Posted on 11/28/2012 3:46:44 PM PST by Seizethecarp
Dear Patient,
Going into the coming year, I have made a difficult but necessary determination that I will no longer be a Medicare provider. This will go into effect as of January 1, 2013. My decision is directly related to the continuing Medicare cuts and cumbersome requirements that Medicare has put into place. Regretfully, it is no longer feasible for us to participate with Medicare.
I took my time before telling her that we had received this letter from her very dear treating psychiatrist.
Fortunately, it was only in the past two months that after an extensive trial and error process, an "old drug" that he prescribed had a nearly miraculous effect on her and restored her to almost perfect sanity for the first time in three years.
But now, thanks to Obamacare's excessive regulations and the funding of Obamacare by squeezing payments to MD's and hospitals and paying MD's less than the cost of providing care, she will lose this wonderful MD and has no quarantee of being able to find another in or out of her plan that will take Medicare as primary.
I am sure that this little drama is being played out across the land right now.
It she had received this letter two months ago, I am sure I would have had to take her back to the locked ward! So I am thankful for the mercy that it arrived just after she regained sanity.
My Senior Parents Primary Doc's let them know they both are retiring real soon, gee I wonder why.
I am curious your wife's Doctor, do you think she is an Obee supporter given many in her field are?
“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
But your doctor may not keep you!
Good wishes for you and your wife—it sounds like you’ve had a challenging journey.
I am so sorry.
Hopefully you will find a private agency to help you out.
I understand somewhat, I have a necessary thyroid medication that will no longer be covered by medicare.
Probably lots of stories just here on FR, however your wife is dealing with more than most can understand, prayers for you and for her.
Bless you brother.
I AM SO HAPPY TO HEAR YOUR WIFE IS DOING MUCH BETTER!
Ask her doctor for a good referral physician to either another doc that takes medicare or a Community Mental Health Center that works on a sliding fee scale and has qualified doctors. It is really hard to find a doctor that is ethical and good, but they are out there and asking her doc for a referral is probably the best way to go.at least if something in the meds or whatever needs tweaking you will have already established with someone. she may also feel more secure knowing her previous doc made the referral.
Her shrink doesn’t support Barry.
God bless you and your wife. If there is a medical school near you, I would suggest you call its Department of Psychiatry to see if they have a clinic. She may get assigned to a resident who is in training or she may get into one of the private practice physicians who teach there. In any case, I would bet just about anything that they take Medicare. Good luck to you and your wife. She’s a very lucky woman to have a husband like you.
I hope your wife does okay and God gives you the strength you need to support her.
obamacare may take us to the next dark ages. he will cripple our healthcare system about the time a plague will sweeps across the nation. Just like in the olden days.
I WISH this would only happen to brain dead Libs, but alas it will be happening to all of us. When there is only Government care, there will be no Medicare, no Medicaid and no
TriCare. Just Government care. And you cannot go anywhere else for care, so, if the Government decides for whatever reason that you don’t deserve the level of care you need, you are SOL. That was always the desired end result of Obamacare. The Admin has been dismantling health care in this country since The Won took office in 2009. We are so doomed to mediocre care that mostly ends when we hit 60 years of age. You are expendable when you are no longer paying into the system.
I am hopeful that when doctors discard Medicare, their expenses may go down and are able to offer a discounted cash fee. How old is your doc? It could be he/she is retiring, or cutting back. There are 660,000 physicians in the US, and 250,000 are over 55.
Incredible isn’t it?
Also, God bless you two, true love is hard to find man!
A severely depressed, possibly suicidal patient, or paranoid patient is not going to respond well to a letter like this! It would only serve to “validate” their view of the world a seen from their diseased mind.
Bless you - I am sure it must be awfully difficult for you at times. Good luck.
Best wishes for your wife and you.
I’ve been worried about this myself, since my wife and I are both primary medicare patients with our doctor, with backup insurance from UHC.
A lot of doctors have evidently decided not to take on any NEW Medicare patients. I hope not too many will decide not to keep their current patients, as your psychiatrist has done. But Obama is screwing them all, while piling on required paperwork and reporting expenses, so we’re are all now effectively becoming reliant on our doctors’ good will—or what amounts to charity.
I hope that your wife continues to see improvement in her condition.
My wife had to change doctors because her doctor is no longer participating in TRICARE for the same reasons you described. This Obammycare is already wrecking patient care throughout the US.
