As a financially hard-up dialysis patient, I had a lot of experiences going to politicians to make a request to give me either some financial assistance or for medical assistance. The process requires me to get a clearance from our local council. Depending on where you are, you can get it for free or you may have to pay for it.
Then I also have to make a request for an indigency certificate on the town council where I have to undergo an interview. The officials there knew me well because of my frequent visitations so I was only interviewed for a short time. Nonetheless I must travel and spend some money to get it.
I also have to produce some laboratory results to complete my papers for my request for assistance which is usually for my needed medicines. Now the hard part is getting in line to submit my papers and get another paper that they will indicate how much fund will I get. Then I will go in line again to have it signed by the politician that will finance it.
After that, I have to go to the city which will require me to ride a bus and then the metro to the hospital that I will again have to go in line again to submit my papers a few times which often won,t complete in a day because of so many people doing what I am doing. The places in the hospital are far apart and sometime's I have to run just to beat the closing time of 4:00 o'clock for paper processing.
Processing the papers requires me to get some clinical tests in order for the doctor to see me. That I have to go in line as well, long lines. Then after the doctor had seen me, he will give me prescription for my medicines. Then I will have to go now to the Pharmacy to go in long lines again and hope that I will catch the day's quota which I rarely don't.
Note that these process doesn't complete in a week sometimes because sometimes there are no doctors because they are in a conference or something like that or I didn't finish because it is time already due to long lines of people on the queues.
Before the final stage where I have to go to the hospital's pharmacy to get on queue again hoping to snag the quota in the wee hours of the morning where the metro only opens from 5:00 o'clock A.M. I will buy some grapes to bribe the lady guard just to include my papers on the day's queue, that line for the pharmacy that she is assigned to manage.
Sometimes a poor folk would breakdown and cause a scene because of being not given their medicines because of either no supply or the pharmacists insists of the brand name in the prescription be given and not its generic counterpart. So they will stop the dispensing when that happens and also when there is a problem in the queue line, frustrating infuriating everyone, wasting all our time and hard efforts from that day alone.
Sometimes I have to go home not getting any medicines because of scenes like that with the lady guard managing the people's long lines enjoying my bribe of grapes. It's OK for me to give her gifts tho, she deserves it because they had given her a hard job, but not getting my hard-earned medicines really makes me cry. Also a funny thing and I am not laughing about it, after getting my medicine, I calculated my expenses and it turned out that my expenses was also worth my medicine's price. I got victimized by a red tape, bureaucracy, and corruption. I never did returned back to that politician again.