medical assistance - letter to my state reps

I sent the following letter to my state reps on Thursday:

Gentlemen:

I am a constituent, living in Sheboygan. My husband and I are both currently unemployed, uninsured, childless, and going through a tough financial situation. I don't particularly want a hand-out - what I want is a job, but I haven't been able to find one - but I am an insulin-dependent diabetic who cannot afford her insulin (if I were taking the shots as prescribed, it would cost $190 a month for the insulin itself, plus approximately $65 a month more for the required supplies (syringes, lancets,
test strips)).

Thus, I was dismayed to learn that, in Wisconsin, one must have a child to qualify for medical assistance of any kind, if one is not completely disabled from working. Clearly, my choices, if I need help with the costs attendant to obtaining my insulin, are (1) get pregnant (not a good choice, considering that we cannot afford a child, plus the uncontrolled diabetes and the fact that I'm 39 mean that any pregnancy would be risky), or (2) go without (which is what I have been doing), and/or (3) wait until
my diabetes actually becomes disabling (which may not be far off), at which point, I might qualify, but would no longer be able to work. Do these sound like good choices to you?

I tried to qualify for Lilly's discount insulin program, but it is based on the prior year's tax returns, and, since I made $45,000 last year before losing my job, I made too much, and cannot qualify. It does not matter that I have no money at all, now.

Perhaps the legislature should think about putting into place some way for persons who are not completely disabled, and do not have children, to obtain at least limited medical assistance for chronic and potentially disabling conditions. I would hope that this would be a measure that anyone, of any party, could get behind. Thus, I hope that I can count on both of you to introduce appropriate legislation to make such assistance a reality - and soon.

Thank you for your time and your anticipated cooperation.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yesterday, I got a call from one of the reps' staffers. They will be introducing legislation next week. They agreed that it makes much more sense for the state to temporarily cover the medication costs of someone who is able to work, than to force that person to become disabled and then have the state have to pay their medical bills for the rest of their lives. The staffer is also going to try to find other avenues of assistance for me that I might have missed in my own search for help.

Of course, there's no guarantee that the measure will pass, or that it would become effective soon enough to actually help me; but if it does pass, it'll help a lot of people - I can't be the only person with a chronic, potentially disabling, but completely treatable, condition who can't afford their medication.

Who says it does no good to contact your representatives?

a. ;)

Sometimes....

there's just nothing worth saying.

Such has been the case for the last few weeks. My life right now is unbelievably depressing (I was going to say "unbearably", but clearly, I'm bearing it just fine; no suicidal tendencies here - although, I must say, if I did have any, they'd certainly be at the fore by now).

For the unaware, I'm an attorney. I've been licensed to practice law in at least one jurisdiction since December 1994 (and was admitted in others later). However, I can't afford to open my own firm, and I cannot buy a job.

In my last job, I was a "legal assistant." Basically, my job was to make my (former) boss look good. I did the work, he took the credit. Then he fired me for daring to protest gender discrimination (actually, the stated reason was that the firm could not meet its payroll, and I was an "expensive employee", but, since I was immediately replaced with a temporary employee (for whom the firm had to pay the agency more than they had been paying me), that's fairly clearly nothing but pretextual).

He claims there was no discrimination to protest.

Really? None? Well, let's see. When I was hired, I had already been licensed in another state for 9 1/2 years, but didn't have the bar here yet. He told me at the time that every time the firm had tried to have more than 3 attorneys, there had been "problems" (of an unspecified nature), so that once I had the bar here, he would expect that I would look for a new position, elsewhere. Okay, so, at the time, that seemed gender-neutral. However, the following year, the firm hired 2 male attorneys, right out of law school - and the *minute* each of them were sworn in, they were promoted. When I got admitted after them? Well, I got cake - from the other legal assistants (all female) - but no promotion.

And it's not like my work wasn't good enough. For over three years, it was good enough for him to sign his name to the briefs that I researched and wrote for him, while he worked on his farm and went on vacation. It was good enough for him to rely on my investigations and my organization when he went off to trials, often with little or no preparation time of his own. If it's good enough for him to use my work, then my work ought to be good enough for me to be allowed to practice. But, apparently, not in his firm. His firm only promotes men. How, exactly, is that not discriminatory?

If you can see it, drop me a line and explain it to me, because I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept, and, frankly, I'm failing miserably.

So, since the end of July 2007, I have been unemployed. I had hired an attorney in August to represent me in my claim against my former employer - she turned out to be a worthless piece of work, but she ran up a bill that I'm now obligated to try to pay off - and now I owe her over $5700. I hadn't thought I could be objective enough to handle the claim myself; as it is, I'm handling it myself anyway, so I should have just saved the retainer.

My unemployment benefits ran out at the end of January 2008. I have applied for over 1000 jobs, and had fewer than 20 interviews - no call backs, no offers, no fucking job.

I already had no savings (I'm also still paying off student loans and medical bills).

My husband is also unemployed.

So, we're broke. And when I say "broke", I mean literally destitute. I have fewer than 10 pennies in my changepurse, and -$600 in my checking account (yeah, that's a negative number, as in severely overdrawn). I don't mean "broke" as in "we'll have to cut out going out to dinner" - we did that months ago.