Have you discussed what his cash fee might be?
Your wife is lucky to have you, but of course too many of those with such challenges don’t have that level of close support.
The medicare cuts may first be coming for the mentally ill, but they are steep enough that they will come for most other recipients as well. My hope is that we still have a good enough country not to allow the Obamcarization of our health system to continue.
I am sorry that this has happened to you, and I hope you can find a good resolution.
At the medical office where my wife works they did this 6 months ago. They refer Medicare patients to another facility. She says that it is indeed too cumbersome to get paid, and to even just get paid enough to cover costs when they do get paid.
Here is what I think will happen...Dear Leader will issue an executive order or some amendment to Ocare that forces doctors and other healthcare providers to accept Medicare, i.e. he will make it illegal not to. If he doesn’t do that, there won’t be any providers left that accept it within 2-3 years, and the only other options are then to either nationalize healthcare completely, or start building government hospitals that can provide care on the cheap.
What a mess.
It does help that I love my wife a whole lot and that she loves me, at least when she is back to normal! It has been a deep privilege to have been able to have been there for her, and she is now able to show her appreciation. During her last manic/psychotic episode she wanted to divorce me for calling the “guys in the white jackets” (EMTs) to take her away. But now she has thanked me! (again)
How wonderful that your wife was able to be restored to sanity, and with what turns out to be perfect timing. I would hope that there is a way you can obtain the ‘old drug’ through another doctor or clinic. Would it be feasible to stay a non-medicare patient of this doctor with only a visit every other or every third month, so that the cost wouldn’t be unbearable, but it would allow him to prescribe the drug for her?
Best wishes in getting through this, you’ve already come so far1
Good luck to you and your wife. I have experience n my family with mental illness and dementia, and I know how much of a burden it is on the healthy members. This will hit us all in a number of ways.
My condolences. I hope that you can manage to get your wife the care she needs.
I’m so sorry. My husband is a retired M.D. of 7 years, (practice in psychiatry) and medicare, its cumbersome requirements and tons of paperwork were killing him back then. He treated several patients for free rather than endure all that nuisance and charged a very minimum to others.
This is going to be the effect of ObamaCare
The New Normal
The personality cult will demand you be grateful for the chance to take a cut for them
Bless you both. What an ordeal.
The best thing you can do going forward is to optimize her physical health and fitness. Her diet should be mostly fresh or steamed vegetables, fruits and lean meat without cheese or sauces. Cut out pasta and bread, especially high gluten products, junk food, and sugar, as well as artificial sweeteners like aspartame, nutrasweet, and especially high fructose corn syrup, which are found in most processed foods (read all labels).
Fish oil capsules do wonders, as does regular exercise, like a walking or yoga program that meets at least twice a week, and if possible four or five times. Cut out any smoking, drinking, any drugs that aren’t medically necessary (even aspirin can upset some people) and make sure she gets her thyroid and Vitamin D levels checked thoroughly and frequently.
If she is presently off-kilter in any of these areas, even small improvements can help, and getting into normal range can be miraculous.
Take those two factors together, and the 55+ crowd has one of two options:
(1) start getting healthy by eating right & exercising like hell as if your very life depended on it - because it does; or
(2) check into one of the emerging SOMA facilities where (legal) opiates will be administered to while away the days.
No one has ever suggested the end of a Republic would be anything short of nasty & brutish.
Have you talked to the doc to see about private pay?
So, I had no doctor that very day. Called a friend, got the name of her doctor, called that office, and everything went fine until she asked me about insurance. Said I had Medicare and a supplement - she said they didn't take Medicare. I still had no doctor.
Called a doctor friend and he gave me the name of a doctor he would go to. Called that office, and thank God, they took Medicare. I finally had a doctor and went to him and he had also been with the clinic that closed and was able to call up my records on his computer. I am happy with this doctor and we did blood tests, etc., to see where I was with my blood numbers which needed to be done. My medicines were all switched to his name so I could refill medicines. He and I got it done.
Several weeks went by, AND THEN I GOT ANOTHER LETTER:
The doctor that dumped me sent a letter to his old patients saying he missed his relationship with his old patients and had left the concierge group and we could have an appointment any time and he was sorry if this had caused us any inconvenience. CAUSED ME INCONVENIENCE?!
Evidently, his old patients, including me, didn't pay the $1,650 and he didn't have any patients or enough of them to stay with that fancy group.
