Good Health is a Privilege

I have always liked veggies. I really like growing my own.

As someone who has dared to pursue some bohemian occupations in my life, I’ve been painfully aware of how expensive it is to become ill in this country. If you’ve always have insurance covered by your employer, you may not have had as much experience with this, but good health is a privilege that not everyone in this country can afford to enjoy. 

This is a topic I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while, as I get really impassioned when I talk about how healthy food is not available to every community equally, but I like things to be current when possible. So here we are. The pendulum has swung again, and I am again having to look at my finances when I prioritize my health.

I’m a pretty healthy person. I’ve always made it a priority, but it doesn’t come without a cost. 

Let’s jump into some concrete examples. 

Back in 2016, Dean and I decided to try a sugar cleanse that was being offered at one of the health clubs that I worked at. This was a nice place. Had I not worked there, I would not have even known about this program. As it was, a registered dietician had created a menu, instructions, and would be available throughout the two weeks to answer questions. The program was still $75. No employee discount.

We decided to do it, we had the privilege of an extra $75 that we could put toward this. I wanted to see what it was like, being under the supervision of a professional appealed to me, and I thought perhaps we would develop habits that would stick with us for a lifetime. Thus we embarked.

Sugar is in EVERYTHING.

That first grocery trip hurt our brains. Fortunately we did it the day before the cleanse started and went to a Marianos so we could have a drink during. And not only were we learning a new skill in how to read labels and recognize hidden names for sugar, but the stuff without sugar was expensive as hell. If you were on a strict grocery budget, there is no way you’d be opting for brown rice tortillas just to be more health conscious. You’d be getting the cheapo ones so your family could eat more for less. 

Glossing over how difficult the cleanse was to get through—you can read about it here, here, here, and here—there were some long term habits that I kept. And there are some foods I don’t skimp on now. But I have this option. I’m able to look at a menu and choose this over that because I’m no longer watching every dollar.

Did you know that a certain major grocery store chain will take its leftover produce from the affluent areas and send it over to the ‘up and coming’ areas? I didn’t realize this until I moved into one of those areas and couldn’t figure out why the produce was so freaking sad. Aaaanyway…

I don’t even remember which illness this was.

Recently, I decided to establish care with a primary physician in Nashville. I only put it off four years.This was after a few back to back infections landed me in the Minute Clinic one to many times. (If you’ve been following, you know how often I’ve been ill this year. Ridiculous.) Both at the clinic and at my Dr.’s office, the intake nurses were impressed by how many vitamins I take. 

“Someone who cares…” one actually said.

I mean, yes, I do care, but I also have the bandwidth to think about such things. I also have a Costco membership, which enables me to purchase vitamins in bulk, which is much less expensive. And I will say, as I’ve gotten older, my body requires more vitamins than it did before to function at full capacity. I don’t want to get into the science of why that is, it would likely just depress me, the point is, the vitamins help and I can afford them. Not everyone can.

Now we get into actual health care. Recently my husband changed jobs, which changed our insurance. I’ll spare you the hoops we jumped through and the math we did to figure out what would be financially feasible, but it was eventually determined that it might be better for me to get my own insurance through the marketplace. 

After discussing things with the agent, I had what I thought was a decent plan. Higher deductible, but that was to be expected. All major players were in network, I felt like we were good to go. 

I got socked with several illnesses and decided I should get some regular appointments taken care of. I established care with a primary, which resulted in a battery of otherWell, you’re this age now…” tests. I started ticking off the boxes and it was all going well until I got to my OBGYN annual. 

They canceled that one without telling me.

Why? Apparently preventative female care is not covered under my insurance. What? Is that legal? I’ve never heard of that, you say. Or at least, several of my friends and family said. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t think this was a thing I had to specifically request of my insurance provider either. I mean, I’m a middle aged woman from a long line of women with complicated uteri. I’m not looking to roll those dice. 

After three attempts at scheduling an appointment with my agent through the calendar app that they insist upon using, I finally searched in my ‘Insurance’ folder and found the original email that I had been sent telling me to schedule the appointment with said person. I replied back to this email and said that I had a problem, that the person was not showing up to meetings, and could I please speak to somebody.

Right around this time I got a couple of very large bills for my mammogram and one of my clinic visits. What the hell? I thought upon carefully reading through the breakdown. Insurance only pays like… ten percent? What crap deal did I broker?

Side bar here: often places will bill you MORE if you submit a claim through insurance because they expect insurance to barter it down. However, this doesn’t mean that the payment you’re responsible for will be less. Case in point: remember all the physical therapy I went through to get myself back running again? Well, at some point, I had exhausted all of my covered PT visits. At my final covered visit, my PT came over during the warm up and explained the situation with me, finishing with, “The good news is that we can still see you, it will just be $45 a visit out of pocket.”

“That’s it?” I asked. He confirmed. “That’s a hell of a lot less than I’m paying now.”

I showed him my bills. He was flabbergasted. He had no idea. I did a few more visits at a much lower rate with no insurance. I wish it were possible to see how much all medical procedures would be with or without insurance. 

I do have these excellent cat doctors at least.

Back on track, I finally got someone to talk to me about my shitty insurance. (Different from the much better insurance I was on when I got physical therapy, ironically.) I explained to him my situation. He apologized that I had been ‘poorly informed’ and explained that many of these ‘low premium plans’ are kept that way by not covering preventative care. Yes, I put low premium in quotes for a reason.

He strongly advised me to stay where I was until the end of the year, apologized that the other agent hadn’t gotten back to me, and set up a tentative time on our calendars to shop for new plans in November. He said that since open enrollment was over, I would be paying a lot more to change plans and if—God forbid—I had some kind of accident, I didn’t want to be without any insurance.

I updated Dean when he came home. His response? “Are you just not gonna check out your lady parts for a year?”

And honestly, I’m not sure. I’ll probably call up and see how much a visit would be without insurance. Hell, maybe it would be less. But I’ve been doing a lot of book travel lately and those expenses hit at the same time as these unexpected medical expenses. I was in a pretty good place—better than we’ve been in since we met probably—until all of this hit at the same time. 

And now I’m having to prioritize. 

Will I be fine? Probably. But will I be that not-so-small-percentage of person whose cancer goes undetected because they just couldn’t afford to get in on time? 

I mean, I hope not.