Tuesday, April 10, 2012

I'M TOO SICK, BUT ....

Sometimes, illness becomes an additive affair. The original serious problem becomes complicated by another serious problem- or problems) which confounds doctors and patient, alike.  A difficult practice issue is whether one problem's complexities makes it difficult - or unwise - to use the potent therapeutic firepower which might ordinarily be invoked. So that's my situation.  I will see my doctor in a few days because his advice is given with integrity and competence.

In the meantime, life is made more complicated by messages from a Medicare review agency which has decided that I don't qualify for the blood sugar frequency that my doctor has prescribed through the years.I guess that the money Medicare is saved because the testing allows my doctor and me to carefully control my sugar levels, avoid hospital emergency room treatments, hospitalizations for heart attacks and strokes, loss of vision, loss of kidney function (then dialysis) and bodily  injury from auto accidents doesn't count. What does count more and more these days is a bureaucratic review system, administered by anonymous people in far off places, in which arbitrary decisions seem to be issued (appeal is allowed, but physicians who have had their Medicare reimbursement cut may be grudging participants in the bureaucratic paperwork process of their patients and hiring an attorney seems cost-ineffective).  Sick people don't have the strength or resources to fight this impenetrable system.

If you have never read Kafka's "The Trial" click for a link.  Kafka described your brave new world.

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