Reason #1,473 why American Healthcare Insurance and Medicaid/Medicaid are so expensive and not only cumbersome but almost unusable:

My son has 6 specialist doctors and 3 therapists with the largest medical hospital and clinics system of the state. Suddenly, no notice ahead of time to each clinic or my son, his insurance company AND Medicare/Medicaid in March announced each year each professional must have their own referral from the family doctor, with each diagnosis listed for each doctor and therapist before any more appointments are allowed.

So, for example each of the 3 different therapists in the outpatient therapy clinic (OT,PT, and SLP) need separate letters of referral for 2026. The 3 doctors in the same clinic for neuroscience need separate letters. The GI doctor needs one. The Alzheimer Clinic needs 2: the NP and the Clinical Geriatric Psychiatrist.

9 separate letters to be faxed by the family doctor office. Then we will do it again in 9 months. Oh, and no notice to us. And the insurance company and Medicare/Medicaid, and the hospital system don’t have any responsibility to inform the patient. It’s all “find out the hard way” when you show up to your appointment and are told it’s cancelled because the patient didn’t get this taken care of.

Do you realize the time this takes for family to make to ask the family doctor for each letter and we are to supply each name, each diagnosis, each address, each fax number. How many patients and family advocates are capable of doing these separate requests? What if I don’t have English as my first language? What if I’m not quite educated enough to understand what must be done? What if I was traveling or sick and unable to get this done? What if I had no idea now I have to do this over and over now?

What if I had not asked the right questions the first time we ran into the problem? We solved the one for last week but today I learned the full scope of the problem because I got a call from the other neurologist’s appointment scheduler IN SAME CLINIC who told me we will be cancelled from an appointment we’ve waited for SIX MONTHS unless we get a new referral order. I asked “But we got one last week! For same office! Oh-ho, silly me, didn’t I know we need a separate referral for each doctor? No one told me last week. And what if I had not just now on the phone asked the right questions?

Ok, now I have to GET AN APPOINTMENT with the family doctor and bring a list of each professional and their contact information for each request. I have 8 days to complete this for our next neurologist appointment for seizures. We saw the neurologist for migraines same office last week. We go to a different clinic for Alzheimer’s in 3 weeks. I could just scream.

TL; DR: The insurance and government healthcare programs have made paperwork requirements even more difficult and time-consuming. Someone is “paying for this”. Who do you think pays?
#UniversalHealthcare #Medical #Healthcare #Insurance #Medicare #Medicaid