[dradernh]

Originally Posted by ASAP

doctors can't even spend time with you because again Insurance companies won't pay or say you can only spend x amount of time with a patient.

That certainly describes the nation's premier medical insurance provider, the one it is often suggested should be covering all of us. If it did, given the all-too-common lack of sufficient medical providers, the measure of the time to get in to be seen for the first time at a practice might rise from months to quarters.

That outfit no longer pays for physicals, either annually or otherwise. Instead, we get "wellness exams."

Now that I'm 75, it seems I'm entitled to one of those every year instead of every other year. And yes, they fit into short time slots; at least that's what they seem like compared to how long a genuinely complete physical exam used to take, and that's not including the in-person follow-up consultation after the test results came back.

There are options, of course, and they generally would cost more out-of-pocket. I've scratched the surface of going that route, but am a bit lazy by nature, and it would take some work to figure out exactly which alternative(s) would best suit me and the wife.

I will say the following about insurance reimbursements (in this case, Medicare): the wife spent 21 days in an ICU in December of 2022, and I naturally wondered what billing would be like, especially how much. Duh. Welcome to the Twilight Zone, but the good kind of Twilight Zone! Specifically, we received a single bill 201 days after her discharge. It showed a charge of $3,643 and that we owed $1,880 of that amount. There was no information or detail at all; the bill was a one-liner. I kept waiting for the other shoes to drop: surgeons, PT, specialists, etc. Never happened. That one was a total black box, and clearly not one I'm complaining about.