First thanks to Alberto for making a contribution today. The generosity of some people never ceases to amaze me. Well today was the big day that I had been waiting for. 3 months it took me to get an appeal hearing for some medical assistance. I was up before dawn. Nearly waking everyone else in the shelter in the process because my alarm was set to full volume, and it was LOUD.
So I make my way over to where the hearing is scheduled to take place. It ws only a couple blocks from the shelter and surprisingly the weather wasn’t that bad. The windchill was a whopping 11F degrees. I got there about 20 minutes early so I could warm up in the lobby before going in.
It’s now 9:30am and I’m sitting in the courtroom. Just me at my table and the judge at the bench. The other-side (The State of Pennsylvania) doesn’t show up. So I am thinking GREAT! I win automatically. Cause surely if I didn’t show up, I would lose automatically. However the judge calls someone and after about 5 minutes on the phone the judge says we’re going to reschedule this for Monday Jan 21st. My head sunk low. I was pretty pissed off. I finally spoke up and said to the judge “I’m sure your time is valuable as is mine, why are you allowing them to waist both our time like this?” The judge said that sometimes they (meaning the state) gets so backed up, the sometimes forget and as a courtesy to the state, the judge would give them another chance.
So I leave the courtroom fuming with anger. I waited 3 months to get jerked around by the system. Our system is broken. There is no other explanation. I know for a fact I would have not been given the same courtesy had the roles been reversed. The judge also explained to me that even if I do eventually win my appeal. It will not cover any past medical expenses. Only future incurring expenses for 1 year.
So I’m still on the hook for 6 thousand dollars no matter the outcome. This makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve sold practically everything I own. Now thanks to some new law in my state, even if I declared bankruptcy those outstanding medical expenses can not be discharged.
So I before heading back to the shelter, I stopped off at a law firm, which happened to be in the same building. I asked to schedule an appointment to talk with a lawyer. I feel as though I’m getting the run around with this system. I have no idea how much this legal aid will cost me yet.
I then went back to the shelter because my mind was just completely blown and all I wanted to do was block out everything and write some code. Which I’ve been doing for the past several hours.
If you can help by contributing to my cause, I would really appreciate it. If you can’t help financially there are other ways to help. You can go to my Indegogo page and click the share buttons. My Indegogo campaign started off with a bang, now it’s only getting a few visitors per day, so any help you can provide to help me get some traffic to that page would be nice.
Another way you can help is by signing up for a free Dropbox account using this link. When you install their software, you’ll get an extra 500mb of cloud storage, and so will I. As a developer I can always use more cloud storage. There is also a free Pligg module in which you can backup your Pligg site to the cloud on a regular basis. Trust me it’s good to always have a fresh backup handy that’s located in the cloud.
Tune in tomorrow
~ ChuckRoast