Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
This is what the world needs now: two free-thinking “seasoned” Black women speaking their truth and inspiring others to do the same. Shaped by 45 years of friendship that began at the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School through the Ivy League, medical school, marriages, divorces, triumphs, parenting queer children, life-threatening illness and many many amazing adventures. Each week, besties Leslie Osei-Tutu and Angella Fraser will push against boundaries in love, culture, careers, faith, politics and out-dated assumptions about women of a certain age. Remember, you’re never too old to change your mind…or your hair! (but more on that later :-)All views are our own and do not reflect the views of our institution/company. Information provided is not intended to serve as medical advice.
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Copay Blues
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To hear these Besties talk, one would think that one of them is a doctor! But all jokes aside, Leslie is not giving medical advice here. The Besties discuss a recent experience when faced with the high costs of prescription drugs and healthcare in general in America. Leslie’s in shock at learning that her new copayment will be for her migraine medication - several thousand dollars (her headache disappeared immediately!).
We are told that America has the best medical care but what about those who don’t have financial or digital access? There are so many countries, even “poor” ones that provide universal healthcare to their populations. Hmmm, perhaps the Besties will consider moving abroad like the ExodUS Summit encourages. It’s a virtual conference for Black women planning a sabbatical, expat move, or nomadic life abroad. Co-founders Stephanie Perry and Rhoshida Dowe have been advocates for living outside of the US and they’ve caught Ange’s attention. Stay tuned for updates.
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Hey Sicky. Hello. How's it going?
SPEAKER_00It's going well. For the next five minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, we're gonna start into our conversations. And then once again, I'll forget to say. Welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.
SPEAKER_02Brooklyn. Hey Sicky.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Stop telling people that I'm sick. I haven't started coughing yet.
SPEAKER_02All right. This is just a warning that um it will happen. And it's been going on for a while, Les. It really has.
SPEAKER_00I know.
SPEAKER_02What's going on?
SPEAKER_00So you're violating my hip.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. Wow. Okay. Listen.
SPEAKER_00Disclosure of medical information without the person's permission.
SPEAKER_02Now, okay. So this is what permission looks like to me. Okay, go ahead. Um I'm recording that.
SPEAKER_00We are recording this. So before the board or before the courts.
SPEAKER_02Permission looks like. Les, do you feel well enough to do a podcast yesterday, the day before? Uh I don't think so. No. Les this morning, do you feel well enough, you think, to record? No, no, no. That's not how it happened. You said you want to record today? I said. Do you think you feel well enough to do that? I didn't tell you to blow me up on the code. Okay, listen, listen, you made this a legal thing, so let's just be whole like all the legal stuff, okay? So full transparency. So you then said, Yeah, I think I can get through it. I may cough, but it's okay for people to know that I'm sick.
SPEAKER_00If I bring it up, if I start coughing. All right, so I have the flu.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you do.
SPEAKER_00I've been sick with the flu for the last five days. Um, I started my intervention with Tama flu early. Good. Um, and I'm feeling better. But man, I did get the flu vaccine. I do all the time. Yeah. And people will say that perhaps when I I got the vaccine, I would have had it worse than I had it for the last few days. But I had the whole nine chills, yeah, body aches.
SPEAKER_02Your eyes, your eye sockets were hurting, you said.
SPEAKER_00My eyes were hurting. Just looking to the left. It's every time I moved my eyes, it was painful. That's crazy. That's crazy, right? It's really crazy. Sweats, night sweats, cough. But I'm feeling better. I'm feeling better. Good. And you don't get the flu shots, right?
SPEAKER_02I I got one for the first time um this year. Um, I got the flu, I got shingles, and I got the last um COVID booster on the same day, actually. Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember that actually. Yeah. I just wanted to be I know all those shots tell us that we're getting old. We always I was just kinda nervous about shingles for some reason because I've had um I've had uh what is the one that it's associated with? Um chicken pox. Chicken pox, yes. Um, as a child. And so um I just said, let me just let me just get them all done.
SPEAKER_00So why were you nervous about the shingles?
SPEAKER_02In particular, I think because um a couple reasons. Um a friend of of of my sister got it and it was awful, and I've seen one too many uh commercials for for it, or commercials, whatever, advert advertisements for it. And um it was just let me just do it.
