Winter Blues

My health has not been very good lately. My chronic pain is bouncing up and down on a regular basis and my mental health has basically just been going more and more South. I have been in Bakersfield for a long time now and I have no access to medical care. I have been bounced out of the clinics without care. The hospital had a doctor see me but he did it just as quickly and coldly as he could then they chucked me out and told me not to return again. The problem is my Medi-Cal has not transferred from Alameda County to Kern County. It is supposed to happen by just giving them the new address and in six weeks you are supposed to be hooked up with Medi-Cal and an HMO for care. It did not work out that way.

For the first six weeks I waited like they told me and then went in to ask about it. I got my head chewed off for asking. I waited a few more weeks and then I started to call around to see what was going on. One worker at legal aide was told that Alameda County was holding it up by not responding. She told me to go back to Alameda County and demand that they forward my papers. I finally got to talk to the worker in Alameda and he told me he never received a request to transfer. I gave him a request on the spot. He told me to wait six more weeks and I would have it in Kern County. He never sent anything.

I got an attorney at Bakersfield legal Aide to help me. He talked to the supervisors in both Alameda and Kern Counties and they told me I would have it done in 45 days. He told me to go ahead and apply for Healthnet the Kern County HMO. I applied for the HMO and they sent me out a card and copious explanations of how to obtain care. Then in the seventh month of my attempt to change my address I received a Notice Of Action saying I was declined for Medi-Cal because Alameda County never forwarded the papers. I will not appeal. I will not fight anymore. I would rather just be dead than take any more abuse from those people in the Medi-Cal office.

So now I have no coverage. The clinics and hospitals will not help me out and no doctors accept just Medicare. So I get to just sit and suffer. No one cares that I am on the verge of death. The strange thing is a poor Mexican could walk into the same clinics and hospitals that are declining me and the Mexican could get care. The whole system sucks and I have totally given up on ever obtaining any more medical care. I would rather just die than live in a world this cold. The entire system can just go to hell as far as I am concerned now. I will get my affairs in order and then let nature take its course.