Health care inequality means that my nuisance would be someone else's disaster
newsdepo.com
Sometimes when the U.S. health care system works for you, it becomes all the more visible how horribly it doesn’t work for so many people. In late April 2020, I got a raging case of ophthalmic shingles. I wrote about it a month later, essentially decHealth care inequality means that my nuisance would be someone else's disaster
Sometimes when the U.S. health care system works for you, it becomes all the more visible how horribly it doesn’t work for so many people. In late April 2020, I got a raging case of ophthalmic shingles. I wrote about it a month later, essentially declaring case closed—I was lucky to have had care right when I needed it, and had avoided permanent vision damage. Then, a month or two later, I developed pain in my right eye again, and went back to the doctor. And then I went back, and back, and back, and back. Nearly 14 months after I developed shingles, I am again on steroid eye drops for continuing problems in my eye. I have been repeatedly on and off of antiviral pills. By my count, I have been to the ophthalmologist 13 times, most of those visits to a cornea specialist. I have never paid more than a $20 copay for each visit and $15 or so for a prescription because Daily Kos provides me with good health coverage. But think about how many people in this country don’t have that—either they don’t have insurance, or they don’t have the kind of insurance that would allow them to go to a specialist again and again and again. Or they don’t have the income to shrug off a $20 copay as insignificant. Or they’re someone for whom medical appointments mean unpaid time off work. If I didn’t have all of these things, I would likely have permanent damage to my right eye. Read more