Friday, October 14, 2011

Go Ahead, America...Suck My Blood...See If I Care: WAIT! I REALLY DO CARE!


As many of you know, I am a nurse. Some people are probably like, "OMG...I hate nurses! They are always poking me with needles, or trying to shove IVs into my arm!" This is very true. I do this quite regularly. However, I don't suck at it, and I'm really flipping good at popping an IV line in people--even if it's a woman thrashing around in labor.

I hate needles. I hate needles more than most people I know. I can totally dish it out, but I can't take it. As a matter of fact, the past two times I've had to have an IV put in me the nursing staff has made fun of me for being a nurse while simultaneously being such a wimp when it came to having a line put in me. I guess I should be flattered at the fact that they find me so entertaining. I try...

I've been working kind of a kooky schedule lately. I only "technically" work three days per week, but somehow over the past 2.5 weeks have ended up with a schedule that is 2 off, three on, two off, three on, etc. Not a huge deal, but I work night shift, so technically I actually get off for my day off ON MY DAY OFF (confused yet?). This part kind of sucks, and doesn't allow for a lot of time to recuperate before having to go back and pull three more 12 hour shifts in a row. Why do you care?...well...you probably don't, but I'm leading into my rant, so if you're going to stick around long enough to find out what my gripe is, then I'm going to spend some time setting the scene for you.

So yes...not working the best schedule lately, and I actually have to drive all the way out to work tomorrow morning ON MY DAY OFF. See, they've made it mandatory now that we have to go through a health screening at work in order to be able to choose our insurance benefits. If we fail to go through the health screening, then we get the bottom of the barrel, total piece of crap health insurance that they offer. This is apparently part of the new "Obama Care" plan with our government. Now, a lot of you will probably be saying, "Well now, Whitney, if you didn't vote, you can't gripe!" Well let me just tell you, I DID VOTE, THEREFORE I WILL GRIPE AT MY LEISURE. Besides--it's my blog. I can do and say whatever I want on here--assuming www.blogspot.com doesn't pull the rug out from under me.

I did vote. I voted for Obama. I am part of the reason the State of Colorado went blue during the last election. After 8 years of having that pathetic monkey of a president in office there was no way I was going to vote on the Republican ticket. And let me just say that I'm all about socialized medicine, so let's make that abundantly clear. Most non-third world countries have some sort of government health care in place--and they aren't even socialists! We are the country that is completely ass-backwards with health care. As a matter of fact, I have the best-of-the-best health care benefits through my hospital job, had to have surgery two years ago, and still ended up paying $20K out of my own pocket for it. That's the beauty of huge corporations running our health insurance--they can charge you whatever the hell they want. Quite frankly it makes our government health care look awesome. You've heard of our government health care, right? It's called Medicaid. They give it to the vast majority of people who do nothing but sit around and leach off the system. It's quite amazing. Do nothing/get everything for free! SWEET! Sign me up! Better yet, don't sign me up. I'll just go to work, work my butt off, get crap for benefits, and then you can take everyone else's freebie government benefits out of my paycheck in taxes! Woohoo!

Some of you might be like, "Well if you hadn't voted on the democratic ticket then this wouldn't be happening!" Rest assured that even when the Republican party was running the show MEDICAID STILL EXISTED. Don't sit there and point party line fingers--our system is totally jacked up. Doesn't matter if you're red, blue, elephant, or donkey. It's a mess.

So here's the dealio. Back to why I'm ranting. I've been working a crap schedule and on my one day off that truly is my day off I get to go into work so they can suck my blood, run labs on me, and get to know me on a very, personal, metabolic level prior to offering me the (crap) options I have for health care benefits. Seems fair to me, right? I give you blood, and all my personal health care information, and you give me crappy health care benefit options through a private corporation, and because the United States of America said so...WHAT A DEAL! I wouldn't gripe nearly as much if we actually had government health care in place and the government actually gave me benefits to get to know me so intimately. However, when you throw in the private insurance companies in the mix as the middle man then I'm inevitably going to end up feeling SCREWED.

I understand that some of you are probably like, "But Whitney!...if there is government-run health care then they will start running cost/benefit analyses on people's lives and only treating them if it's worth the government's money!" I get this fear, I really do, but maybe, just maybe it's time that we start a few little cost/benefit analyses on people's lives. For instance, if you're obese, a diabetic, have congestive heart failure, and COPD--yet you sit around eating Big Macs, Snickers bars, and smoking cigarettes all day then NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU! I think it would be brilliant. People might actually have to have some accountability for their health. It would be GREAT!

So yes...tonight at midnight I will start fasting for my ridiculous blood test so I can obtain my mediocre-at-best health insurance benefits for the next year. I'll also start dreaming of moving to France where they have fine wines, champagne, and provide health care for their people.



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