Health Care

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

I give myself insulin shots twice every day.   Would it be any different to
give myself B12 shots?

Would the B12 shots likely be covered by my Medicare prescription drug
program?   If not, how expensive are they?

Are the B12 tablets covered, or are they over-the-counter?

Is any medication taken by shots ever 'over-the-counter'?

I post with apologies to those in civilized countries, where it unnecessary
to ask questions about your health based on the risk of inordinate prices.
In the United States, I am allowed to swim where I want in any public
swimming pool:  no one assigns a spot sized according to my tax
contributions to the building and maintenance of the pool.   I can drive on
any public highway without anyone restricting me to the part that I paid
for.  I can read any books in the public library, not just a portion of the
collection that I paid for with my taxes.   The United States long ago
concluded that pools, highways, and libraries should be socialized, and no
one is trying to have them any other way.    But not so with citizens'
access to health care, the most vital concerns of life itself.

Nine years ago I fell in an ATM annex of a bank in Lisbon, dislocated both
shoulders, and fractured one of them.   I was rushed by ambulance to a
nearby hospital and treated over several hours.   When the doctor came to
give me copies of the x-rays to take home to my doctor in New Jersey, I
asked the question whose answer I dreaded:  "How much do I owe for all the
treatment?"

The doctor shook his face as if he was not understanding a joke.

"Pay?" he asked.   "Why should you expect to pay anything?  You had an
accident.  Hospitals and ambulances and doctors and medics all exist to
respond to your need.   It would be uncivilized to ask you to pay."

Indeed.   Portugal is the poorest country in Europe but not so poor as to
neglect its citizens greatest needs.

On the morning after treatment, the hospital staff call, and several asked
me how I was feeling.  The ambulance workers did the same.  The staff of our
hotel  who had called the ambulance sent to our room a ginger bread house
modeled on the life-size one in the lobby.

Pray that the United States will discover how to be civilized.

Louie

Louie Crew, 377 S. Harrison St., 12D, East Orange, NJ 07018 973-395-1068
http://queereye4lectionary.blogspot.com/  Queer Eye for the Lectionary

    We make his love too narrow
    By false limits of our own
    And we magnify his strictness
    With zeal he will not own.

         -- Frederick William Faber