Health Care seems to have no simple answers. But here is the situation from a friend's viewpoint.
My friend and her hubby run a small clinic in a small town that caters to health situations of a particular dimension. They have a small staff of four or five who have been with them for a long time and who are like family to them. Most of their patients are elderly and on Medicare.
My friend and her hubby are several years past retirement age themselves. They plan to shut down their clinic when he turns seventy next year. In the meantime they no longer are taking on new patients. And, why? Because payments for patients on Medicare have been reduced 21.3 percent.
As my friend says...their rent has not been reduced nor have their staff salary expenses been reduced.
They tried selling their clinic to a group of physicians from a nearby city but the group declined to take on a small clinic 30 or 40 miles from their main office. The doors will be shut. Patients will need to drive 30 to 40 miles to another doctor.
I don't know the answers in regards to national health care. I'm just sharing this one little anecdote. I wish it were an easy scenario but it is not.
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5 comments:
Thank you for your prayers, encouragement, and support.
Blessings,
andrea
For the same reasons you mentioned, my husband sees a day in the very near future when he will no longer be able to accept medicare patients and they will, instead, need to drive more than an hour to another facility in order to receive care. And they will need to wait much longer for surgery, too.
Most people don't realize the toll this will have on our society. When you stop and think about it, it's a form of rationing care.
It is all true, that you say. My heart Drs. shared this with us also.
Until this nation opens their eyes & ears & pay attention ... it is going to be a disaster. Hopefully, all these 'people' that are trying to STOP it, thru the legal system or state governments, etc., we the people are getting the 'SHAM', still.
It is a disaster ... sad.
Have a beau-TEA-ful week.
TTFN ~ Marydon
Living in a rural area and being of Medicare age makes me well aware of the gravity of this situation.
It should be obvious that cutting medicare reimbursement will make accepting Medicare patients impossible for docs with overhead, huge medical training debt and liability premiums to pay. I've met people from around the country who cannot find a primary care physician and a time in their lives when they need one the most. Medicare has been in going down the drain ever since life expentency has extended to the point where there are just too many folks drawing on it and not enough folks paying into it. That is a classic Ponzi scheme for which Mr. Madoff is spending the rest of his life in prison.
Jane
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