'If I didn’t have Medicaid assistance for my mental health, I wouldn’t be alive today'

But in late 2017, I realized thatwas not okay, and I could no longer ignore what was going on inside of me. I started seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist, I got put on medication, I started to feel better. That foundation was ripped away from me when I no longer had insurance through my job. I was offered the option of paying for COBRA .

Going off my medication after a series of traumatic, life-altering events, with a ton of other things happening in my personal life, nearly killed me. By October 2018, I was afraid I would take my own life. I was crying every day, not eating, not socializing, emotionally supporting my alcoholic mother from afar who was taking care of her own dying mom , working just enough to make sure I could pay my rent, and staring at the walls.

My brother and I had stopped speaking a year earlier and now he was having a son I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to meet. My closest friend and our other roommate moved out of the apartment we all shared. I was trying my best but completely, totally, and utterly isolated on every front, left to fend for myself on the heels of a complex-PTSD and possible bipolar II diagnosis. I also tore my MCL and had to hobble around barely able to walk for months.

But I still had one person who cared about me: my therapist from when I had insurance. She knew how isolated I was and encouraged me to apply to MediCal, aka the California Medical Assistance Program. As a resident of Los Angeles making the amount I currently do, I was eligible for coverage under the state’s Medicaid program serving low-income individuals and families. She made a point to see me whenever she had a spare hour and I had a spare $30.

I don’t want to die or live my life resenting how much it costs to maintain my health and my body: you only get one so you have to take care of it. But I do want to put an end to our current healthcare system. If a state as big as California can figure out how to manage providing what is essentially universal healthcare within our current systems, it’s proof that the whole of the United States of America can do it, too.

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