Some thoughts.

Healthcare

What is wrong with the medical system in this country? When I get sick I should be able to go see the nearest doctor to check my symptoms and determine if:

1. I’m a big fat wuss and I should go home and suck it up
2. I’ve got the same nasty cold that everyone else has, and I should take some antibiotics
3. I’m off the charts, and I should go to a specialist

That should be a human right.

This whole mess of creating a relationship with a general practitioner makes no sense to me. Two years ago I lived in North Carolina. One year ago I lived in Santa Rosa. Now I live in San Francisco, and I could stay here for two years or twenty. I just don’t know. And I do not have the time or interest or inclination to court some physician. I’m generally healthy. I generally take good care of myself. But when I get sick, I don’t want to have to sort through a list of 60 doctors who may or may not be accepting new patients, who may or may not have any available appointments today, and who may or may not open until 9:30am and take lunch from noon to 2pm.

I am very fortunate to have health insurance, but I need more choices than a family doctor and the emergency room. In Santa Rosa I went to the emergency room twice, once for a sprained wrist that I thought was broken, and once for poison oak that I thought was an allergic reaction to neosporin. And both times I felt like such a dolt, sitting around for hours surrounded by people in much worse condition than I. Eventually I discovered the concept of Urgent Care (one notch down from Emergency) where I was able to get my poison oak treated. It was simple, easy, painless, and I got fixed. That is the sort of universal healthcare I envision writ large.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, San Francisco county has NO Urgent Care centers. I live right next to a hospital for chrissakes, but their emergency room and state of the art burn center does nothing for an annoying cough that keeps me up all night. And the city’s groundbreaking Health Access Plan that would seem to fill in this gap? Not going to be available to me cause I’m insured.

Voting

There must be a special circle to hell devoted to those individuals who try to prevent people from voting or deceive who someone votes for or fabricate voting results. Why don’t we prosecute voter fraud as stringently as counterfeiting? 230 years of democracy and you think we’d have voting licked.

In August when I moved from Sonoma County to San Francisco County, I thought among all the change of address forms I filled out in August, somewhere in there was a box I checked to automatically register me to vote at my new address, or at least send me the necessary materials in order to register to vote in SF. Apparently that was not the case, because when the election was close enough for me to actually care about it (Monday, October 30 to be precise), it turns out I was not registered in San Francisco, SOL in Sonoma County, and it was too late to register (the deadline was Oct 23). This steams me like nothing else. Voting Should Just Work. I should not have to work at it, or maintain it, or fill out paperwork that duplicates other paperwork in order to vote.

So tomorrow morning I’ll be walking over to the hospital that isn’t able to treat my cough to cast a practically undocumented provisional ballot that may not get counted.

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