#i might end up straight up calling my congressman bc apparently this exact issue happened to my friend last year and thats what she did

[sharpenote]

so. back in march, i received a big ol packet in the mail from my insurance (this is state insurance, too, not private) saying i needed to renew, that i might not be automatically renewed as i have been for the past however many years i’ve had this insurance. i said cool, okay, they have a URL to do this online, i’ll do that. go to the link, website completely nonfunctional. i try again the next day in case it was just receiving a lot of traffic that day from people like me and was having issues because of that. website still completely nonfunctional - at this point i feel comfortable assuming this was its default state, since that tends to be the norm as far as government websites tend go. i say okay, they also have a phone number to call - i’ll do that, since there are presumably fewer steps that can go wrong in that process as opposed to mailing it in (mail could get lost, correspondence could take way too long to hear back from them if i accidentally submitted wrong info, etc). i spoke to a very nice woman on the phone who told me “oh, your insurance has already been automatically renewed, you don’t have to do anything.” i say yay! what a huge load off my chest! this experience has been very stressful for me since my insurance has automatically renewed every year prior to this and i wasn’t sure of the process. thank you so much for checking that for me, ma’am!

SMASH CUT TO TODAY, WHEN I AM AWOKEN BY AN EMAIL NOTIFICATION FROM MY PSYCHIATRIST’S OFFICE THAT IS INFORMING ME THAT MY APPOINTMENT FOR TODAY - THAT I NEED TO REFILL MY MEDICATION THAT I ONLY HAVE A WEEK LEFT OF - HAS BEEN CANCELLED, BECAUSE MY INSURANCE HAS INFORMED THEM THAT I AM NO LONGER COVERED. i say hey, what the fuck! didn’t we take care of this three months ago? so i call the number on my insurance card and ask them, hey, what the fuck? Does this mean my doctor just isn’t in network anymore and is just no longer covered (which has happened multiple times in the past), or do i just straight up have no insurance now? and they tell me “uhhhh it looks like your account has been closed” so i say, hm! well that’s strange! i was told by someone that my insurance had automatically been renewed already! can you please connect me to someone who can figure out what is going on? and so they connect me to someone who can figure out what is going on, and what is going on is that i never renewed my health insurance so i no longer have health insurance, and that there is no way they can fix this other than me manually renewing it now - which i tried to do back in march!!!!! in!!! march!!!!!!!! - and i might not hear if that even worked at all for up to 30 days. and if you recall, i only have a week left of this medication i need very badly - maybe two, if i cut the pills in half so at least i’m not going off of a very high dosage completely cold turkey

this is all to say the american healthcare system is a fucking joke and if i ever find out the name of the woman who fucked me over i am going to hunt her for sport