BAD MEDICINE

I went to the Pharmacy an hour after leaving the hospital.
Gave them my prescriptions and my Insurance Card.
How much will it be?
They can’t tell me till after they fill the prescription.
That’s gotta be Bullshit, I never bought a car like that but guess what?
Thats the way the American Health system works. So I ask a really stupid question…
How much would that be BEFORE Insurance.
It takes the man about 15 minutes to figure it out.
$850.
Eight-hundred and Fifty Dollars!
I just shook my head and crossed my fingers.
An hour later I step up to the counter. My prescription is ready.
Girl takes my Insurance card, runs it through the register and says
"Its expired".
"Expired? The issue date is 1/1/08….what is it? An 11 month card? I just spent 20,000 dollars in the Hospital with that card."
So I ask…what in the blue f*ck am I supposed to do?
You know what she said?
She didn’t even bat an eye…she says
“You could pay full price!”
I says
‘I can’t believe you just said that to me”
Because I can't.
Believe she said that to me.
I thought I was going to faint!

Anyway, I called my boss and he says that happens sometimes and to keep running the card through until its accepted.
So that’s what we do because, boys and girls, I would not spend $850 for medicine if they told me I would die and burn in hell today.
Especially if I had $850.

But things being what they are, my card eventually worked.
She rings me up again, and says in the most cold-blooded voice i've ever heard
"That'll be Five hundred and Fifty dollars"
$550!
I nearly went into Diabetic Shock right there at the counter. My legs wobbled, my knees began to buckle and the blood rushed from my face.
“Sweet Weepin’ Jesus, woman,
(the same one that had just suggested I pay 850)
I don’t have 550”
I looked down and to my right. There was a little (huge) lady in a Motorized shopping cart. She must have weighed 500 pounds and was shaped like a sack of potatoes. She looked up at me, shook her poor head, and with a face full of empathy says
“Don’t you just HATE this?”
It was like
“Welcome to the F’n Pharmacy, Pal!”
I am sure my blood pressure was about 14 million over 2 Thousand.

My dying last words are soon to be spoken.
I ask the woman how it could be that my Insurance only covered 300 of 850 dollars worth.
That’s my last dying question.
Its all I really want to know.
Mind you, if I had 550 Dollars, I would probably be handing her my money.
She goes back to the register, spends a few moments and comes back with another total.
“ I got it down to 225 dollars for you” she says, showing as much emotion as a Hefty Garbage Bag.
“How’d you do that?” I ask.

Know what she did in answer to my question?
She shrugged her shoulders.
Shrugged, like “I don’t know what I did”.
Like I’m supposed to be happy!
Never, ever, ever have I felt so vulnerable.
Raped and Freezin', as Alice Cooper would say.
If had had a pistol I might have shot her.

Well, I figured out what she did after I got home and looked at the receipts. She nearly charged me 320 dollars for the test strips used to check my sugar. Those are free, all I do is give a drop of blood.

I felt like I had been Playing 3 Card Molly….the game you can’t win.