I’m feeling overwhelmed and stressed out and I don’t even have a job. Ok wait, let me rephrase that: I don’t have a paying job. In reality, I feel like I have two full-time jobs right now: to improve my health and to manage health insurance crap.
I left my job in October thinking that I’d rest, feel better, and go right back to work. Obviously that didn’t happen. But during that time I was on short term disability (STD) so I had money (though only 70% of my salary) coming in and I could just focus on my health. Unfortunately, I was halfway through the 6-month limit before I got onto what I believe is the right track for improving my health. It took months of research, reading all sorts of books and web sites, and calling to interview doctors, naturopaths, and others. Finally, a bit after STD ended, I had a course of action.
Unfortunately, the long term disability (LTD) portion was not so smooth, so I’ve dealing with that shit just as I’ve been starting new treatments with a new practitioner. If you’ve been reading my blog, you already knew about all of this. If you’ve had to go on LTD or SSDI, then you’re intimately familiar with this kind of situation. This is nothing new to many of you. But here’s the thing, the injustice of it all, the absurdity, just keeps coming back at me, and I can’t let it go.
How is it that when people are at their lowest, the system is designed to push them down even further? Why is it that no one seems to care?
Sure, the people most affected are usually unable to stand up for themselves. I get that. But what about friends and family? Surely the politicians and business people responsible for this mess of bureaucracy must have friends and family who’ve been caught up in this system. Don’t they see what a mess it is? Haven’t they ever watched a loved one suffer?
It is just not ok that I am having to focus less on getting better so that I can instead try to complete forms, talk to lawyers, argue with health insurance, and all the rest of that idiocy. Wouldn’t everyone involved benefit if instead I focused on improving my health so that I could one day go back to work and then I wouldn’t need Medicaid or SSDI or any of the rest of it? Or if I never get better, will all the forms really have turned out to be so necessary?
I want to fix this system. I can’t possibly do it now, and I know that’s just the way it is. But some day, if I ever get well enough, something has to be done. I’m very willing to take on the system. Any suggestions on where I’d begin?
Chronic Rants 