SPEAKER_00Let me just do it. I'm here. I've never had shingles, thank god. But a couple of um info points. It doesn't do something?
SPEAKER_02No, okay.
SPEAKER_00It does come from the same virus that causes chicken pox. Okay, but moreover, as I understand it, you said I've had chicken pox. You could not get shingles if you've never had chicken pox.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00Right, because it has to live dormant in your nerve cells in order to um yeah, okay, scary support.
SPEAKER_02By the way, this is not can you say that this is not medical advice?
SPEAKER_00No, I didn't say anything about uh offering medical advice. I'm just giving you some information about where good I wanted to do.
SPEAKER_02Shingles come from.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00I am not offering rent medical advice to anyone other than my bestie right over the age. Just telling her, give giving her some info that Dr. Google told me. But yeah, I got the shingles vaccine also. It's a series of two.
SPEAKER_02Oh, is it it is two?
SPEAKER_00It is. You gotta go back and get the second one, babe for four coverage. I think it's a month. Don't tell me you missed it. You gotta start all over.
SPEAKER_02They didn't say. I'm gonna look at my paperwork. They didn't say.
SPEAKER_00All right, go look. If I um if I if I'm correct, I believe it's your shingrix vaccine.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I have it on my card.
SPEAKER_00It should be a two-step. Unless they just wanted to stick my ass twice. No, it is two. It's it's two.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I'm gonna look. I I heard nothing about that about um doing a follow-up at all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but sinkles I hear is really nasty and ugly, and it can present in in ways that are just awful. Um, lesions that can affect your eye and your face. And so in fact, I remember um when I worked in pain management a thousand years ago, um, the patient came into the office and she couldn't even put on clothing. It was so painful she came in in a nightgown. Oh my gosh. Um, because her lesions were so blistering and painful.
SPEAKER_02Okay. I will be checking on this today and scheduling my appointment this week for sure. For both if you've missed the week. If I miss one, exactly, to get um fully. Oh, that would be something. Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah, I know, wait, I know you're not, I know you're not laughing. Like, no, what would be something really? It's a cough coming on, it's not a laugh. Oh, okay. Okay, because I'm not sure why why that would even be funny, but okay.
SPEAKER_00No, it's not it would be right, no, it wouldn't be funny, but it would be typical. So, um listen, you ain't gonna believe what I found out today because today is New Year's Day. Happy New Year!
SPEAKER_02Happy New Year! Happy New Year.
SPEAKER_00So you know, with the new year comes new health insurance and new deductibles and things like that. So um, my company, we actually changed carriers, so I have a new carrier completely.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And I put in for a refill of the injectable medication I take for migraine headaches. Here's more medical information. But so I s I have been using um they call them biologics, um, medications that uh impact your immune system and work in the immune s realm in order to activate your own response to issues, right? Illnesses. So I started taking this medication called AJOV, AJOVI, that's the um brand name.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um to prevent migraine headaches. It's a once-a-month injection. Um, before that, I was using another injectable called M Gality. Worked for a couple months, but stopped working. So I switched over. This has been pretty effective.
SPEAKER_02All right. Can I ask why why would it stop working? What would make it stop working?
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I gotta say, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Must be you, but okay.
SPEAKER_00It just broke. It just broke. The sentence broke. So, so and so I put in online. I, you know, I have refills, I put in for my refill.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00It showed me what my copay was gonna be. Guess what it was? Um let me just tell you. Okay. Um the last few times I refilled this prescription, my copay was zero.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00You know, but I know you're maybe I met my deductible or whatever, you know. Three injectable months.
SPEAKER_03What?
SPEAKER_00And when I saw two thousand dollars, I said, I don't have a headache anymore. I'm cured. It's a miracle.
SPEAKER_01Hallelujah. You know, it's the man who threw away the crutches and now he's walking out the place. I'm about to do the happy dance.
SPEAKER_02You know, the praise dance.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, what? Two thousand dollars. Oh my goodness. But let me tell you the saddest part of this whole thing. If I had put in for the refill 12 hours prior when it was still December 31st of 2023, my copay would have been zero.
SPEAKER_03Oh man.
SPEAKER_02What the hell is that? Oh man, oh man.
SPEAKER_00So you know the first thing I thought, I'm like, I would have got black CVS. You what? I wanted to call him up and say, could you kind of put it through like back meeting? You do be a solid.
