By skyforbes 
Not Very Well
Since I returned from Iraq in December of 2011, 21 months ago, ago my family has been without health insurance. Up until our savings ran out in May of 2012 we just paid out of pocket for doctor’s visits and medicine. In May, when our savings ran out, we just stopped going.
When my son, Colgan, went back to school in August 2012, the school let us know he was having trouble concentrating and behaving in class. We let the school know we could not afford to send him to the doctor let alone to get the prescription filled. The school was kind enough to send us forms to get him enrolled in Medicaid. My wife filled out the forms and within a few weeks Colgan was enrolled. That was the easy part. My wife did a search for doctors that accepted Medicaid here in the Saginaw, TX area and found 10. When my wife called each them they all said they were not accepting any new patients.
Fortunately for us, Suzy had a childhood friend who was now a pediatrician in Dallas which is an hour’s drive away. Ritalin is a controlled substance so if we did not fill the prescription fast enough, a wrong annotation was made or I forget the original prescription (you have to do produce the old one to get the new one) I had to make the trip all over again.
The other fun part of this experience is the actual trip to the pharmacy.
I guess they don’t like dealing with Medicaid either. Back in January of of this year, one morning we gave our son his last pill. If he skips a day or 2 no problem, but by day 3 it’s an issue.
2 weeks passed before I could manage to get the prescription filled. We were told the medicine was too expensive, the wrong code was used, our doctor had not cleared it with Medicaid etc. I am missing a few excuses but each one represents a separate trip to the pharmacy. During this whole time the Pharmacy Techs claimed they were working issue calling and faxing on our behalf. When our doctor’s nurse asked for the call history on the case, turns out the pharmacy never called Medicaid regarding our son’s case nor had they sent the faxes to our doctor like they claimed.
Unfortunately, after this incident we ended up transferring to a doctor closer to our house. The new doctor at first allowed our son to keep taking the same medicine as before. Then in March, she questioned why Colgan was taking such an expensive medication. So she switched him to a less expensive but not as effective brand. The next month she said he needed to be tested all together and since he was on Medicaid he had to wait 6 months and in the mean time she was not writing any more prescriptions.
Colgan’s performance in the classroom both in academics and behavior suffered through April and May. The summer months were hard for him as well.
When he went back to school 2 weeks ago the teacher sent a note home that something had to be done. So we found a doctor on our own and paid $175 for the visit, half my paycheck for the week. Same protocol , same tests same questions but no drama. Oddly when went to have the prescription filled we were prepared to pay the full price of $125 the pharmacist told us Medicaid covered the bill.
I guess doctors are willing to sacrifice a child’s education over some uncomfortable bureaucracy
What I am taking away from my hopefully temporary classification as poor in America is it sucks and good people are not being properly served. Instead of basic health care being provided the most at risk Americans are being ejected from the system for being an inconvenience.