the pharmacy clerk left their screen wide open and i just stood there reading it like i wasn’t supposed to
one prescription sitting right there with numbers that don’t even make sense. base cost barely over a hundred, then suddenly it’s getting billed out in the tens of thousands like they just added zeroes for fun. insurance throws money at it, cuts a huge payment, and somehow everyone in that system still acts like things are “tight” and prices can’t come down. i’m literally staring at the breakdown and it looks like a game where the goal is to inflate everything as much as possible
and yeah, i didn’t just glance and walk away. i stood there longer than i should’ve, reading through all of it while the clerk was busy, because if they’re gonna leave it open like that then clearly it’s not that serious to them. it just confirmed what everyone already suspects but never actually sees laid out this blunt. numbers don’t lie, they just hope nobody’s paying attention
so i took a picture in my head of the whole thing and started talking about it right there, loud enough for people nearby to hear. because if i’m standing there struggling to pay for basic stuff and this is how the backend looks, i’m not keeping that thought to myself
people can say i shouldn’t have been looking, shouldn’t have said anything, whatever. but if the system looks like that when nobody thinks you’re watching, then maybe it deserves to get watched a little more closely
