Have you ever felt thoroughly bewildered, bamboozled, and beaten up by your health insurance plan? That is, if you’re lucky enough to have one?
Not long ago, when I was standing in line at my neighborhood CVS, waiting, as usual, to pick up a prescription, I got to thinking about how health care didn’t always seem so awful.
Naturally, I wrote an essay about it, which I called “Refuahs,” the Yiddish word for remedies, and I’m very grateful to the literary journal Cagibi for publishing it in their June 2026 edition.
Photo courtesy of Coke Yancosky and the Mount Pleasant Area Historical Society.