I ALMOST NEVER think about how I don’t have health insurance. It just makes me angry. I don’t think I deserve to have the rest of the country pay for my trips to the doctor—but when I see us buying hella jets as a nation, it makes me mad and I have to stop thinking about it. I should probably be more aware of my lack of health insurance. I’d probably write fewer columns about sandwiches. I would probably be a much healthier person if I spent more time dwelling on the fact that I’m shackled to a get-fucked bomb, I have no idea how long the fuse is, and I’m ruined when it goes off—either financially or physically.

Of course, being more aware would enforce healthier habits, but it wouldn’t keep me from breaking my leg, turning an ankle, coming down with some rarefied Oscar bait-type disease, sleepwalking into a horse, pouring piping hot spaghetti water into a colander wrong, getting strep-everything or losing a thumb war in a hyper-tragic Darren Aronofsky-type way. No, all the kale in Laurelhurst can’t save you from those sad fates. That’s probably why I try not to think about how I don’t have insurance.

Once you start thinking about it, the terror consumes. Your breasts and testicles stop being the sexual Scottie Pippen to your vagina and penis’ Michael Jordan. (I feel like at some point, proper grammar would have told me to use “respectively” in that last sentence, but FUCK GRAMMAR.) Instead, your boobs and balls become nothing more than shit you definitely have cancer in, except no way that’s cancer, except that’s totally cancer. That’s life without health insurance­—being simultaneously convinced that you have cancer and that you definitely don’t, and for the same reason… you can’t afford it.

WebMD says you have gout, but you probably just sprained your ankle, so do you want to drop large dollars to find out for sure?

Last weekend I got WELL DRUNK INDEED, GOVERNOR, and woke up feeling like the garbage behind an Arby’s. I assumed I was hungover, but as the day wore on, it became clear that more powerful warlocks were at work. I had a fever, my skeleton felt like bullshit, and it was 80 degrees outside and I was wearing two sweatshirts and shivering. My shin was covered in some sort of creeping red menace that looked like a cartoon sunburn. I should have gone to the doctor right away, but going to the doctor meant missing my two shows that night, and I needed to do those shows because I needed the money so I could go to the doctor. It’s like a modern-day “The Gift of the Magi” that Rand Paul wrote to give himself a quaking erection.

The next day I went to ZoomCare, and they were lovely and told me I had a cellulitis infection in my leg and they gave me antibiotics and it didn’t end up being that expensive and I felt very fortunate. It’s an unsettling fortune, though. It’s snapping to reality behind the wheel of your car, realizing you have no recollection of the last five minutes. It fucking sucks that, for so many of us, health care is an “OH SHIT SOMETHING TERRIBLE” endeavor. The gambit makes it necessary to banish the thoughts from your head so you can have a fucking day, and perhaps that’s the hidden toll of having no health care. Having the very idea of “getting better” associated with a pile of bills you can’t pay. It’s fucked and it’s terrifying, but hey, airshows are pretty fucking cool. Fuck.

9 replies on “Portland as Fuck”

  2. I’ve been waiting for the day that having a great health plan becomes super attractive to the ladies in this town.

    It’s, like, my only hope.

  4. [Foreword: this comment is perhaps longer than the original post – please feel free to ignore / delete / ban the commenter, etc.]

    Ian, nice article. I was employed in January and underwent, “minor” surgery – something about my sphincter, a scalpel and some anesthesia. As much as that sounds like a prospect for the opening scene for HUMAN CENTIPEDE III, and despite the sour-faced, puckered reaction that often accompanies the word, “Sphincter,” it was not all that unpleasant. I don’t need to sit down anyway. I have never been able to sit for very long. No big deal. Fuck you, anal fissure [I know – that puckered face again]. Why am I waxing verbose about my rectal cavity and the month of January? Because I knew that, in April, I would no longer be employed and would, like you and so many artists, be in the market for a personal healthcare plan. I submitted an application with Blue Cross / Blue Shield and a sprightly agent said, “Hell, at your age with no major pre-existing health conditions, this ought to be a breeze.” Then I got a letter from an underwriter that read something like, “Some medical conditions, either alone or in combination with the cost of medication, present uncertain medical underwriting risks. In view of these risks, we find we are unable to offer you enrollment in the plan/policy [which, by the way, got me 3 Dr. visits per year and did not cover things like visits to the ER, surgery, removal of bee stingers, pain-numbing medication if I smash my thumb with a hammer, lice shampoo if I ride public transit in Oakland, etc.]. However, we would like to offer you the opportunity to enroll in our STANDARD RX Plan with an additional 75% monthly premium.” Because of a sphincterotomy, which is essentially as serious as getting a paper cut that heals in three days [albeit, a paper cup on your eyeball or worse, you sphincter — it really doesn’t get any easier to say, does it]. So I called them back and said, “You dumb motherfucker, everything is a goddamned uncertain medical underwriting risk. What if a plane engine traverses a wormhole and falls through my bedroom ceiling and crushes me like Donnie Darko? What if I step on a banana peel on the BART platform and fall on the electric tracks? And get electrocuted? And then my charred body is run over by a training car that barrels through the stop because it isn’t collecting passengers? What then? Assholes [I had to].”

    My point is this: I live in a place [SF] where companies realign their “strategic management” hierarchy and people like me [IT nerds] are perceived as being extraneous and disposable, which is probably true. Anyway, “reduction in force” is common and I have recently come to appreciate that terrifying sensation associated with the phrase, “Health coverage.” But hey, Fleet Week is pretty fucking cool indeed.

    See you in Canada.

  5. Nice article^^^

    You know what a comment is right?

    Sorry just had a bad day limping around on ankle I cant get treatment for.

  6. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Ian’s article loud and enthusiastically in an empty house.
    I moderately enjoyed doing the same with Benny Hanna’s article.

  8. Depends on how much money you make you could probably qualify some-type of government funded (OHP) or subsidized health care plan in 2014, just saying…

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