(Fill in the blank) Nation: better living through modern chemistry

Is this world over medicated and over diagnosed? It seems that every time I pick up a magazine I see ads for five of the newest wonder drugs, the happy man/woman/child/family on the medication raves how much better life is with the drug, how they don’t know how they lived before it. And nowhere does it say what the drug is used to treat… I end up reading the fine print trying to figure it out. How many people just rip that ad out and bring it to their doctor, and how many doctors will willingly prescribe the latest and greatest?

Over diagnosed. Syndrome this and Disorder that. It’s never our fault. Even the stuff that is our fault isn’t our fault because it was just the disorder. New wonder drugs are available to treat it, but insurance won’t cover that. Sometimes they do, but we are too ashamed of the label to tell them and thus go slowly broke paying for our meds. The disorder may go out of fashion at some point in the future and we’ll stop flaunting it- but that label will follow us forever. If you plan on changing jobs, who doesn’t in this economy, it’ll turn into a preexisting condition and they won’t cover you at all. Not that they’ll tell you this up front. No, they’ll wait until you file a claim, pocketing your premiums and denying care.

Am I just a bit bitter about this topic? Yup. Does it personally affect me and my family? Not right now, but it used to and I’m willing to bet that it will again. Although we’re covered by Tricare- “We Try to Care” –and don’t have to deal with deductibles and copays and the nightmare of referral, because I had cancer as a young girl I cannot afford to be without insurance. It will cost an arm and a leg in the civilian world to get private insurance, and I can forget about life insurance. Our daughter was a preemie. She’s screwed now as well. That early PDA and time spent on a ventilator is all it will take to make any future policy too expensive for her to afford. My husband really wasn’t kidding or exaggerating when he told me at her birth that if he wasn’t in the navy he would have lost both me and the baby. And he’d still be in debt the rest of his life trying to pay for trying to save our lives.