Scribblings

Since When Can't You Just Pay Your Doctor?

Apparently if you are covered by some insurance company your doctor doesn't take...especially one associated with Medicaid!

Linda is really sick. Her insurance is from Medicaid now and the primary assigned to her no longer takes that insurance! Well, that figures--outdated information and misinformation is one of the many things wrong with any provider. There is no doctor locally who takes that insurance and when Linda called the provider, they told her to go to the emergency room! Yey, way to drive up everyone's medical expenses, thanks for nothing!

Linda called the doctor she'd been seeing for the last several years, explained what happened and offerd to pay cash for seeing the doctor. The person she talked to said okay and so she went all the way out there to see the doctor only to learn from the office manager that they weren't "legally allowed" to see Linda because of her insurance.

What! Since when has having any insurance at all made a difference if you could pay in cash? I swear, the whole health system is totally fercockt! So Linda is now at the emergency room.

I have a memory that goes back to January 1965. We'd just moved to Maryland from New York and my brother (he was 10 at the time) got really sick on the way to school one morning. As it turned out, his appendix ruptured and my parents took him to the nearest hospital. The admitting person asked my father about his health insurance and my dad lied and said we had it. In truth, it hadn't kicked in yet. My parents were afraid if they told the truth my brother would be turned away and sent to a hospital that treated the insured further away and in a bad part of the city. When the officials found out my father wasn't insured after all, they were totally furious but it was too late. By then my brother had had his surgery. My dad just shrugged and said sorry, I misunderstood the question, deaf and dumb, you know?

My how times change.