In which I finally succumb to the pressure to blog about politics

And here's a secret: If I had voted, it wouldn't have been for you anyway. At heart, I'm still the Republican upper-middle-class girl raised in a Republican upper-middle-class family that I've always been. I know most of my peers have fashionably rebelled against their conservative upbringings, but as I mentioned: I just haven't cared that much.

But here's the thing. See, despite my family's upper-middle-class roots, right now we're not the wealthiest of constituents. Heck, we're downright low-income. And in the past year, we've had to overcome our snooty Republican pride and enroll our family in Medicaid - so that we can be sure our kids will have access to the healthcare they need, so that we can afford vaccinations and office visits and, most importantly, Mommy's antidepressants and still have money left over for groceries. 

This is a painful thing, for an upper-middle-class Republican girl trapped in a low-income body. The process of applying (and then re-applying every three months) is humiliating enough already: Show us your pay stubs from the past six months, and your lease, and your utility bills, and your ID, and proof that your children really belong to you, and then wait while we scrutinize each one in case you might have forged it! Then there's whipping out the card at every doctor's appointment and getting The Look that the receptionist reserves for parasitic families who can't be bothered to get jobs and take care of their children. What fun this is!

But a process that requires a fair amount of pride-swallowing and bureaucracy-tolerating on a good day requires a complete pride amputation on a bad one. Bad days have involved things like getting extensive bills from the pediatrician's office because the claim they sent to Medicaid for the kids' checkups and immunizations came back denied - why? because despite my having sent in all the required forms TWICE, Medicaid has no record of my kids' coverage. Really bad days have involved going to the drugstore to refill my antidepressant and having the pharmacist tell me that the prescription is denied, and my then calling Medicaid only to be told, after forty minutes on hold in the drugstore parking lot with the kids whining in the backseat, that they will not cover my prescription until my doctor calls them to confirm that I really do need it, because even though I have that piece of paper called a prescription? the one that is my doctor's way of saying, Here is a drug you need to take? that is not good enough for Medicaid, and by the way it will take TEN TO FOURTEEN DAYS for the form to go through. So meanwhile I buy the medicine myself because it is NOT a good idea for me to wait ten to fourteen days before I fill this prescription, and I keep my receipt in a safe place so I can be reimbursed for it and go buy some groceries, and finally Medicaid tells me that my doctor's note has cleared and I just need to take my receipt back to the drugstore and the pharmacist will reimburse me for the medicine - but wait! the pharmacist replies that since it was Medicaid's fault that the drug wasn't covered, Medicaid will have to reimburse me themselves! - and I'm left relaying lengthy and confusing messages from Medicaid to the drugstore and back, because they refuse to talk to each other directly and I'm stuck in the middle like a kid whose parents are divorcing. And meanwhile my prescription is due for another refill, and I'm hoping that this time I will just be able to pick up the prescription without going through more beaurocratic acrobatics, I'm hoping that this time I will be left with some grocery money.