Went into the pharmacy today to fill my med subscription. I’d been putting off refilling my insulin until I had my insurance card, so needless to say I was down to half a pen of Novolog and my last Lantus pen.
So I walk in and get just one thing of testing strips on top of that because I don’t have the prescription refill on me cause I see my endo this week, and my last insurance company didn’t cover the strips unless I had the RX.
But you can imagine my shock when the pharmacist aid said, “That’ll be $342.”
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“Three hundred forty-two dollars,” she repeated.
“That can’t be right. I have a $100 deductible, and then everything is free. They cover 100%.”
She called over the pharmacist, who looked rather surprised at the slip. “Oh!” he exclaimed, “I never look at that part!”
Well, of course. Why would a pharmacist care how much we’re all paying for the drugs that keep us alive.
Dude. My company is paying thousands of dollars a month so I can have this wicked-good health care and you’re fucking me over.
“I can’t afford this,” I said, knowing full well I wasn’t going to leave the pharmacy without the drugs. Because without the drugs, I will die.
So I pulled out my credit card, which now has over $12,000 on it. For just this reason.
I was so angry I couldn’t speak. I wanted to scream and rage and knock something over. I was literally shaking as I left the pharmacy, I was so fucking angry. Here were all the old memories again, of being unemployed and spending putting $350 on the credit card every month that I didn’t have, just so I could fucking live, digging a deeper hole just to postpone the invevitable.
And I fucking hate that feeling. I hate that dependency. I hate that my ability to fucking live could be fucked at any time by somebody fucking up their paperwork. I hate that I’ll never be able to fucking work for myself because I’ll always have to have employer-sponsored health insurance. I hate drugs in general and insurance companies in particular and I hate everything that has to do with anything.
Most of all, I fucking hate being poor.
NOTE: restrained phone call to the insurance company confirms that I am covered – but I must pay the first 1K out of pocket and submit my receipts to be reimbursed. I wonder if they will reimburse me for the finance charges on my credit card as well… no?