That's like your boy friend dumping you for another girl, then coming back and saying he likes you better.
I did not go back to him after the mega mess he put me through. I'm afraid he would do that again and he can go pound sand.
Soma for all.... Brave New World
This last week we have been waiting for some prescriptions to be filled. No problem with insurer, but with availability. The drug shortage has started. I haven’t had an anti-depressant that I take to help me sleep. The nightmares have been terrible.
“The drug shortage has started.”
Yes, it has. I had two that took a few days to get, but then I had one they couldn’t get FOR A MONTH. It wasn’t critical and I had extras, but the fact Walgreens can’t get a medicine for a month is significant.
What I mean is, if the patient is going to have to experience a cutback in psych services, she should step up her other areas of health to the maximum while still getting whatever reduced mental health services she can get.
Also, there are many physical symptoms of organic diseases like hyperthyroid that look like emotional disease, and having those symptoms is frightening enough to exacerbate an existing emotional disease. But in no case would I suggest that a psych patient should go cold turkey and precipitously try to substitute healthy lifestyle for mental health care.
I’m so sorry to hear you can’t get something you need, KYGrandma. :-(
If you haven’t yet tried any, I have taken herbs like chamomile, hops, valerian root, lemon balm, or St. John’s Wort for calming stress and to help me sleep.
I know that some have interactions (lemon balm with thyroid) so please look them up, but they have helped me a lot. The valerian root causes me to sleep well, but sometimes it causes more dreams, just not bad ones.
I also have tried melatonin and benadryl in a pinch.
AT A PRICE !
“I’ve been worried about this myself, since my wife and I are both primary medicare patients with our doctor, with backup insurance from UHC.”
Same situation with the wife and I. I’m pretty sure Medicare is always primary. You’ll probably be OK though, since to qualify as a preferred DR. with UHC, they are bound to take medicare. That’s the way I understand it anyway.
nobamacare has the Drs by the balls...if they don’t play by the rules...no license to practice. nobamacare = stay healthy or die. I retired a few years early because of this pending BS. Good luck to all.
My Wife has many of the same disorders. Her primary medication is no longer covered by her current insurance. We had to switch her insurance and now the premium is three times what it was before.
We got a letter from my endocrinologist yesterday. He decided it was time to leave the US to be with his family. In Syria.
You know it’s bad when a doctor thinks he’s better off in Syria than in the US.
He didn’t give his reasons so who knows why he decided this, but I remember back to about 3 years ago when he told me I should stop getting depressed over “politics” because the world is a good place, the future is bright, and I should just be happy and thankful for what I have.
Nobody but us kooks were willing to see what was going to happen. Vindication is supposed to feel good, but this doesn’t feel good at all. I wish we had all been wrong when we said we saw this coming.
I hope that if it’s an old drug that it’s cheaper and that you may even be able to order it online or something. Make sure you at least get ALL your records from this doc —
Shouldn’t be too hard to at least get another provider to at least write an RX for the drug, esp if you tell them it’s been helpful ....docs/NP’s will usually give you what you want if you can demonstrate there have been no ill effects or allergies to it. Good luck!
Thank you and blessings to you, too!
“Find 100 ways”” is my motto! After all, in addition to loving her very much, she is a retired RN and I have to get her back into shape so she take care of me with my progressive neurological condition (orthostatic intolerance and ME/CFS) as I appear to be getting worse these days!
She is already back in the church choir, Christmas Cantata and secular holiday chorus...and therefore she is “warbling” around the house practicing, which makes my day!
Eggsackly. The whole obamacare fiasco is but a transitional plan designed to force the exact outcome you idfentify. Always recall that Obama has committed himself to government- only healthcare. Everything he and his plan does is designed to advance that end.
Some trials come and go. Some come and stay and then get worse, but we must find and seek the strength to persevere.
It helps to be really stubborn! Also, to have a good sense of humor, when appropriate.
“”has no quarantee of being able to find another in or out of her plan that will take Medicare as primary.””
Was she on ORIGINAL Medicare? Can’t she get a Medicare Advantage plan before the enrollment ends on 12/7/12?
Medicare is not PRIMARY if you have a Medicare Advantage plan. I never give my medicare card to doctors - only the MA one.
But MDs were losing money on Medicare anyway, so they are being driven out of business taking either one. They can't cost-shift the losses to those on corporate insurance plans and private payers without huge price increases on top to already huge increases.
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