the passionate ailurophile

If you have been reading this blog for any good length of time, you should already know this one:  HEALTH CARE.  It’s bad enough that too many Americans are completely uninsured, but it is even worse when people who are insured can’t even afford to see their own doctors.  I know this first hand, as my own doctor will no longer see me because she will no longer accept Cigna.  That will be ending soon, in December, because Mike’s employer has seen the error of their ways and are dumping Cigna and letting people go back to the Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan we all had before.

But some people have no choice.  Medicare patients, for example.  I just read this letter in today’s Annie’s Mailbox column:

Dear Annie: Yesterday, my doctor said I could no longer be her patient because I was on Medicare and the reimbursements were too low. She told me not to bother trying to find another doctor because they were all doing the same thing.

I am now at a stage in life where having a doctor is extremely important and I don’t know what to do. Can doctors be required to take patients on Medicare? What about the ethics of tossing old people out even when the patient has medical coverage? When a doctor takes the Hippocratic oath, is the oath valid only as long as a substantial profit is made? I used to worry about those who have no medical insurance, but I should have been worried about this. — Have Medical Coverage but No Doctor

Dear Have Coverage: It’s true that doctors are not reimbursed for Medicare at the same level that they are reimbursed by private insurance companies. We’re sorry to say, for many physicians, it is simply not cost-effective to treat Medicare patients.

However, there are still many physicians who will, so don’t give up. You also can ask your doctor about setting up a sliding-scale fee so you can pay for some of the treatment yourself. This is going to be a tremendous problem in the near future, and we hope our next president will add it to the long list of issues on his plate.

Barack Obama is the clear choice, if you care about getting any serious health care reform around here.