My family can't help. Mom's on a fixed income. My brother's in school and living off an Army pension. They're it. I don't have anyone else.

His family won't help. In fact, his stepfather told him that he shouldn't bother to call them anymore, "since you only call when you need something" - nice, considering that the last 3 times his mother or stepfather called us was when they needed hubby to fix their computers for them, for free - oh, and despite the fact that we're broke, we had to front the costs for the parts and for shipping, but apparently, that doesn't matter. His father gave us $20 in gasoline so we could continue to get to job interviews, and said he might be able to bring our checking account balance "back up to $0", but he'd have to "check his finances" - this from a man who paid over $20k to have cabinets with "air brakes" in his new kitchen in his new $275k house. Ok, dad. Thanks. I won't hold my breath waiting for your call (which, by the way, has not been forthcoming for the past week - just sayin').

So, I applied for food stamps. My stomach aches at just the thought that somehow my life has gotten so bad that I need - and qualify for - public assistance. Seven years of post-high-school education (which, again, I'm still paying off), and I qualify for public assistance. How sad is that?

We were supposed to have the required "face to face" meeting with the case worker last Wednesday. Our appointment was set for 1:30 p.m. I know this, because while on the phone with the case worker to schedule this appointment, I wrote the date and time down on my scratch pad that I keep between my keyboard and the telephone. Here it is: "Food - [case worker's name] - Wed 3/19 1:30 p.m. - Job Center". When we arrived at the Job Center at 1:25, the receptionist informed me that our appointment was at 1:00, and when we hadn't arrived by 1:05, our case worker had left for the week.

Not the day.

The week.

Friday was Good Friday, so the Job Center was closed, and the case worker had arranged to take a personal day on Thursday. Apparently, she decided that she didn't feel like working on Wednesday afternoon, either, so she changed our appointment time in the schedule book (you could still see where the original appointment had been written in and erased, although the receptionist tried to hide it), didn't bother to tell us that it had been changed, and then, when we (unsurprisingly) "didn't show", she left.

The receptionist didn't tell us that she had left immediately. No, she let us wait until 2:00 before she admitted that our case worker was actually gone, and that she had been trying to reach another case worker to see if they could fit us in instead, to no avail. She told us someone would call us at home to reschedule - at 2:15, after we'd been waiting for nearly an hour.

It is now a week later.

I have called and left several messages for the case worker. I have left messages for her supervisor. I have spoken with the receptionist (who assures me that there is nothing she can do, as the case workers set their own appointments). No one for whom I've left a message has returned my calls. No one has called to reschedule the appointment.

Did I mention that this is for food stamps? Did I mention that we're fucking destitute? Did I mention that we have very little food left, and no way to obtain more unless and until this bitch calls me back? Yeah. I'm displeased.

And, of course, tempers are tight around the apartment just now, because hubby, on top of being hungry, is also suffering from five infected teeth (which need to be surgically extracted, which we cannot afford - did I mention that we have no medical insurance, and I haven't been able to buy my insulin for over a month?), is also trying to quit smoking, and has very little in the way of caffeine available to him. He's jonesin', and he's grouchy.

See, for our entire marriage, I've been the responsible one, the breadwinner, the one who solves all problems. He's come to expect that, and I've let him. So, now that I can't fix it, he still expects me to; and when I don't, he bites my head off....and I, never shy to be a bitch myself - well, I bite back.

Of course, I'm pissed that he doesn't even try - to take responsibility, to fix things, to fucking help out a teensy little bit; to get his ass off the computer, and maybe wash a fucking dish now and then.

Eh. I don't like washing dishes. What can I say? He'll have to get off the computer soon; we can't afford cable, much less his World of Warcraft subscription.

Anyway.

I vent to my mother. I try to relate the cute stories, too, but there are fewer of them. She, still suffering from the after-effects of her disastrous marriage to my father (which ended 33 years ago, ffs), urges divorce. I'm not doing it. Even if I could afford the filing fee (and I can't), (a) I made a promise, a commitment, a vow, and that means something to me - I knew what he was like, all his flaws and faults, before I married him, they're just more irritating now that we're poor, that's all; and (b) I know the judges in this county, and I won't put any of them in that kind of position of power over me, thank you.

I don't know how to explain to Mom that the good outweighs the bad, that I remain committed to this marriage and this man, and love him with all my heart despite (perhaps because of) his flaws, in any way that she'll understand. I wish I could, but I can't.

I love my mom, but our priorities are often different. She loves me, but she doesn't understand me. She wants me to leave him, come home, live in her basement....like I could find a job there, in a state where I'm not admitted to the bar, any more easily than I can here? Um...no. I love her for the offer, but. No.

So, yeah, it's not that there's nothing going on. It's more that what is going on is such stupid shit that I can't bear to think about it, much less blog about it.

I'm sick of election news already. My own life is depressing, as noted previously. There's nothing much else going on. So, I'll blog again when things improve, or get notably worse, as the case may be.

In the meantime, here's an interesting site for fun and profit. Color me appalled.

a. ;)