Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Election Day- Intermission

I'm on a roll.This morning it took less than an hour to vote (well under the local average from what I hear); I missed a major traffic SNAFU on the way to work and at lunchtime I obtained free medical care for one year, courtesy of a charity organization called Crossover Clinic (CC).

If you ignore the three week waiting time to get the initial financial consultation ,the approval process took less than 15 minutes- Ann, my consultant, took my paperwork, waved a pocket calculator over my documents, told me that my projected income for 2009 was $13,000 and that I qualified for free clinic visits and prescription medicines for one year's duration.

There was nothing especially stressful or degrading about the process- the staff at CC were very pleasant and the facilty was surprisingly cheerful -but my feelings at this point are mixed : on one hand, I'm lucky that I found someone who provides free healthcare and I'm actually a bit proud of my ability to stay on a budget- after all, it's pretty hard to live on $1100 a month- but on the other hand, I seem to be entrenched in poverty for life and it's starting to exact a steep price on my psyche and self-esteem. I can't afford to be depressed any longer so I'm going to try therapy. I'll be getting a psychiatric evaluation later this month and, hopefully, get some sort of diagnosis and prognosis that doesn't involve taking pills.

Anyway, it's good to know that if I get sick again, I can go to the doctor right away- I feel as if I have wasted an entire month on being sick and time is too precious to squander. Except tonight- I imagine I'll waste the entire night watching TV news...I hope it's not a rerun.

4 comments:

Sling said...

I was pleased to discover that asking for medical help wasn't a demeaning experience for me too.
I qualified for $600.00 a month in covered medical expenses.
..I don't have anywhere near that requirement,so that's nice.

yellowdoggranny said...

that's terrific allan..im not sure we have anything like that in texas...so your lucky..
you can still move to west and be manager of the family dollar store..we're going to need a new one soon, as i think thom is going to another store..feck! and inky and michelle can't pass the managers test..jeez.

Anonymous said...

That's great. Those resources are there for a reason. But I'm still hoping we come to our sense and get national health coverage.

But, yay!! for us and our new president!

Allan said...

S- I hope you never need it!

JS- There are more programs than I knew about- they don't advertise, so it can be hard to find them except by word-o-mouth.
Can I tele-manage the store on-line?

C- Right now, I'm actually better off without insurance...weird.
But yay! I mean, YAY!