Juli continues to improve, getting steadily more hydrated, and even taking little bites of solid, banal food like applesauce and plain noodles. I've got her on plenty of electrolyte liquids like Gatorade and Vitamin water, trying to replace some of the nutrients she's lost.
She asked for and received a medical leave of absence from her job yesterday. The idea is to eliminate all the sources of stress on her body and mind, while we work on getting her diagnosed and then fixed. Leaving her job has the added benefit of making her completely destitute, so perhaps now she will qualify for medicaid or some other charity medical care.
It's insane, but if you are working, even part-time, trying to be responsible and pay your bills, you don't qualify for any free medical care at all. While the current political debate rages about health care, the facts on the ground are that if you're a slacker, indigent, unemployed, or lazy, you get a free ride, no questions asked. If you answer "yes" to the first question, "are you working," you're bounced into the "We can get money from this stone" category. If you're struggling to make the rent, trying to work every minute you're not sick, able to pay a little but not a lot, you don't qualify for anything--you pay full price for yourself and a portion for everyone who's getting the free care you don't get. I haven't heard anyone discuss this issue at all. The assumption is that if you're "poor," you get free care and the rest of us have to pay for it. But the definition of "poor" is actually "not working," for whatever reason. Juli and Kerne are working their hearts out, constantly falling behind, never quite getting ahead of the curve. They are by definition, "working," so they are deemed able to pay the thousands of dollars each ER visit costs in inflated dollars.
Juli tells me that according to her past hospital bills in Seattle, every time they hang a bag of saline above her head, it costs $600. A litre bag of normal saline in Alex's retail pharmacy costs less than $3.00--and the politicians wail about the cost of care and the cost of insurance. I am completely flummoxed by the insanity of it all--the specious nature of the argument, the reality out here in the real world, the total lack of rational thought and pragmatic solutions to real problems.
By contrast, in California, our entire ER visit, meds, saline,rooms and doctor care was a flat fee of $800, if we paid it immediately upon discharge. I got out my credit card and paid happily--what a bargain!
So that's my rant this morning. If you too have bought all the hype about how "the truly needy" people get or will get a free ride, do some research--it ain't so. In order for Juli to get the care she needs, she has to become a person she never wanted to become--someone who doesn't even try to pull her own weight, someone who gives up and doesn't go to work, someone who is "helpless" and unemployed. It's not right, but it is what she has to do, according to the insane rules of the game.
What kind of society have we let ourselves become?
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