Diary of a Neighborhood Pharmacist, Entry #1

I've been hit with expenses, and so I've been working in drug stores, and this is even before I start training for a semi-full-time (every other week) job. You see, it's true (pretty much) that my passive income is enough to get by on, and is way higher than many people's, but I have too many things I want to do, or have to, and I decline to go into savings for that stuff.

One of the days I did 10 hours in an old-fashioned drug store in Brooklyn. It wasn't old-fashioned in the sense of having mortars and pestles and pill tiles, but it was in a working class area, and that makes all the difference. Where I live, we're sort of "educated middle class." Nobody is well off, but we all have a degree or two, and when we need professional information we can ask a neighbor. We're a subdivision of teachers, accountants, psychologists, and not-very-successful lawyers, with an occasional nurse thrown in. Nurses are the first called for all health information.

But the Brooklyn neighborhood is mostly tradesmen, and when people need health information they go to the pharmacy. It's not just drug information, but anything relating to physical well-being. For someone with my background, it's a little bit scary. I'm great on drug information, particularly with a computerized crib sheet in front of me, but I'm being told symptoms and I know I'm not qualified.

Worse, some of the people asking are the working poor, that vast stretch of America that's too well-off for Medicaid and can't afford private health insurance. I wound up recommending that people go to emergency rooms, knowing that they really couldn't afford the visit, and that the expense may just go on a credit card that will charge them 18% or 21% until they can work it off.

Friday, I worked on Staten Island, in a pharmacy where most of the patients are on Medicaid. Medicaid is the program providing health care to the almost poorest people. That is, they have to be broke, but not yet homeless. I finally got around to looking up the eligibility for Medicaid, and for a family of four it means a monthly net income of $992 and assets of not more than $5,950. I find I can sympathize, but not empathize, because I'm simply too far removed. I recall reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, but that didn't help my understanding all that much.

It's just starting to get through to me now.

See the next installment, Diary of a Neighborhood Pharmacist, Entry #2.

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