SPEAKER_01Hey, I talked to you for a minute.
SPEAKER_02Who are you gonna grease their palms?
SPEAKER_01Anything less than $2,000, I'd be ahead, right? Oh my goodness, what?
SPEAKER_02Isn't it crazy? Wow. Wow, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_00I don't know how people afford things that look like and I understand that this is how the medical system is and deductibles work and whatever. We happen to have a high deductible with our insurance.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00But then when I like stopped panicking and the headache started setting back in again, I said the first thing I did, I started Googling HOV coupons, right? Okay. And all these pages came up. First of all, um the manufacturer's website, I think it's Teva or Teva or whatever, came up, and you can um fill out forms to get assistance with copays, or if you can't afford your medicine or whatever, right? And you fill out, you get uh fill out some your name and address, just demographic stuff and get some information. But then there's all these coupons, um good RX, well RX, etc. etc., that comes up and offers coupons depending on where you want to go. So if I want to go to CVS or if I want to go to Walgreens or whatever.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I was able to pull up some coupons, and so far I can get my copay could be 700 and change for the three months of medication.
SPEAKER_02So two months. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Wow. But but just think, all right, just think about this.
SPEAKER_02Less than half.
SPEAKER_00A third.
SPEAKER_02Is it a third?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So one, what if I didn't look for the coupons? What made you look? $2,000.
SPEAKER_02Well, I see what made me look. The morning. I just what what made you do more? Wait. So it was like a panic search or oh my gosh, yes.
SPEAKER_00Because I'm thinking like, even if I were to pay the $2,000 for the next refill, right, going forward, right, it's eight grand a year for this. Is you know, one, thank God I don't take a lot of uh medications, but eight grand a year for medication, for this medication, Ern takes some meds, Omari certainly takes medications.
SPEAKER_03Right, right.
SPEAKER_00I suppose we would meet our deductible that much quicker, but I'm like, there must be some better way.
SPEAKER_02Right, wow.
SPEAKER_00And if these coupons work, and I believe they do, you mean all I had to do was have access to a computer, which not everybody does.
SPEAKER_02Not everyone does. Digital divide. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Certainly, if I can't afford my prescriptions, there's a higher chance of me not having resources like internet all the time or or knowledge. What if I didn't know that there are such things as medication coupons and medication help?
SPEAKER_02I tell you, it's what people do without. Yeah, it wouldn't have been the immediate thought to me. Well, my immediate thought would be to call you. Well, no, no, you just say get back under the covers. For sure, for sure. Um that's that's pretty that's pretty telling right there.
SPEAKER_00And and and the default is, you know, this is why we put money away in savings, and this is what we save for, and you know, for these emergencies and things like that. But uh I just take it away from me, you know, because I always try to look at the broader, you know, yeah issues. There could be language barriers, right? There could be understanding barriers, right? Um, as you said, digital divides, yeah, certainly financial barriers. Not everybody can afford this.
SPEAKER_02Not everybody has a little um emergency stash. Their emergency stash is is how the paycheck stretches.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there are people who who with with uh forego taking their medications completely. Yeah. Or, you know, you hear these people eating cans of tuna and and whatever to ration out their medications, you know, when you're supposed to take a three-time a day med, they take it once a day to stretch it out. Right. I know, you know, my mom used to do that with her pain medicine, you know, to try to stretch out things. And it's like I I it got me thinking about the larger picture. And it it, you know, I get distressed and and I can empathize with people over so many things. I think about Omari and all the medications he takes to um prevent transplant rejection, you know.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And I was reminded how one of the things that was very important in the pretesting um and um all the conferences was that if you do not have the financial support and means to pay for your anti-rejection medicines, you are not a candidate for life-saving transplant. Just like that. Another You're not going to put uh a well rationed kidney into a person who is unable to afford their lifelong anti-rejection drugs. Think about it right there. What not everybody's a candidate, period.
SPEAKER_02What?
SPEAKER_00So poverty is a killer.
SPEAKER_02A killer.
