PHOTO PROMPT @ Jan Wayne Fields
It wasn’t her fault she was born with a rickety body. Like an old car that started nickle-and-diming its owner, at age fifty, her conditions, doctor visits, medications, and work sick time became routine. She started using the health credit card to cover insurance co-pays.
After the teeth in her job’s union were extracted, it didn’t take the company long to downsize her. Like a domino of failures, she couldn’t keep up the mortgage payments on her condo and became homeless.
Sitting at her shabby motel room desk, she stared at what remained of her 15×15 home office and wept.
[100 words]
Rochelle Wisoff-Fields is the encouraging host of Friday Fictioneers.
Tao Talk 
Aww, so sad.
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Yes it is :(
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😕
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This is a such sad tale, and an indictment on health care.
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It can happen to anyone, and that is a scary thought.
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I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – I cannot understand the American obsession with NOT having free health care for all. I just don’t get it. Sad stories like this one is what it leads to.
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It’s becoming truer everyday.
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We’re sticking with the union, ’til the day we die
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So sad.
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There are countless in such despair as businesses close, jobs are lost or downsized, and health-care benefits cut. Sometimes you wonder who the unions are working for. Well told, Lisa.
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Thanks Dora, indeed.
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This is certainly a different and quite touching look at this prompt. Well done.
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Thank you, Linda.
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Very sad, but, unfortunately, it does happen :(
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This small story is full of so much that is wrong in our country and in the world. (K)
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The Great American Healthcare System.
Oh that’s right, there isn’t one.
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We have patchy coverage with Medicaid for the young and Medicare for the old, but it’s like a thin blanket full of holes in the middle of a subzero winter.
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A sorrowful tale that I’m sure is all too common. I don’t want to rub it in, but I cannot imagine life without free healthcare and medication.
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Healthcare many times is a stranglehold employers hold over their employees to keep them working under terrible conditions. The co-pays and premiums continue to rise for them, but it’s nothing compared to Cobra, which is unaffordable, where a person would choose between eating and paying the insurance bill :( They keep building these what I call palaces of sickness, i.e. hospitals, but who can afford to stay there. A trend I’ve seen or one that maybe has always been there is to “overdiagnose” those with good healthcare insurance so they can run a bunch of expensives tests on them. Hypochondriacs are easy pickins but for everybody else they are terrified they are really sick. It’s an evil system!
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Oh, I really feel her pain… almost literally. At 51, my body feels like it should be 90 something. UGH! I can totally relate to her position. At least, we aren’t homeless… yet.
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I’m so sorry to know you suffer health issues, and being at the mercy of the healthcare system has got to be a waking nightmare for you. What gets me is when insurance reps, not doctors, decide what treatments you will or will not receive. Them and their little codes of approved and not approved services! I remember going through this snafu with kids in my job with mental health issues. Horrible!!!!!!!!
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Am going through that with insurance and hubbys recent spin through hospital. It sucks.
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I’m always fascinated, not in a good way, by the absence of free health care. You brought this home expertly.
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Thank you very much, Sandra.
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Dear Lisa,
Painfully sad and well written.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Rochelle, thank you and wish it wasn’t so for so many.
Shalom,
Lisa
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It happens every day to many with no or minimum health care.
Quick way to deplete a bank account. Scary, Lisa. Be Safe 😷
Isadora 😎
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Yes, Isadora. Thank you and I wish you the same.
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Oh, dear God, this is heartbreaking, especially the last line. Good job. :(
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It is a sad reality for too many, and many with children :( Thanks, Eugi.
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This is so sad.
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Poor woman. If I got ill abroad I’d have to hope I was well enough to get home again so I didn’t have to pay anything.
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I remember in one of Michael Moore’s films, “Sicko” (no not that kind!) highlights our healthcare system as well as healthcare systems that work around the globe. He has relatives in Canada and in the movie one of them said they were afraid to travel to the US for that very reason.
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That’s so sad :(
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Yes it is :(
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what sad state if affairs i wouldn’t wish on anyone. hopefully, she’d get halp and find courage to move on.
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Yes, I hope there is some path back for her.
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Very sad for your character, and for real people in the US. I haven’t lived there for a long time and have been fortunate to live in places with good, inexpensive, healthcare systems. My husband and I cannot retire back to the US at this stage because healthcare would drain our savings or nearly so. Something needs to be done (not for me) but for the plethora of people who don’t receive adequate care. (Sorry, touched on a nerve). Hopefully, something can be done now, but I despair that the system can be fixed. Well written story, Lisa!!
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Thank you for your thoughtful response, Brenda. I like that you can see both sides of the situation. Yes, something needs to be done!
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Oh this is so so sad.
You’ve described the down fall very well. That last line is a killer of emotion
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Thank you, Laurie.
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Sad story, but can be very real. Well written Ms. Jadeli!
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Thank you very much.
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Oh NO!! Pulled at my heart strings.. But I must say I enjoyed the “rickety old car nickel and diming” comparison.
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:) Thank you.
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Oh that’s devastating! I wonder if she has family to turn to in her time of need? I truly hope so.
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Let’s hope so…
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