Things continue to be pretty lame.
I was excited because I finally got enrolled in a suboxone program that is covered by insurance. I was looking forward to both the relief I hoped to get from subs as well as the structure of the program. The program is run by a large HMO/hospital, and it seemed pretty good. Nothing fancy, but perfectly solid and legit-seeming.
I went to my first day of the program on Wednesday of this week. It was fine...had to listen to a room-full of junkies (like me) tell the doctor their woes and hopes, but whatever. I was pretty scandalized by the cost--each week's meeting session cost me a hefty chunk of change because my obamacare insurance (which is also very expensive) sucks. But eventually those sessions would become bi-weekly, and eventually monthly, so I was willing to tolerate that cost.
The real trouble came when I went to the pharmacy to pick up my script. ... Under my insurance, even the generic bupe they Rx'ed me was $<insert very large number here>.
The cost of the program/medication was ludicrous and impossible for me to cover. So I had no choice but to bail (even if I did have a choice, I wouldn't have paid that outrageous cost).
The whole thing made me want to write a letter to the New York Times Op-ed page about the fucked up state of healthcare in this country, especially as it relates to our 'opioid epidemic.' I was outraged...I'm a fairly assertive, articulate, non-dumb person, and it took me days of following leads and pestering people even to get in the door of this program. Even finding a program that my insurance covered was hard. Once I found the program, it turned out to be prohibitively expensive (I also wasted a tremendous amount of time getting to the point where I found this out).
I am in that spot financially where I do not qualify for obamacare subsidies, making healthcare by far the biggest bill I pay. I also don't qualify for medicaid (or our local equivalent). But I'm *by no means* wealthy. I can't afford to live on my own around here, for example. I'm trying to do the right thing...keep myself insured, get on subs. But I feel like that's nearly impossible given the state of healthcare and addiction treatment in the US.
I'll resist the urge to rant about this more. Thanks, everyone for your loving posts/messages. I love you all, and am thinking of you even as I'm here at the bottom of the universe, surrounded by dead crows (reference to once of my earlier posts regarding ketamine).
