Oh, the pain

Posted on July 12, 2005 by Gene

Today is a day off for me — mostly. I’ve been working on various freelance projects for the last few weeks nonstop, and the biggest of them have gone to, respectively, the printers and the disc replicators. It comes just in time for me, as I’ve been sick for the last couple of days with what I have self-diagnosed as either kidney stones or something.
That last sentence is what most people would term too much information, and I tend to agree.
Nevertheless, there it is, and it serves to indicate that I have been experiencing sharp bouts of pain for the last few days on and off. And me with no health insurance.
I applied to Kaiser Permanente last Tuesday for an individual health plan that’ll cost me $200 a month. Frankly, when compared to the exhorbitant sums (more than twice three times that) people like my aunt — who basically makes $50 too much to be under the poverty line — and my mother — who learned a tragic lesson about moving out of a health plan’s coverage area upon retirement — um… this run-on sentence has left me confused about where I am.
Oh, yes. Anyway, I tend to budget things monthly and $200 per month with an income of, roughly, $350 a month, is a bit of a scary proposition, no matter how cheap it is in the realm of health costs. The way I get around it is to aggregate the months together and look at the annual cost — $2400, which is half the cost of the TV I bought last month. (I don’t know why my mind works this way, it just does and it’s really annoying.) It’s like the rent on my house, which I paid in a lump sum for the first 6 months, saving myself the horror of writing a check for $2100 every month when I have no job.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, except to complain (as always) and say that I still haven’t heard back from Kaiser about my application. And I don’t feel very well.
(Don’t tell them about this entry, they might say it’s a pre-existing condition.)