Not that I expected anything really different from my check-up this morning, but it’s nice to hear anyway. Blood pressure fine, lungs fine, dunno what bloodwork is going to say when I go take care of that tomorrow, but everything’s functional. Asked for the shingles vaccine, but apparently there’s a national backlog or something.
Doctor did warn me that the colonoscopy carousel starts up next year, though. …Oh, boy. That’s gonna be fun!
My sister-in-law just asked that, rhetorically: but let me explain anyway (this explanation draws heavily from The Right Stuff):
Doctors never give you good news. No doctor will ever tell you, “You now have the physique of a Greek god and may indulge in some of the things that you were previously forbidden to indulge in.” At absolute best you will be told that there has been no change, or that you have recovered from a previous setback; but usually a doctor will tell you what new things that you may never do again.
I hope that this clears things up for people.
I fail to see why there should be the problem described in this title (“Doctors cut from Medicare Advantage networks struggle with what to tell patients“):
Thousands of primary-care doctors and specialists across the country have been terminated from privately run Medicare Advantage plans, sparking a battle between doctors who say patient care is being threatened and insurers that insist they have to reduce costs and streamline their operations.
Medical associations, which describe the dismissals as the largest in the program’s history, say the cuts are forcing some patients to leave their doctors in mid-treatment and creating gaps in the types of medical specialists covered in some areas.
The answer is very simple: what doctors need to tell their soon-to-be-former patients is that Barack Obama and the Democratic party thought that they collectively had the experience, expertise, and foresight to craft a health care law that would not, among other things, gut Medicare Advantage.
And Barack Obama and the Democratic party turned out to be wrong. Continue reading More gutting of Medicare Advantage doctor networks. #obamacare
