Is there a doctor in the house?

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Now normally I don’t want to use this blog as a platform to say anything that might sound even remotely political. However, I ran across a situation which needs to be spoken about and something certainly needs to be done about. Okay, here goes. There are several people I know who can’t get medical insurance for a variety of reasons. Not private, not Medicaid, nothing. Not that having insurance would do them much good. Turns out there’s a serious lack of doctors in the area. As in, apparently none who actually will take new patients anytime in the next year. I’ve spoken to I don’t know how many people lately who’ve told me they’ve called offices to make appointments and gotten the same response. Come in, fill out a form, in 6 months or so the doctor will decide if he/she wants you as a patient and then may or may not schedule an appointment 6 months or so later. What?! Come on, this can’t be a real thing. Thus I tried calling a few places, even tried pretending to have some sort of emergency situation. Yup, I got the some response every time. Try the ER because you ain’t getting in to see whichever doctor I was calling within the next year or so since I was a new patient. Uhm, okay. This is no way to treat people. How in the world did our healthcare system get to this? What ever happened to the kindly family doctor who will bend over backward to take care of you and your family? Is the situation so bad that doctors just don’t want to practice anymore? I wasn’t sure what was up with all of this, so I asked my doctor if he could shed some light. He thought it was because insurance payments were down so dramatically and self-pay patients never seem to pay anything anymore. Okay, fair enough, actually getting paid for your job is important. Then I asked if he knew of any doctors accepting new patients. He said he wasn’t aware of any in a 100 mile radius. Yikes, that’s not good. Now I’m not one who thinks government needs to solve our problems. But I’m not sure crowd-funding should either. Yup, in case you haven’t heard, that’s how an awful lot of people pay for medical care anymore. What is the solution? To be honest, I haven’t a clue. However, this is one thing we need to come together and solve. No politics, no craziness, no dramatics. Just a nationwide discussion about how to make sure people can see a doctor. Really, how hard can this be? I know, I know, it would probably be easier to walk to the moon…

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