Tales from the Shoebox.

I swear to everything holy, if one more person asserts that health insurance reform isn’t needed, if we don’t desperately need to regulate the insurance industry, if we don’t need to take the profit margin out of medical coverage, I will cut a bitch.

I went to the doctor last month. I was inexplicably fatigued, which started before the insomnia set in, and I couldn’t figure out why. I’ve been anemic before, my grandmother has thyroid issues, Mom just died, there’s a million things it could have been.

So I went. I went to a provider in my provider’s network, paid my $30 copay, and had a nice long chat about what’s been going on in my life & with my body.

And then on Friday we get a statement of benefits from the insurance company.

$224, please and thankyou. You’ll get a bill from your provider. Go fuck yourself, Jen, we’re not paying for this.

Because I’d talked with my doctor about my panic attacks, insomnia, and fatigue. Those are, to quote the insurance company, “behavioral health” issues, and because I’m on an individual plan, they’re not required by law to cover behavioral or mental health issues in the same way they cover physical health issues. Group plans are required by law, thanks to recent mental health parity laws. But there’s a giant loophole in the parity law that exempts individual plans from being subject to that law. A giant loophole into which I’d like to stick the PacificSource CEO’s head.

If one more person dares tell me health care isn’t a right, I may have to pay a defense attorney instead of my health insurance. Of course, in prison, I’d get health care.