Wading through the morass of the health care system

It's so hard to believe the rigamarole that I have to go through in order to get a pair of shoes, then be able to wear them. Since I have an inch and a half discrepancy of my left leg due to a long ago accident, I have to wear a large external lift on my left shoes. However, in order to get them put on, I need a prescription, and the one I have is now 10 years old (the original prescription given to me by my primary care physician) and apparently is no longer acceptable, meaning that now I have to make an appointment with my orthopaedic surgeon (can you say, co-pay? cha-CHING!) and get a prescription for shoe lifts every time I want to buy a pair of shoes and have them modified. And to add insult to injury, my health insurance does not cover orthotics, even though it is a medical necessity for me (more cha-CHING!). I simply cannot fathom why it is that I have to jump through so many hoops and spend so much money just to get a pair of shoes modified for me to be able to wear them. It just doesn't make any sense. Even if I go to an insurance approved orthotics provider, insurance won't pay for the lifts, and none of this makes any sense to me whatsoever. Is it any wonder that I have so few pairs of shoes, and the ones I do have, I tend to wear until they are just about unwearable? It's tough enough to afford shoes these days as it is, since everything's become hideously expensive due to rising energy costs, but now, to add to my misery, if I want to buy a good pair of shoes that will give me maximum support and motion control for my habitual supination, this will be costly enough without having to cope with the additional costs of having my left shoe modified. Good shoes can end up costing me well over $200. Add to that a cost of up to $110 for a lift and you can see that a good pair of shoes can end up breaking the bank for me. It's ridiculous that my insurance considers this to be an "exclusionary cost" when it is, in fact, a medical necessity.

This is just one of many reasons that our health care system needs serious reform NOW. Along with higher education costs, health care costs are another soaring expense for many families and are running completely out of control with no end in sight. No one seems intent on stopping the bleeding because of how much money is being thrown down the drain to fight an illegal war that also seems to have no end in sight. We're so in hock to China and Saudi Arabia that if they ever want to collect on our debt, this country would go bankrupt overnight. As it is, the Feds bailed out Bear Stearns in order to prevent a complete collapse of our economy, but they won't bail out homeowners who are victims of bad Wall Street investments and rampant greed. Nothing in this economy makes sense anymore, nothing. Everything's gone topsy turvy, with the rich getting richer and the poor being screwed. It boggles me why, time and time again, people vote against their own economic self interest, and then when their jobs are sent overseas and their homes are foreclosed on, they continue to do the same stupid thing over and over again, voting in Republicans whose only interest is in enriching the rich and screwing the poor. It makes no sense. But then, nothing in the past 7½ years has made much sense. I just hope that this time, people are waking up to the hard reality of who they've been voting into office and what those folks have done to screw things up so badly. Then again, P.T. Barnum said it best when he said, "There's a sucker born every day."