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“It doesn’t matter what your card says. We’re not taking patients.” Or the Joys of Obamacare, Part 320,349
Today, I finally decided I was low enough on my standard medications for my chronic illnesses that I would finally contact that new doctor I signed up for in August. It didn’t take effect until September 1st. See, I had to fire my last internist. After a (literal) 5 minute appointment with the man for my yearly evaluation, I was told that he was very busy, one of my other specialists could do my labs and investigate any further issues (that being every issue, since he did nothing). That was the extent of the appointment. After he rushed out, I was nearly in tears which does take quite a lot for me these days.
I fired him when I got home.
Today, I called the new office to make an appointment and was told that New! Improved! Not Crappy! Doctor could not see me as she was no longer taking patients. I said this had to be in error since she was still listed on the insurance website as taking patients. We’re in open enrollment, so surely this was a miscommunication. Even if she was no longer taking patients, I had her assigned as PCP in starting in September. I’m not “new” exactly, I’ve just yet to see her.
I was told after a long hold that it didn’t matter what my card said. She’s not taking patients. After a dead silence and absolute shock, I mentioned that this sucked and she murmured something resembling a non-committal sound of questionable agreement with the sentiment. I asked if any other doctors in the office were taking patients. One. One that I know for a fact has gone “boutique”, which is to say, requiring a yearly down payment prior to any appointments. That same doctor (who is excellent, I might add), is booked up through February.
I hung up, completely flattened.
I’m now on the phone with my insurance discussing complaint filing, but basically being told to just look through their catalogue and pick. I have a migraine. I’m about to run out of medicine and my only recourse since the advent of Obamacare is an urgent care or the ER. I am in tears because it is not going to get better. I finally hung up because the front staff of the Place I Wanted to Go has switched phones to voicemail over an hour early and cannot be contacted by my insurance carrier. All medical offices will be closing soon and there’s no point in picking people from a list and then calling them one by one to ensure they will take new patients (which is the only consolation my insurance has offered me). Come January 1st, my insurance goes from HMO to even crappier HMO.
I have chronic illnesses that are already impacting my life. It is hard not to embrace California’s Right to Die law while sitting here knowing that my quality of life will be stolen from me, not by the disease process; but by sheer incompetence, reduced access to timely care, and legislated medical malpractice.
Published in Healthcare
I’m really sorry this is happening to you!
I don’t want sorrow. I want some GD healthcare reform. The kind that rewards doctors for taking patients, taking care of patients, and having decent office staff that isn’t just there wanking all day long. This means actual care of patients, not following a numbered list of what the government says you should do first. This means doctors using their brains, patients taking advice and a new Contract with Healthcare Providers whereby people try to take care of themselves, insurance companies work on proper payment, and HCPs do not get the short end of the pointy stick in a delicate place every time they try something useful.
Hang in there.
Every day older, another step closer to the Government Hospice Conversation: “Don’t you think its best that you stop being a burden on your family and society and instead take this nice pill…”
I should stop belly aching and be grateful for small favors. The Kalispell Medical Center bought out most of the small doctors’ offices around the Flathead and I’ve been bitching about it for a number of years now, but my gosh, even with increased premiums and share of cost, I still have my own doctor of 13 years. At lest he still fills my prescriptions, even fills DocJay’s suggestions for me. Maybe you can get one of your prior doctors to at least call in refills for you. Prayers.
This is so sad…I can’t imagine what anger and frustration you have.
I have excellent insurance–federal Blue Cross basic. Yet even so, I got caught in their cross hairs. They decided after 11 months and 2 $1,600 Prolia shots for ostopenia that the drug was experimental and they won’t be paying.
Sorry Amiga. You will get through it though as I can’t imagine a better advocate to navigate the labyrinthine nonsense than you.
I’m having a similar difficulty, although with less shocked disappointment – it’s the norm for these specialists to not be taking patients, or at least not adult patients.
I don’t know if you will find this consoling – I’m not sure how you feel about absurdity right now – but you might. You’ll be in our prayers.
This is the ongoing problem. After my glorious Dr. B went to North Carolina (anyone from there, I have an excellent Dr. recommendation!), I have had two doctors. She left maybe three years ago? Maybe even just two? The state of healthcare in CA is such that doctors in my immediate area are 1) out of network or 2) boutique. It is hard to find a doctor and past doctors have no interest in doing anyone a solid. None. My former doctor was a raging a-hole. I did his work for him (I am a nurse, after all) and he still was a jackass. Previous doctor fired the entire family because my mom may have insulted him? Maybe? He’s a vindictive prick.
The most likely candidate for actual care is a doctor I work with prescribing for me out of the goodness of their hearts and putting their license up on the shelf due to questionable prescribing. Sometimes they’d do that for antibiotics, but the stuff I have is weird and they do not need that impacting their hospital practice. :(
It’s just another indication of what is to come. Minimum care for everyone. It does no good to take more patients or even to do anything nice; there’s simply no benefit and being “good” is not sustainable long-term.
