An Incensed Texan-American, And Deservedly So....

One Woman's struggle for Good Health.

Every day for almost six years now, I have drug my Broken Body through Texas’ deliberately broken down Workers’ Compensation System expecting - then hesitantly hoping - then finally begging to be healed. To be Fixed. And Deservedly So……

In the 1990’s Texas allowed the Insurance Companies, and their very well paid lawyers to gut the Texas Workers’ Compensation System with Elitist, 1%er torte reforms. Reforms which favored the Insurance Companies, and short-changed everyone else involved in the convoluted process - the rigged game.

If a Citizen gets a broken arm or leg. Sure, the WC folks will Fix it with a minimum of hearings and delays. It’s quick to mend and cheap. But have one of your high school students accidentally seriously injure your back - injure your hip - now, that’s more long-term and expensive. Especially, if the person injured is over thirty.

The insurance companies actuaries have created charts on how non-cost-effective such expenditures are to companies as a whole. And so, the now ineffective WC System will delay, and delay and delay said injured person until they finally give up and go away.

Every procedure - every methodology - any and everything prescribed by any and all doctors you are shuffled off to will be just another hearing you have to attend with a State Omsbudsman who keeps reminding you that they are not a lawyer, but are at each hearing (which are scheduled months apart each and every time one is required for you to attend) to offer your defense against the Insurance Company’s well paid lawyer on the other side of the table. Once again the cards are stacked in the Insurance Company’s favor (surprise, surprise).

You win some, you lose some. But one thing is always certain. No matter what happens at the hearing you’re in, it will always lead to yet another hearing. It’s how everyone earns their pay cheques at the patients (excuse me, I meant to say litigants) expense.

You may enter into the portals of the Texas Workers’ Comp System a Patient in need of timely medical care, but by the first hearing you’re converted into a full time Litigant. A piece of sand in the UnMerciful Eye of the mighty Insurance Leviathan.

Well, we’ve been doing this boringly dizzying Texas Polka for almost six years now, and I (the patient-Litigant) must admit to being just plumb tuckered out.

I have been sorely tempted (very sorely tempted) to dry up and blow away, but I’m still hanging in there. Stubborness has always been a notable family trait in both of my ancestral lineages. Plus, I’m a Texan, and when you get one of us riled, we tend to stay that way until the situation that riled us in the first place gets resolved. And Deservedly So…..

I must be honest and admit that the functioning of my Body and overall Health have been on a steady decline, and the pain on a steady incline ever since my student accidentally injured me at school. But I do not believe in law suits, and so thus far have not sought Justice and Fair Treatment in those quarters as of yet.

Also, I do not want to be labeled disabled and receive disability cheques. I want to be Fixed. And Deservedly So……

So, irritating as I have become to the Texas WC System, I will continue to “hang in there” until the UnEthically and Demoralizingly dysfunctional Texas WC System finally gives in and does “right by me”. And Deservedly So……

Now, I have also discovered that the gentleman from another planet who calls himself the governor of the proud (but sometimes highly manipulated) state of Texas is boasting that he is refusing to enact two key initiatives under the Affordable Care Act (just ruled Constitutional by the American Supreme Court).

Rick Perry says that the national Affordable Act, which does away with any insurance company’s ability to give anyone a lifetime cap, or be turned away for a pre-existing condition (like cancer), and allows children who cannot find work to stay on their parents group insurance until the age of 26, and many other such Just and Fair things, “will find no foothold here”. “Here” being the illustrious state of Texas.

Governor Perry said that Texas will not expand Medicaid, and he is turning down an estimated $13 billion a year in federal money from 2014 to 2017. The Texas governor also refuses to create a Health Care Exchange, which would manifest as an online market allowing uninsured people to shop-til-they-drop for insurance coverage.

Why is governor Perry choosing to exclude so many millions of Texans (like myself), who are at this point in time uninsured for one reason or another, from proper, just and compassionate Medical Care ?

Why would this fine, upstanding Christian man, and chosen leader do this to his constituents - his fellow Human Beings ?

Well, according to Mr. Perry, in a letter he wrote to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in words right out of the horse’s mouth, “Please, relay this message to the president. Both represent brazen intrusions into the sovereignty of our state.”

Now, with gentlemen like this making decisions for the state of Texas, it is no wonder that the Workers’ Compensation System got gutted, and left to rot out internally. And, probably, as far as Mr. Perry, and other men of his same said Christian ilk are concerned, Deservedly So…..

The wonderful folks who depend upon me each and every day, and my family, are what keep me going. Keep me moving, and finding the interior Will to force myself out of bed, and into the Working fray, each and every live long day. And Deservedly So……

In the meantime, I’ll just continue to Hope for a Light at the end of this very long and dark tunnel I find myself imprisoned within Called the WC Blues, and pray that my Body, Mind and Soul do not give-out before all of us so called Constituents can vote for new and better leadership in the great state of Texas.

Leaders who would consider spending $25 million dollars in state taxes on getting folks like me up and whole again more important than spending those same tax dollars on a Race Track to nowhere. Where folks cheer-on F-1 cars and drivers whizzing noisily by going round-and-round in circles, spewing out exhaust fumes and a lot of very hot air.

I Love the great state of Texas and being a Texan. But must admit to my disappointment in many of her Decision Makers. Her careless Back Breakers. And Deservedly So…..