Sometimes the hardest thing is how dehumanizing getting help is. Be grateful that you qualify for Medicaid, even when it's $13 an hour. Be grateful even when they halve your hours for no reason. Be grateful even though you have to file each day to the minute for those paltry handfuls of $13 hours. Be grateful as what insurance is "able" to do just magically shrinks. Be grateful that there's still funding this summer for Medicaid at all.
Sometimes I can't be grateful for the munificence of insurance. It's an insult that people in genuine need (much more so than us) have to beg and scrape and get their hours cut. That... they have to justify the importance of their life, through all the ones and zeroes and administrative hoops, as if an error means they no longer deserve it.
It's all so invisible and degrading. Be grateful for the scraps, as if you didn't work for years for them, as if the person in need isn't really in need. For anyone in this situation, I see you through the invisibility. Their refusal to grant leniency and dignity has nothing to do with your worth.
