Happy Hallow's Ween!

Dickin' Around with Latex

Got my trick-or-treat dates goofed and wound up getting all dolled up for nothing. Oh well. Always a learning experience this.

Venting: I really hate America sometimes.

I recently overheard a phone-call my mother was having with the company that helps her get her medication. They recently were withholding some of her medication due to an outstanding fee that my step-father had when he was sick with cancer, this company also procured his cancer medication, and were withholding her prescription until she paid it. Thing is, my step-father died 2 years ago from said cancer and before he even got to use the medication that company was billing my mother for and she had shouldered a good brunt of it, footing the cost of the medication when my step-father was going through treatment.

Now, two years after he passed, they withheld my mother's medication, one that she needs to prolong her life, because of a fee they charged without her ever needing or knowing of it. She, apparently, had been going back and forth with them about this a couple calls before and they gave her such a run around and degraded her, for medication she needs, that she broke down and cried over the phone.

She has been pushing with a stiff-upper lip as long as I've known her, fleeing brutal Communist regime after being held up in the bureaucracy there for 20 years, seeking a better life in America, only to be here for 30+ years and still having to fight for what she needs all that time. Just for some money, they made my mother cry.

...I really hate America sometimes...

It's not the people I have problems with, everyone needs work, and it was because of people that she eventually got it partially resolved. She told me that the rep on the phone was so gutted to hear her cry that they finagled what they could to get the medication my mother needed this one time. She still needs to go through them every time she needs medicine though. After all that, they still will make her jump through a hoop to get it. I don't hate the people; I hate the enterprise. I can't help but think of all the other similar incidents this company must've had like with my mother, but only took a firmer stand, and denied the people outright the thing they needed. 

Such a shitty thing to do and the worst of it being that no one will ever be held accountable for it. These big, immortal, faceless corporations, made of even bigger, nebulous collectives of people, have the same rights as ordinary civilians, which makes it possible to press charges against them (I suppose), but when they're so big and powerful and literally untouchable, what, if any, justice can anyone get? It may be law but not all laws are just and an unjust law is tantamount to having no law at all.

I know it's just me being riled but anyone that defends these companies, either directly or indirectly, from lawyers to anyone that chirps "Well, it's not their fault or responsibility...", is either completely inept or morally bankrupt (aka scum). And what really gets me is we let this happen. For all the reasons in the world, we let it get to the point where highway robbery of the disadvantaged can be protected in the eyes of the law. Just to make a buck. I was hoping to use a line from Unforgiven, "We all have it coming", but the fact of the matter is not everyone does and it sickens me. 

It really doesn't have much to do with anything but I can't help but remember a time when I was accosted by some military guys at the park one night, how grateful I should be to them for being able to enjoy such a place because of them in the first place, and then I think of this current incident. I wonder how proud those same guys would be to know this incident with my mother, and others similar to it, is also what they and so many others, my brother included, fight and sacrifice for.

...I really hate America sometimes...

Especially when I know we can be so much better and so much more.