"I'm a Medicare Patient. Please Don't Hate Me!"

[Dragonfli]

20. I fully understand the problem, I am on Medicaid and nearly zero doctors will see me.

I believe Medicare and Medicaid share the same issues. The reimbursement rates grow smaller and smaller and fewer and fewer health care professionals will see you, I do not know how one compares to the other (will not for a couple of years yet if I make it that far) as far as how low the rates are, but this is becoming a very serious issue. I do not believe it has anything to do with the health care professionals "hating" one for being poor, although I am sure there are some that do, I believe it is because the rates are below what is needed to actually pay for the service (including the paid support staff, equipment and insurance required by the doctor or clinic) to be anything more than a recipe for bankruptcy.

I am very concerned with the latest political trend of cutting the rates further under the banner of of reducing "fraud, waste, and abuse". There have been many cuts recently to the rates paid by Medicare and Medicaid under that very banner and I have watched these cuts widdle down available doctors and clinics at an almost exponential rate. Stealth cuts to the safety net is what they are and they are very popular in our party these days and part of most of the bills proposed by Democrats. I suppose to appease the republicans or perhaps as part of the neoliberal economic philosophy that has replaced the economic liberal philosophy as the party has changed the past thirty years.

In any event, even tho I live in a city with many places available I can only find care at the county hospital or through the Catholic Charities network (where I found a clinic willing to act as "primary Care Physician&quot .

It is also telling that the insurance companies have taken over Medicaid (at least where I live) and it is the insurance company that blocks every single one of my medications that is not cheap (or attempt to do so) driving my doctors crazy trying to justify my need for what they prescribe or scrambling trying to find something that may not work as well but may forestall the decline in my health less than no medication at all. They spend far more time with the back and forth with insurance companies than they do on my actual care.