I have to be honest. \u00c2\u00a0Being at the bottom rungs of income levels can mean crossing some very odd paths.<\/p>\n
There have been times that the Poor family has not had health insurance. \u00c2\u00a0That can be a problem for me, since I take a large handful of prescription medicines every day. \u00c2\u00a0It also means that every so often I have to go wave my bottles in front of a doctor and say, “More, please.” \u00c2\u00a0During the rough patches I have gone to a nice little place not far away. \u00c2\u00a0They only charged a flat $25 for an appointment, which put them miles ahead of the other charity medical centers near me. \u00c2\u00a0Those want to go over your finances and then base their fee on your income and expenses. I prefer a clear price so I don’t waste my time if it’s too expensive.<\/p>\n
At the moment, I have a dicey Obamacare plan from You’ve Never Heard of Us Medical that at least pays for my pills and a doctor visit to get new prescriptions. \u00c2\u00a0But I can’t get in with the doctor for another month, and last week I was out of some of my most important pills. \u00c2\u00a0So off I went to the friendly neighborhood clinic. \u00c2\u00a0I noticed there were no cars in the parking lot. \u00c2\u00a0But once or twice before they had been closed because the doctor scheduled for that day couldn’t come in, so I didn’t worry. \u00c2\u00a0I got out to see if there was a note about when they would be open again. \u00c2\u00a0No note. \u00c2\u00a0So I looked through the window and saw… no furniture. \u00c2\u00a0Oops.<\/p>\n
I still wasn’t panicked. \u00c2\u00a0Just before we started going there, they had moved to that building from another just down the street. \u00c2\u00a0So I whipped out my smartphone to see if they were somewhere else.<\/p>\n
They had been closed since March. \u00c2\u00a0Sad. \u00c2\u00a0Then my eyes bugged out. \u00c2\u00a0I learned that it had shut down after one of the people who worked there and her son were arrested for running a pill mill. \u00c2\u00a0For those more innocent, that means they were selling prescriptions to drugs like oxycodone. \u00c2\u00a0My nice, shabby but comfortable, friendly doctors’ office had been the sort of place I helped raid back in my law enforcement days.<\/p>\n
But the cherry on the top of awful is that the name of the person in the news articles sounded very familiar. \u00c2\u00a0Was she the doctor who told me that I should apply for Social Security disability, that she had patients on it that weren’t as sick as me? \u00c2\u00a0The logical part of my brain reminded me that after that I had a doctor in a very reputable practice agree that I should apply, but the other part was screaming that I had spent years struggling on the advice of a drug dealer.<\/p>\n
I pawed through some drawers and found an old pill bottle with the doctor’s name on it. \u00c2\u00a0Not the same woman. \u00c2\u00a0Whew. \u00c2\u00a0Yvonne and Yolanda are close enough to ring bells, and it was a relief to realize she wasn’t the one involved. \u00c2\u00a0I really liked her a lot. \u00c2\u00a0Earlier today I checked into it again and found a picture of the woman involved. \u00c2\u00a0She was one of the office staff that I had seen several times. \u00c2\u00a0I admit the whole thing left me a bit rattled.<\/p>\n
Oh, and for those who like a complete story, I discovered that my local CVS drugstore had a little mini-clinic that took my insurance. \u00c2\u00a0The nice lady there gave me a three month supply of all my medicines, more than enough to last me until I see my new doctor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have to be honest. \u00c2\u00a0Being at the bottom rungs of income levels can mean crossing some very odd paths. There have been times that the Poor family has not had health insurance. \u00c2\u00a0That can be a problem for me, since I take a large handful of prescription medicines every day. \u00c2\u00a0It also means that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}