Make It Chemical

Went to pick up my meds and the lady at the pharmacy tells me my insurance has expired. Sure, I can pick up my pills but at full price. What is the full price you ask? Roughly $1200 each. Without insurance, for me to be able to continue living, I'd have to pay these people about $2400 every month. Puts the whole renting vs. buying a house in a weird sort of perspective.

The two pills I take are Truvada and Intelence.

Problem becomes that I haven't been able to get in contact with anyone from my old job's benefits department. This whole COBRA mess was too damn good to be true. I'm sure tomorrow I'll be able to get all this straightened out. Perhaps I should be worried but I'm not. But all of this has brought back to me the idea of a National Health Service. This is the sort of situation where this would be a non-issue if all Americans had equal access to healthcare. Never mind me, imagine if it was you and you needed some sort of treatment just to live but couldn't afford it, what would you do? What could you do?

(I'd called the Long Beach CARE Program recently about other options in regards to options for HIV positive folk in my stead and the very helpful woman on the phone said the best possible option was for me to try to keep my insurance because otherwise, even The Ryan White Act provided little in terms of assistance, and I would then be left up to whatever public assistance can do, which, she said, isn't very much considering my particular situation (which was something that I'd discussed with my older brother and Corey a bit ago, that I'm not sick enough to qualify for government programs and I'm too well off to even apply for them), and that in itself was disappointing to hear, not because of me (well, partly) but because other folk who don't have the resources that I do would simply linger.)

As I'm talking about this cost that I really didn't know until now, I'm reminded of what Clayton Cubitt said last year:

"I can't conceive of inventing a pill that would save lives, then charging money for it. I'm a failed capitalist."

Problem with every industry is that there's always someone who's out to make money. No one wants to just do the right thing, do they?

Anyway, imagine up to what point I'd have to reach before anyone anywhere who isn't family would help me. Suppose it was someone you care about, what then? That's the thing about examples and fictions and for instances, it's all make believe and not real, is it? Tell you something: I'm pretty real.