Pssst. Am I the Only One Who Cannot Figure Out This Stuff?

Yes. I'm still sick. Just thought I'd let you know. I bark like a performing seal. All that is missing is the brightly color ball to balance on my nose. I DO have a brightly colored nose, if that counts.

When my dad brought my mom over today he handed me an envelope. I still have several envelopes I've been handed to go through. Behind I am in envelope attending.

This one was marked URGENT or some other such word that made my stomach lurch.

Have I mentioned lately that second only to moving, I HATE figuring out insurances and prescription stuff for my parents? Have I? I certainly believe that I have.

The URGENT envelope told me that my parents prescription coverage is going to go up in every way possible. They are presently in the 'gap' where they are both required to pay full price for their medications. Even that gap will be widening next year. Yet, they will be paying more for less.

It used to be so easy. They had very good insurance from my dad's former employer. The prescription coverage was great. It always covered everything. They paid a handsome premium, but it was worth it.

Then that insurer in a fit of what can only be described as utter madness DROPPED the prescription coverage.

My life since those insurance people dropped the prescription coverage has dropped drastically in quality. I spend much time searching out better and more affordable programs for my parents.

Did anyone ever stop to consider that the people whose lives they are messing around with are old? On fixed incomes? Unable to figure out the strange and tangled mess that insuring the elderly has become?

Under their first health insurance, the one that still had prescription coverage, I could solve all of their paper work problems with one simple email. Everything was on-line and simple for ME to understand. My parents understand nothing about computers. My dad is thrilled when I play a foreign language for him, or show him my blog in Spanish (i have to show it to him in spanish, so he can't read it. pictures are not translated. funny, isn't it?) or when I play an old Amos and Andy show for him. But, to have him order drugs on line - he would not be able to do it. My mother can no longer find her way out of my bathroom, so, I truly doubt anyone would expect her to figure this mess out.

So, who gets to?

Oh, Dear "Powers That Be", it falls to my parent's uneducated child (me) to figure this out. She who would rather be doing a thousand other equally distasteful things or even tasteful things, but finds herself AGAIN, needing to maneuver the horrible mess that health insurance in America has come to.

"Powers That Be" please note that in the past three years I have spent more time on this than I have on anything else in my life.

I want a permanent solution (not the kind that will curl my hair, although, this one does do that...yes...it does) that will give my parents, parents who have always been wise and discerning in EVERYTHING they do to be cared for in a way that brings honor and respect to them.

They have fantastic doctors. But, the help that they need is being blocked at every turn by this mess that you, "Powers That Be", have created.

I cannot figure out why the richest nation in the world cannot solve this. It is an appalling situation.

I would devote all the rest of the years of my life to searching out what is best for my parents, but then YOU HAVE TO STOP CHANGING THE RULES. Will this be the FORTH November in a row that I have had to find another way to get them the things that they NEED?

I am sick and tired and depressed.

Something has GOT to change. This is INSANE.

I cannot do it anymore, because I do know the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing in the same way every time and expecting a different result.

Soon, there will need to be a law placed in effect similar to the law in my state that allows a mother to drop off her newborn baby at a police or fire station with no questions asked. This law will need to cover the other end of the age spectrum.

And, I will end with this wonderful word from Calvin's dad of Calvin and Hobbes fame:

Slippinrippindangfangrottenzargbargadingdong!