SPEAKER_00I mean, and and we we've said it several times, you know, certainly in our home, we've recognized that, you know, if Omari were in a different country or in a different place or we had different circumstances, he would not have survived this illness.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And many people don't.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but but speaking of different countries, you know, I've been um oh lord, I know I tire you out. I really do. Um sometimes I have to keep. Remember, I'm sick, not too much. Sometimes, sometimes I have to I have to titrate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I gotta rap the move. And remember just the other day, I think it was yesterday or whatever, you were at you you were presenting something with me, and you're like, so Les, what do you think? And I said, And I gotta be honest with you. I'm not at my full capacity. You're not gonna get a well thought out response. Well, let's defer that. I said, I gotta be honest. I'm not at my best.
SPEAKER_02I appreciate it. Thank goodness it was simple. It was just like the color of my lipstick or something like that. By the way, my new lipstick, Ruby, Ruby Woo. I'm trying to not new, it's new to you. It's new to me. Exactly. My new lipstick.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I see. Okay, it's not a new lipstick, it's one of Max signature colors.
SPEAKER_02I understand. Listen, let me start over. So my new lipstick, Ruby Blue.
SPEAKER_00Looks lovely.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. I saw Tony wearing it, and um, I've been on it, and Isaiah got it for me for Christmas. Anyway, I digress, focus. So um I have been um watching videos about moving abroad more frequently. I'd done it before. I told you um Jess was looking at it and when we had um her on talking about um uh the possibility of her retiring abroad. Um but I've been watching it more often, like maybe once a day I'll watch a podcast. And there's this a part of it is a whole conversation around um black women and freedom and the burdens we carry and what rest looks like and um you know what we're not gonna take into 2024, you know, things like that. So it goes beyond, it's kind of um um relocating, moving abroad as a way of um experiencing life better than what we think we have to um live under racism and economic injustice and things like that in the United States.
SPEAKER_00It's a whole, let me tell you, the ways that we are conditioned to live.
SPEAKER_02Right. And thinking because America is the greatest country on earth, they say, and thinking that it doesn't get any better. So whatever we have here, you you gotta put up with because it this is the best the best place. Well um the one I was listening to any to yesterday, by the way, the two women that um I listened to, they are co-founders of a community YouTube channel and so on called um Exodus Summit. So it's EXO D U and then Capital US Summit. Um uh Stephanie Perry. She is a house sitter. Um, so she just travels the world house sitting, and um that's her life, unapologetic, unapologetic about I do the things, I do, I live life the simple way, I live life easy. I'm not trying to do things hard. If it's too hard, I'm not doing it. Um that's her example. She's very clear about it, and I'm not mad at her. Um, she's the opposite of me. I it she's the opposite of me, but I'm telling you, it's it's quite juicy anyway. And the other person is um Rashida Dow.
SPEAKER_00That will be my 2025 goal to be like her.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Um, but the other person we gotta talk about that a whole two years. Well, anyway, a whole one year. But um so they have their own um channels, but then they co-founded Exodus Summit, and it is specifically for um a community of black women and living abroad. You know, there are different issues that we face as black people, black women um around this, and so this community is specifically for this group. But you know, they have so how does that relate to what we were speaking about in terms of the I'm getting there.
SPEAKER_00In the few minutes we have left.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so I'm getting there. So the one I listened to yesterday, they were talking about the barriers that we believe are in our way in order to move abroad, but are not. So one of the things is um health care and around more generally affordability. And do you know that one of them lives in Costa Rica? Or she travels there often.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Do you know that um medical care is uh free in Costa Rica? This idea of um universal health care, no. It it's not necessarily for citizens because it isn't necessarily for citizens, right? Because um it's difficult to get citizenship in other countries. You don't need citizenship in order to live in a country. You could have permanent residency, you could have some places you could live for, you know, six months just on a uh travel visa. So it's not it's not tied to citizenship.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02It's not. Um so she was saying how when she talks about her experiences in the US, like having to pay for an ambulance or um different things like medication and things like that, they laugh. They laugh at her. Yeah, because it's it's unheard of. So you think about a country, and you know, I um I was looking this up. These are the countries that have universal health care. So when we're told here that it's it's hard, it's you know, we we can't afford and so on, Denmark, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Albania, Algeria, Austria, Brazil, Croatia, um uh Germany, Argentina, Botswana, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Finland, Israel, Italy, Israel. So we're paying for there. Um, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, Armenia all have universal health care, but we can't afford it.
SPEAKER_00So what does universal health care mean though? It means that as far as you're you're in a sometimes, you know, I hear it and I gotta say I'm not I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Sure. So what it means and what's different, because here we have Medicare and Medicaid, right?