Yep. My mom is going through similar stuff. On IVIG for over 13 years, she’s having to navigate insurance (again) to make sure she can get any brand, even ones that make her temporarily sick just so she can keep mobility. She’s disabled and most of her days are filled with calls to billing, insurance, manufacturers… if she weren’t married, she would be dead by now. Being sick is a full-time job of cross-referencing, checking, appealing, and billing corrections. It isn’t just inefficient. It is morally wrong to have chronically ill people forced to do this to ensure they are not getting ripped off and are being provided the care for which they have dearly paid.
(I have been denied similar because they just decided it wouldn’t be on their formulary. Yay insurance!)
That entirely depends on how I hold out. I am just as likely to end up in the hospital with a psychiatric episode as I am to get my refills. That is actually not an overstatement. The withdrawal syndromes associated with my meds cause all sorts of problems. Last time I ran out for 2 days, I had vertigo so bad I couldn’t get out of bed. But $250 for an inpatient stay almost seems worth it, at this point.
Unfortunately, I know that you aren’t exaggerating in the slightest. Medication over-regulation hurting who deserves it the least. In fact, I need to get to work to start the medication logs. If you need some help with HIPPA let me know–I am a 3rd degree black belt.
If you knew HIPAA, you would spell it correctly. 2nd degree at best.
Our former insurance website would not let you type prescription names into the prescription comparison field, nor would it actually send the form e-mails generated by the “contact us” button once you’d filled them out to complain about how the other stuff on the website was busted.
Texas regulations have dulled my edge.
Odd how that works, huh? You can pay, but you can’t use it. That’s one of the oldest tricks in the book.
gee Right Nurse…your situation really sucks….let me get in touch with my good friend J. Gruber to see if he can help…..Um…sorry, he won’t take my call….I don’t know where you live but if you could get over to Canada… I don’t know,,,at some point I may have the same problem as you…I hope you have success getting your meds. there was a movie long ago about an invasion of giant red ants….nothing could stop them….all was lost……somehow…I don’t remember how…..humanity survived….I hope for you too.
If I lived in Canada, I would get my meds at the same time. They’d be cheaper, but I’d get them 6 months after I needed them. So really, I’d have to drive down to the US to get them, pay out of pocked and then go back. Doesn’t seem worth it. ;)
well, since I am stupid I dont know what any of this means……I would suggest….and I know you have already done this…Go back to your original doctor…with whom I assume you had some longstanding relationship….relate to him/her your situation….and put a gun to his/her head till he/she helps you.
Way back in 2012 I was discussing health care coverage with a lefty friend of mine. She was telling me that she modified plans under O’care expecting to keep the same cardiologist. After the change she couldn’t get the same doctor and they couldn’t tell her why. Her conclusion? The original plan was bad and O’care is great.
Believers gotta believe.
I keep misreading O’care as O’Hare. There may be something to that:
Wish I could tell you things will get better but, they won’t. We’re heading into a very dark period in healthcare.
I live with chronic vertigo due to a damaged vestibular nerve. You can actually learn to navigate, as well as learn to curse. There are times when the vertigo has tossed me to the floor and I can’t get up because I can’t tell up from down. I’m in vestibular rehab now, just getting over my last bad bout. So don’t let it beat you up. You still have my prayers as I so understand.
Insurance and billing are now designed in such a way as to make suffering and death a rational option.
I gave up on prescription plans. I want my meds and decided it was worth it to me to pay out of pocket. The expensive one I buy from Canada as my doc faxes the prescription to them. I get it about 3 weeks later so I plan in advance. I use <www.canadarxconnection.com> They won’t ship a controlled drug but look through their formulary and see if your needs are there. I pay $120 for a supply and the same drug here would be about $350 or $400.
Seems like the point. You get used to a lousy connection because you have to use it.
TRN: I’m not in CA, TBTG, but I fully understand the desire to “Just make it all go away.”, believe me…I don’t have answers, Lord knows, but I’m sending you a Panda Hug – and praying ’til you tell me to stop… <3 You are not alone.
I’ve been since May trying to pay my part of the cost for a CPAP mask, and when I finally broke down and paid my part of the 250% of retail price the company sent the money back.
I’d settle for just wiping O-care off the books and going back to the way it was before. It wasn’t perfect, but nothing is. For the people screaming “single payer”, what happened to you x10 is what would be the norm. See: waits for specialists in Canada and Great Britain. What is it, 11 months on the oncology waiting list up in Canuckistan now?
Going to be the contrarian here: why did you wait until you are almost out of your meds to look to refill them or to meet your new physician?