I am very grateful to the ACA for allowing me, as a freelancer, to have any insurance at all. Yes, I’d vastly prefer a normal system where I didn’t have to make these calculations & health care was free at point of use.

But I don’t got that.

I got ADD & US citizenship

A thread

For many years, I had insurance through my corporately-employed spouse & no issues getting the prescription that works best for my ADD, which is called Vyvanse.

I was on it for eight years. Then I got divorced & remarried & we are both freelancers so we gotta ride that ACA train

Then I fell pregnant.

I had to go off all meds, which in turn made it impossible for me to work in any sustained capacity because—funny story!—turns out ADHD is an actual disorder & not just an excuse for kids acting up in class & I’m not terribly functional unmedicated.

I also nursed for 18m, so no meds there because SIDEBAR there are no studies on ADHD meds & nursing/pregnant people because A. Big Pharma don’t give a fuck, women should just sacrifice & B. No one wants to put their infants in that study SO GOOD NEWS MUM JUST GIVE EVERYTHING UP

All of this means only in the last 9-12 months have I been allowed to have the medication that allows me to be a half-assembles shambles of a human being.

Only I can’t have that medication. Because my ACA plan, & indeed any plan I can afford, only covers “generic” prescriptions.

This means Vyvanse, because it is newer & better, is not covered under my insurance. Only Adderall is, as that’s a “generic” brand.

So Adderall costs $10 at point of sale, & Vyvanse costs $323 for a month.

Obviously I have been taking the generic because I’m not Scrooge McDuck

Trouble is, Adderall sucks for me.

Adderall is the struggle bus. It gets me where I need to go...eventually, but the engine is on fire, the tires are bald, kids are hanging out the windows screaming for their god & the driver is doing Fortnite dances on the roof

Vyvanse is Uber

The generic sort of works. Im back to what I’d consider 75% of normal output & functionality

But it has a lot of side effects, & unlike Vyvanse doesn’t help with my anxiety but actually amplifies it, & simply doesn’t work as well, so that I’ve been living life on 75% for awhile

I’m talking all this out bc for a minute it seemed like my insurance was going to change its mind, grandfather me in as I was on it for so long before my pregnancy, & cover Vyvanse.

But then they were like LOL PSYCH NAH & it’s hard to swallow the hope that I could get life back

When you’re neurodivergent & find the right chemical combo to allow yr brain to live, if not its best life, at least a productive one, it’s very hard to have that taken away & replaced with Folgers Crystals, you know?

Harder to know its only cost keeping that sludge in your mug

I don’t think the ACA will change to let lower-tier plans cover non-generics any time soon. I think I’m stuck with the wrong meds for my brain, the side effects & anxiety, for the foreseeable forever. It sucks so much.

A good life comes in a pill & I can’t afford the pill.

This is the case, in much more extreme ways, for those who need life-saving meds like insulin to continue breathing at all. But people & insurance cos tend to have a lot more sympathy & time for that horrorshow

“Just use a day planner!” —actual doctor advice to solve my problem

ADHD is a tough one because soooo many people just don’t believe it’s real, or if they do, just think it means you can’t focus & kind of see meds as a kind of cheating at life. It’s just not well understood, nor do many who don’t have it get how debilitating it can be.

Plus, people sell meds we need to function for recreation & “help” with finals. So theyre highly controlled substances, we have to have humiliating urine tests every year to make sure we’re taking, not selling them, but it’s still popularly thought we don’t really have a disorder

So I’m stuck in this place where Im ride or die on that janky garbage bus because I can’t afford the car every month, but all the official people + population at large are like “you don’t even need the bus, faker, other people have real problems”

But my engine still on fire tho

Please remember all this, & 1000 other stories, when people say they don’t care about politics.

I can’t get the meds I need because the people who could change that aren’t in office. But I can get SOMETHING because Obama was instead of McCain.

It’s all politics. Always.