A Freelancer's Forty-Three Years in the American Health-Care System
When I lived in San Francisco, I worked freelance for a number of years and had no health insurance. It was too expensive.<p>Over time, I started having sever pains that shot through my abdomen and groin. I could barely walk. I had tried to go to the SF General hospital, but it took about a month to be seen by a general practitioner. I finally did get seen and they thought it could be a hernia, but were unsure. They scheduled more tests, which was about a 6 month wait. (I should note that SF General gets a lot of unusual people and the staff gets slowed down from dealing with the more difficult patients.)<p>Desperate, I found a small hospital clinic and asked them to see me. I told them I had to pay out of pocket. Oddly, the doctor who saw me gave me a huge discount. He diagnosed that I had sciatica from bad ergonomics. Sure enough, changing how I sat improved my pain! I was lucky. Very lucky.<p>Now, my sister is currently struggling with a serious issue, and as a Medicare patient (being under the poverty level), she wasn&#x27;t able to be seen for months, and even now they are unable to diagnose properly due to delays in getting her referrals or tests (CT scans, etc).<p>I can&#x27;t stress enough how uneven and cruel the US healthcare system is. I feel the only way to survive long-term is to have a career that enables access to jobs (or unions) that offer health care as a benefit. Without it, paying for family-level premiums is similar to a mortgage.