SPEAKER_00And private and health insurance and private health insurance, but I'm talking employees or whatever.
SPEAKER_02Right. So um, so universal health care means that the government covers your health care. Um here, the government only covers it if you are um if you're at a certain income level, right? So if you're below a certain income level, that's which one? Medicaid.
SPEAKER_01Medicaid.
SPEAKER_02And then Medicare is based on your age and um disability, whether you have a disability.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So everything outside of that, you have to pay for health care in the United States. Yeah, and people pay for Medicare as well. Medicare has Medicare has deductibles. Yeah. So the difference is that there are not those stipulations, and I could actually um they're actually not there those stipulations on it.
SPEAKER_00Um and I think that that is so the so the implication is that the country benefits from a healthier populace. Correct. And in other words, they put the money and the resources behind their people.
SPEAKER_02Right. They they put the money up front at a fraction of the cost to make the sit make the population more healthy, which is cheaper than having a sicker population and having to support this population on the back end.
SPEAKER_00You know, okay, that's the ideal. However, what I've also and I don't know a lot of detail about this, but in Canada, for example, elective surgery is it the procedures that are covered under the quote unquote universal or the state run or state paid um benefits are not the same as they are here. So I don't know if I can go and get my life life, if I can go and have my liposuction done on Canada's dime.
SPEAKER_02Could you get you know wait, but just to compare whitened, just to compare apples to apples, um, those aren't covered here either, cosmetic surgery isn't covered here. So so what do you mean? Like make a real comparison.
SPEAKER_00Well, what I'm saying is that um and I wish I I had time to look it up or or think more about it, but the I've heard that there are longer waits in other places to get procedures that are done uh more readily here. Okay, so you may need to get your knee replaced, for example, in a place with universal health care. Right, you might have a longer period of disability before you can get some procedure.
SPEAKER_02So let's look at that. But you only get the procedure here by paying for it if you're outside of those groups that we identified, right? So let's say um you can get it here within a week and you pay $10,000. Yeah. Right? Two things about um social about um universal healthcare. You may have to wait, but it's not gonna cost you $10,000. And also, you can get private coverage on top of that.
SPEAKER_00That is available. Yeah, they also have uh correct. Yeah, correct.
SPEAKER_02But everyone has I guess like here. You can socialized medicine. Right, right. But everyone has the um has the safety net, it's not just because of your um abilities or age or that type of thing.
SPEAKER_00Isn't the uh Affordable Care Act here the safety net to cover people that were previously uninsured?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't know a lot of detail, and you know, this isn't an exhaustive um conversation around this, but I know that um with that, you get like a credit. You get a certain amount of money, depending on whatever the criteria are, you get a certain amount of money that you can apply to so instead of you know, like how your employer um um you do pay for some.
SPEAKER_03Subsidizes part of it, sure.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Just in the same way that your employer subsidizes um with um uh Obamacare, there's a um the government subsidizes or can subsidize. So um and that's the other thing. It's like having your health care tied to your employer means that when you don't have employment like what the heck?
SPEAKER_00Start going downhill. It just sounds so well, it just means that you have to move to one of the other options if you have them.
SPEAKER_02Because yeah, because there's so many people who are uninsured, and that's the thing. There's no such thing as being uninsured when there is universal health care. Do you understand what I mean? Like that's probably the most there's no question.
SPEAKER_00But it's worth looking more looking more into.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. But anyway, this came up because the idea around my $2,000 copay.
SPEAKER_01Your $2,000 copay.
SPEAKER_00And this is just for one medication, it's not for the knee replacement that I might need at some point in my old age. It's not for your sciatica or oh no, for these things, and man, the older I get, the more aches and pains I get. But it's like geez, if I want to be migraine headache free for the next just three months, I gotta dig a little deep.
SPEAKER_02My mother would say, you take your tech bad tig Mac joke. Um, laughing to keep from crying, I guess is the other way of saying that. Anyway, yeah, but I'm glad, Leslie. Thank God you have it. You found the coupon.
SPEAKER_00So I found coupons. I hope they work and I'm getting better from the camera flu. And welcome to 2024.
SPEAKER_02Here we are.
SPEAKER_00This has been another episode of Black Puma Besties from Brooklyn. Brooklyn.
