Health Care

Yes, I usually save my politics for Twitter, but I’m tired–for reasons I’ll explain later–and a little punch drunk and pissed off.

I’m a soccer mom. A SOCCER MOM. There’s a lot to hate the GOP for, but right now, what I hate them MOST for is making me involved in politics when I’d rather be SOCCER MOMMING goddammit. For real.

Anyway…

I have two adult children, living on their own, paying rent, car care (one of them), food, utilities–you know. Basically being grownups. In the last two months I’ve had to take them both to the ER.  Chicken because she fell down the stairs and cut her knee open, and last night, I spent three hours in the ER because Big T had an asthma attack and needed a chest X-Ray and a breathing treatment.

Big T is fine–but, of course, with the health care so big in the papers, it did make me really grateful for the fact that my kids are still on our health insurance. The ER copay for each kid was only $100.

Yeah. Only.

Nearly twenty years ago when we were applying to buy our house, we had to clean up one little matter of credit on our record– $180 because I took my son in because he was crying and he must have an ear infection, dammit, right? What he had was a cognitive disability that nobody took the time to diagnose, but we didn’t have health insurance at the time, and–24 years ago–$180 was the running fee for a kid in the ER.

And we couldn’t pay it.

We dodged creditors for YEARS because until Mate got out of school, we flat out didn’t have the goddamned $180.

I am well aware that “only” $100 would level my kids right now. They couldn’t pay the actual fee on their own–they’d have to be billed, and then they’d be dodging that creditor for years until they found some semblance of financial stability.

I’ve lived without insurance and with children.  I lost my first teaching job because I was pregnant with  Big T when I was hired. Since Mate was still working restaurant work and going to school, we ended up on Medicaid when I got pregnant with Chicken. Do you know happens when you go into a hospital with Medicaid to have a baby? Well… first they condescend the SHIT out of you, and then when you give birth they ship you out ASAP. I know that they try not to do this anymore, but I walked into the hospital at 7:40 in labor with Chicken and gave birth at 8:19 pm. We were out the door at 10 a.m. the next morning. Frankly, if it had happened with ZoomBoy, he’d be dead. He became non-responsive after 14 hours and they had to feed him through a tube in his nose. Yes–poor health insurance WOULD HAVE killed my son.

But I digress. (Face it–I ramble–it’s nap time for Amy, because getting to bed at 4 a.m. is not as easy as it used to be.)

What I’m saying is that health care is immediate. It’s real. It’s worth calling your senator for. It’s worth not forgetting.

God, I want to be a soccer mom again and only a soccer mom. But I am a soccer mom and a college graduate’s mom and a minimum wage earner’s mom and a dancer’s mom, and the mom to people who have to breathe and live in this world. (And yes, climate change and pollution ties into EVERYTHING too.  Yesterday was a spare the air day. He had an asthma attack because he works next to a mechanic who pumps a lot of crap into the air. Go figure.)

I have to stay involved, at least until I know that if my son has to go to the ER without me, he can afford to pay the bill.