

[missyedits]

Sorry I haven’t been posting the pst few days! I was moving into uni and I’ve not had much time to spare for moodboards 😅 take 3 today as consolation haha

[itsthecolleenlife]

So I was just watching clips of Last Week Tonight

Specifically the Medicare for All segment from last month. And at around the eighteen-minute mark, he says that he hasn’t met a single person in the United States who doesn’t have a health insurance horror story. So I’mma share a couple of mine.

When I was thirteen my dentist told me that I had a congenitally absent tooth (basically, I didn’t have an adult tooth to replace the baby tooth). He explained that I would need to get a bridge or an implant when I ended up losing the tooth, otherwise I ran the risk of my teeth shifting to fill the gap, which would be quite painful and make it difficult to chew. He recommended to my mother that we go with the bridge option, because it was cheaper and less invasive. It would still cost at least $500 (c. 2004). On the way home, my mother asked me what I wanted to do. She was trying to steer me toward the bridge when I started crying, partly because the idea of getting dental surgery was scary but mostly because either way, it was gonna be really expensive, and we didn’t have dental insurance. We ended up leaving the tooth as-is and just hoping that it would stay there until I was an adult and could deal with it then. I got it pulled about ten years later at a dental school clinic. I haven’t gotten a prosthetic because it’s not visible when I smile and it doesn’t affect my bite.

When I was eighteen I went on birth control to regulate my period. This was pre-Obamacare, so there was no rule about insurance companies being required to pay for contraception. When I got to the pharmacy, I found out that a three-month supply was $80 with insurance, $50 without.

When I was nineteen my mother changed jobs so our insurance changed as well. On the old insurance, the co-pay for my meds had been reasonably affordable, around $100/month for birth control, anti-depressants, and ADHD meds. On the new insurance, my ADHD meds were not initially covered, so the co-pay for those was around $185/month. Fortunately we were able to get a prior authorization, and that price got cut in half.

When I was twenty-one my mother changed jobs again, and went back to our old insurance company. When my family was last on it, our deductible had been $1000. When we got back on it, our deductible went up to $5000. I decided to apply for medical assistance. Fortunately Minnesota has a fairly decent Medicaid program, and I got coverage. Unfortunately whenever my income level changed (which was frequent because I was in college), instead of just adjusting my premium, they would drop me and I would have to reapply. 

When I was twenty-three I moved from southern Minnesota to Minneapolis, so my medical assistance changed (again). Before I moved, my doctor gave me about six months’ worth of paper scripts for my ADHD meds, so that I wouldn’t have to go without while I was finding a clinic. I ended up going to the Walgreen’s near my house, and I don’t know what happened but about six months down the line, Walgreen’s informed me that I was going to have to start paying out-of-pocket for my meds, because the medical assistance plan I was on wasn’t covered. I ended up frantically calling every other pharmacy in the neighborhood to find out if they accepted my plan, which was surprisingly difficult because the plan I was on is more common in greater Minnesota than in the metro. Eventually I went with Target Pharmacy (which later became CVS), and during the next enrollment period I switched to a different medical assistance plan that was accepted at more places in the metro. A couple years later CVS decided they weren’t going to accept my new plan anymore, so I had to find a new pharmacy again. (Some other bullshit happened later, but that wasn’t due to insurance so I won’t go into it).

When I was twenty-five I asked my PCP if she would increase the dosage of my ADHD meds. After some research we found out that my insurance doesn’t normally cover Concerta; I’d been grandfathered in when I went on that plan, but that wouldn’t apply if I changed my dosage. The only one my plan covered without a prior authorization was Adderall. My PCP and I were both willing to switch, but I ended up losing my coverage due to income change and didn’t get it back for a few months, so I just didn’t get my ADHD meds during that time. (This one ended up eventually working in my favor, because when I got back on my insurance, I got switched to Adderall, and it works a lottttttt better than Concerta ever did. But that was a rough couple months 😬)

When I was twenty-seven I got a job with the state of Minnesota, so I got that sweet AFSCME insurance. I ended up losing that job after three months, and my supervisor told me he arranged my last day to be at the end of the month so I wouldn’t have to pay for parking for an extra month. Unfortunately, this also meant that I ended up losing my insurance much more quickly, so I had to scramble to get back on medical assistance. Fortunately it was open enrollment so the process went pretty quickly and I was only uninsured for a month, and I’d just gotten my meds refilled so I didn’t have to worry about paying out-of-pocket.

The really sad thing is, on the spectrum of health insurance nightmares, mine are pretty mild. Right now, one of my friends is uninsured because she had to move away from her abusive parents and ended up in Kansas, and apparently in Kansas the only way a single adult without dependents can get Medicaid is if they’re on disability. 

So basically, I’m really hoping either Bernie or Warren gets the nomination bc Biden ain’t gonna do shit.