Doctor's Visits 21st Century Style
So you are on Medicare and you have to go to the doctor. 10 years ago it cost a mere pittance for the Medicare premiums and the copay for the doctor. Little by little over the years the mere pittance has risen to a ore hefty amount and has become confusing to boot.
Now there is regular basic Medicare and a barrage of Medicare supplements. This was all created to save money for Medicare recipients and doctors, too, but soehow it has all turned into a confusing mess. Even the people at Medicare and at Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) who are trained in this stuff have a hard time explaining it to us so that it makes sense and so that we can decide what plan we need to be on to cover our needs the best.
For instance, a person with dibetes or heart problems who needs to see the doctor and go to the hospital repeatedly and often probably needs a different or additional plan than a person who has asthma and only sees the doctor once every month or two unless there is an unusual problem.
On top of everything else, everyone is a specialist now. You just can't go to a regular general practicioner for a problem and, if, in his or her opinion be sent to a specialist if absolutely necessary. You are sent from one doctor to another to another, often without ever getting an answer because each doctor has a piece of your medical puzzle.
For example, a friend of mine took a fall at work at the beginning of August, 2008. She filled out the right papers and did all she was told to do by her employer and Worker's Comp. Worker's Comp paid her for a couple of weeks because she couldn't work, but then stopped because they decided that a knee injury that happened in 1975, was fullly healed, and never required further treatent after surgery and physical therapy is considered a pre-existing condition. In the 30 years since the knee injury, this woman has been hiking and camping numerous times, horseback riding, scuba diving, playing basketball with her grandchild who is now almost 15, oh, and she has also worked full time - trudging through disasters for FEMA to make sure that people are OK. Yet, this is still a pre-existing condition.
On top of everything else, while she is waiting for Medicaid approval, she is being shuffled from "specialist" to "specialist" to determine what to do. Some doctors won't see her because she can't pay them and they won't wait until Medicaid kicks in. The problem is that the most important doctor who insists she needs surgery on both knees will not see her until he gets some money. That has become a full time job with a lawyer and everything. The doctor sent her to another doctor to deal with the pain. He is a gem and is more worried about the patient than the money. He is trying to help her with the pain and trying to help her get on Social Security because he recognizes - as the first doctor should - that this will definitely take at least a year and there is no guarantee as to how things will turn out.
The third doctor who both other doctors referred her to will not see her until she has Medicaid or something. The problem is that the pain from the accident has dirven up her blood pressure to stroke level, averaging 225/135 when it should be less than 140/90 at most. A simple change of medications - which the patient has all the information on from her old internest from a year ao - would lessen the danger of a heart attack or stroke, yet this doctor will not wait for her $55 dollars for a patient visit just to talk for 5 or 10 minutes and give the patient the prescriptions to help lower the blood pressure and the risk.
This is the state of medical care today. If you have Medicare it is much better, but you need to know which coverage is the best for you so that you don't have to run from doctor to doctor only to find out that you are at the wrong doctor who can 't or won't help you. Do your research, stay as healthy as possible - especially through exercise and diet, and find out all you can about syptoms and medications so that you walk into the doctor's office with the upper hand and a clue of what you need to get help.
