But Lady Luck deserted me, as usual, of course. Just as the new date loomed, so did Old Man Winter, who sent in a storm that dumped one to two feet of snow in our area, plus sheets of freezing rain that made travel "hazardous or impossible," as our local news gravely reminded us.
Hence, the Squawker and myself spent much of the previous day (January 31) glued to the TV set, tracking the storm as it hovered closer and closer to our neck of the woods. Sure enough, the clinic called. They told me to wait for another call in the morning, and they'd let me know what they planned on doing.
I didn't expect much, as ever-increasing lists of business, event and school closings and cancellations rolled across the TV scream, in a never-ending stream. We went to bed, holding our collective breaths, wondering what Old Man Winter would bring.
Sure enough, we didn't have to wait long. The phone rang at 8:30 a.m., but neither of us dived for it in time. So I had to call back. "This is it," I told myself. "My surgery's pushed back, yet again. This is what I'm waiting for, right?"
Not exactly, though. The receptionist began asking how I planned on paying for my procedure, since I wasn't insured at the time we booked it. "Let me connect you with our Finance Department," the woman chirped. "I'm sure that they can..."
Yes, boys and girls, Hell had frozen over -- literally and figuratively -- but the bean counters were proudly in session.
"Excuse me, ma'am," I cut in, "have you looked outside your window?"
"Well, yes, but..."
"Don't get out much, I take it?"
"What do you mean?"
Guess I'll have to spell it out, in capital letters, I thought. "Don't you think we have more pressing problems? Like the surreal hellscape outside, that's turning into a skating rink, with all the ice and snow getting dumped on it?" I said.
"Oh, right."
"Surely, that seems like a more pressing problem, doesn't it?" I ventured. "Because I don't think I'll be keeping that appointment today."
"Let me connect you to the people who can help you with that." Just like that, her professional front returned, and quick as a flash, I got transferred to the relevant office, who gave me a new rain date (4/22). The countdown continues as we speak.
<Reddit/cassette culture:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cassetteculture/comments/fxtp4p/richard_hell_and_the_voidoids_blank_generation/>
I pulled out $15, all I had that day, and tossed it on her desk. "This is it! Not trying to be difficult, but I can't program any kind of payment -- without some kind of a heads up."
We eventually came to a grudging compromise, of sorts. She simply found a medical code that essentially put the $229 bill in suspended animation, but I had to pay it shortly afterwards, which I did, in three chunks.
Ivan Julian, former guitarist of Richard Hell & The Voidoids, also learned a thing or two about sticker shock after getting diagnosed with cancer, as he told Billboard's readers in November 2016:
A handful of doctors offered him preliminary exams, "but they said, ‘We cannot go any further, not even with a biopsy, until you get health insurance,’ ” recalls Julian. “I said, ‘Well, how much could it possibly be? I can maybe pay for it.’ They said, ‘Well, the anesthesiologist alone is something like $750 an hour.’"
The article ("Crowdfunding For His Life: How GoFundMe Helped Save A Punk Legend's Life") makes some really interesting reading, since the disconnect between rhetoric and reality still looms large -- especially for readers who may not understand why Obama's signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), still has a ways to go, in terms of realizing its ambition to cover everyone at a reasonable cost. Or how a punk legend like Julian ended up among the nine percent who still remain uninsured, even after the law's passage.
The article date makes me chuckle, because -- as I've detailed here previously -- I spent the morning after Trump's election waiting, with half a dozen or so other miserable sods, for a tooth extraction at my community health clinic, simply because A) the tooth was too far gone to save, but B) even it wasn't, anything more elaborate was out of the question. I didn't have the juice to pull it off, and without that commodity, nobody will touch you. End of story.
And, of course, there is the other issue that progressives still raise -- namely, that the ACA remains a flawed work in progress, since it accepts the idea of allowing ever-growing entities to continue profiting off our illnesses. Flawed or not, without that premise, it probably wouldn't have passed. Even then, it took a mighty effort.
