A Typical Working Class American Family's Health Care Experience

Welcome to the Twilight Zone

My 27 year old stepson came home early from work on Thursday. Work in an un-air-conditioned warehouse in 90+ degree heat. It had hit 95 the day before. He said he felt terrible, and two of his co-workers had missed work because Covid.

My stepson was never vaccinated, but had definitely had Covid, so both of us figured it was something else--another cold maybe, hopefully not influenza, and the heat made it worse. He went straight to the shower and directly to bed.

The next day he said he felt worse than he had ever felt in his life, he’d surfed the net, convinced himself he might have meningitis, and asked his mom to take him to a hospital. He had 100.8F fever, chills and fever and severe body aches. I remembered having all of those symptoms in 1977; what they called the Russian Flu.

My wife immediately got him into the car, and drove right into the Twilight Zone of American health care for the working class in 2022. Where should they go? Her son had no health insurance. He was ineligible for mine because of Obama’s law about his age. He just started this job a few weeks ago and hasn’t been there long enough to get their shitty health insurance. He makes too much money for Medicaid.

So. No insurance. Those of you who live in civilized countries like Mexico or Russia that have rational health care delivery systems instead of predatory capitalist ones will find this bizarre, but when a working class American has no health insurance and needs medical attention, he must go to either an emergency room or an urgent care clinic just to be seen by someone who theoretically knows something about medicine.

About a mile and a half from our house, my wife came to a fork in the road. Which way? Left? To the University Hospitals emergency room? Her mind whirred with memory. A year ago she had been beset with panic and anxiety attacks triggered by discovering that she, in the parlance of places like Ancestry DNA, was the product of a non-paternal event.

I won’t go into details here, but finding that out when she was in her late 50s was a psychic shock, there are thousands around the world like her, and the science of psychology is just now getting around to realizing that this is a spreading mental health care problem world-wide.

Anyway, when we went to that ER, we waited around for over an hour, a young woman doctor came around, chatted real nicely, declined to prescribe anything like Valium which my wife knew would help her out short-term, prescribed a fracking anti-histamine to help with the anxiety, charged us between $100-$200 up front for the visit and then sent a bill for another $900 that will never be paid.

How will we get away with that, you ask? Sorry, working class secret. One of many. They are survival traits.

At the fork in the road, my wife made her decision, she turned right, and headed to the urgent care clinic pictured in their own ad thusly:

My wife knew her daughter had gone to this urgent care clinic over two years ago when she’d contracted walking pneumonia, and had gotten the antibiotics she needed for about $150 on an installment plan. No-brainer to go there over the ER.

Things have changed. This is also common in the working class American experience. Trusted doctors retire or go to work for some other health care system. One HMO buys out another and everything turns into gooey fecal matter. The Russian doctor who had treated my stepdaughter was gone. They charged $100 up front, told my stepson he didn’t have all of the symptoms of meningitis, but definitely had either Covid or influenza, there was nothing they could do to treat either one, but would Covid test him for another 60 bucks.

He said “That’s OK” and exited forthwith to his mom’s car and home. Later, we went to the CDC site and learned that the first case of the newest round of bird flu had popped up in Fort Collins, Colorado, on April 29. Which means it’s definitely all over Ohio by now. The bird flu was first called the Russian Flu, my wife and I both had it and were both real sick with it, but we can never get it again.

My stepson’s symptoms are consistent with our memories of the original strain, but not quite as severe, and he’ll be fine in a few days. Meanwhile, he’s going to feel like hammered dogshit for awhile. Sorry, but the Navy slang just describes how it feels so perfectly I couldn’t resist.

It should have worked out like this—my stepson could have left work the day before when he started feeling crappy, gone straight to see a doctor somewhere, learned he probably had influenza, and sent home at no charge and with full pay because he would have had paid sick time. As it is, he has zero paid sick days.

Americans are so used to that that none of them reading this are surprised. It’s taken for granted that for many there’s no such thing. Now, companies offer “paid time off,” that employees can take to cover both vacation and sick days, which any self-respecting Italian would find barbaric. But usually only after you’ve been there for several months. If you’re a new hire, well, you don’t get paid to stay home and recover from the fracking flu.

And our media calls the Russians and Chinese barbarians.

Meanwhile, my family is just thankful that we survived yet another encounter with the rapacious Twilight Zone that the American health care system has become.