Healthcare Costs Can Be Hard on Poor People

By Michael Boyd

My back hurts, so I go to the hospital. They find out I don’t have insurance and they don’t give me medicine. Then I get billed $2,000 for an x-ray and some aspirin.

The clinic I go to isn’t authorized to give narcotic medicine,  so they give me aspirin and tell me to do these stretches. They say get into these crazy positions. Well, if I could get into those positions, my back wouldn’t hurt in the first place.

The job situation is rough.   If it wasn’t for me doing the Chronicle, I don’t know how I would have made it through the winter. Going to a temp. agency, they take out taxes and transportation, you don’t have any money left. So how can you save to get out of being homeless?  So then you just have to keep going. Then you hope you don’t get robbed of all the money you’ve been saving.

At the age of 46, if you don’t have education, it’s rough finding a job. No one wants to hire a 46 year old who can barely stand up for an hour, even at McDonald’s.  If it wasn’t for God I’d be doing things to make money illegally. God has changed that.

By my doing the Chronicle, it’s not about the money. It’s about telling people where they can donate clothes. When they tell me they’ve told me they’ve donated clothes at West Side or St. Malachi’s.

I found out Jennifer is cancer-free.  I’m happy, even though she gets on my nerves—a lot. My daughter turned 21 and my grandson turned one so I will press on.

Copyright Cleveland Street Chronicle

May 2014 Cleveland, Ohio