Memorial

XXXV.Chester

THE pain was really getting to him.

He didn’t have medical insurance and Remar reiterated his offer to find doctors willing to see Chess on a contingency basis. It was called being treated “on a lien,” or something like that. The lawyer compared his situation to having been in a crash — you could rent a car while your own was under repair without shelling anything out. Vendors and insurers usually had good-faith agreements re restitution that sometimes applied to doctors as well. It was important that Chess begin to create a papertrail of medical bills. “This isn’t a self-esteem issue,” said the lawyer. “You should find the help you need, pronto.” He would “procure” a list of clinics the firm had worked with. On the strength of the facts of the case, Remar felt reasonably confident Chester could get quality care for nothing or at least pennies on the dollar. He even offered a cash advance. “Don’t let your pride work against you. Again, that’s not the issue here.”

His landlord, Karen, Don Knotts’s daughter, stopped in with soup and sandwiches to commiserate. She was rangy, red-haired, radiant, and big-boned, with a gangly, generous smile. (She was an actress who used to do theater with her dad; Chess loved hearing stories about Life with Don.) She told him that a friend of hers who didn’t have health insurance woke up in the middle of the night with chest pain and went to the ER. They put some kind of stent in there and by the time he left—12 hours later because he was so freaked out about how much everything was costing — he’d racked up $47,000 in bills. She was surprised he didn’t drop dead right then and there. Karen said the guy was suing the hospital for what attorneys were calling a 600 % markup.

You didn’t need a whistleblower to tell you how vulnerable you were in the U S of A: with or without medical coverage. The uninsured (all 45,000,000 of em) were circled like enfeebled prey, while a corporate syndicate of turkey buzzards sought out the soft anus of the dead and dying. Hospitals had Mob-style accountants keeping 2 sets of books — one for scum, the other for bluecrossed bull’s-eyes. Paradoxically, the uninsured were the schmucks who got jacked. Ripe for some homecooked-style fucking, with all the trimmins. You didn’t even have to be in possession of a scabby street person profile; you could just be some poor slob Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf manager going through tough times who can’t afford the few hundred a month for so-called coverage. Even if you had coverage, they found a way to shit in your mouth. The hospitals added insult to injury by calling themselves “not-for-profit.” What a joke!

Let’s say you wanted to do the right thing and spring for the premium. Be a good boy and all that yadda yadda good citizen horseshit. Well, tough—rates had gone up 70 % in just 3 years. 60 Minutes said 50 % of all personal bankruptcies could be traced to overinflated medical bills. Hospitals kept the costs of their procedures secret, so you couldn’t even comparison-shop; accounting departments sent out drone missile invoices left and right, blowing up middleclass houses like piece of shit Shiite temples.

It was a marathon rape everywhere you turned. Didn’t matter if you were an enlisted person who died in the line of duty; there was still a cap of 12K. They knocked on your door and forked over a “military death gratuity”—that’s what they called it — like a restaurant tip. Raping Private Ryan. The government dunned amputees for costs to replace cheap body armor. Deduct it from the gratuity! Chess read in the paper how they didn’t send soldiers home anymore by special transport, with flags draped over the coffins. Fuck that—they shipped em in cargo holds, commercial air, wrapped in plastic.

You couldn’t actually sue for malpractice anymore either; there were more caps than fuckin West Point on grad day. If a strung-out surgeon snagged the wrong kidney or a Down-syndrome RN accidentally switched your nametag with Joe Prostate Cancer and the next morning they murdered your hard-on and you had to be diapered the rest of your life, it was Eat Me Time: damages were capped with a capital C. The gameshow was rigged — everything had its price but the price was wrong, and it didn’t matter whether they blinded you or left sponges in your pussy that tortured you for 6 years before someone figured it out, if they figured it out at all, or they transfused the wrong blood. We’re sorry! capped out at a few hundred grand. Deal or No Deal! That was the law and it was global: even Holocaust reparations were paltry. Let’s say your gonads got irradiated by the SS and for the next 50 years intermittently balloon-bled like pomegranates, or your nips were carved off by der Weise Angel, or you got twappy and phthisical from chemical injections — the most you could get was 3 to 8 Gs. End of story. Finito. Cap City. Capo di tutti Capo.

Done fucking No Deal…

He’d settle, all right, but only for what was fair and balanced—one thing Chess did know was he didn’t plan on being 60 years old and still in court. Eventually, come payday, he would have to sign off on future-related medical procedures. The trick was, he needed reasonable assurance he’d physically recover and not blow whatever money they gave him on potential surgeries, extensive rehab or whatever. He had to think worst-case scenario. That was the new fun zone, right? The Worst Case Scenario game? He knew the drill from fender-bender whiplash — you had to sign a waiver once they cut the check, releasing the big boys from liability if anything went hinky down the line. He knew that much, and Remar confirmed it. The Li-ars had the ability.

Still it was kicky to do a little fantasizing about the jackpot. He didn’t want to get his hopes up but what was the harm? Probably healthy. Chess lit a joint and let his mind drift toward insane riches. The Catholics were really cleaning up. The Church was running scared; at least people were seeing results. A couple million here, a couple million there — in most cases, it was altar boys who got blown on ’70s camping trips. How tough could that be? A sleeping bag by the fire, marshmallows on sticks, hot and hale Marys around your dick…but everyone was so traumatized. That’s what kind of weak fucks Americans were. Put em on the wrong end of preachercock at a tender age and they become simpering snitches, queers, and serial killers. If he knew it’d make him a millionaire, Chess would have let los padres bite the wafer to their hearts’ content. The men in collars could fist him at Roger Mahony’s Bar and Grill for all he cared — just throw another few hundred thousand in the kitty.

Dear Mr Chester Herlihy,

As a responsible citizen, you’ve paid taxes most of your life, and that’s why I think you have a right to be profoundly concerned by what I’m about to tell you.

Until recently, there was considerable confusion over who pays the high cost of nursing home care…Medicare, Medicaid, or you??? With the passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, our federal government made it clear who is primarily responsible for the cost of long-term care, and it is you!

Don’t take chances with your future!!!!!!!!

You were pre-selected to receive this special long-term care insurance offer from Mutual United Evergreen Capital Assurance Company—