Until recently, my husband and I had been seeing one of those “Oh-I’m-so-glad-he’s-my-doctor” physicians for two decades. Then one day the mail brought the announcement that the office was closing its doors and that the four doctors who had been in the practice were either retiring or leaving San Francisco. They enclosed a list of doctors who, they said, had indicated they had room in their practices. So started my search for a new primary-care physician.

I looked the list over, saw a familiar name, and dialed the number. “Yes,” the receptionist assured me, “doctor is taking new patients.” It was all very friendly; I made an appointment; she set about recording the necessary information, and then the crucial question. “What insurance do you have?” “Medicare and AARP” (one of the several medi-gap insurance plans to which those of us who can afford it subscribe), I replied. I heard a small intake of breath, a ten-second silence that felt like much more, and then, “Oh, you shoul...

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FOOTNOTES:

• [1] Ironically, a recent study conducted by the Indiana University School of Medicine’s Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research Policy and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (April 2008) reports that in a survey of 2,200 physicians, 59 percent now support legislation to establish national health insurance. Reflecting on his analysis of the data, Dr. Ronald Ackerman, co-author of the study, concluded that “across the board, physicians feel that our fragmented and for-profit insurance system is obstructing good patient care, and a majority now support national insurance as the remedy.”
• [2] All this, and I haven't even mentioned the huge multi-billion-dollar boondoggle the federal government handed the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry with Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit that went into effect on January 1, 2006. It would take another whole article to discuss the many-tiered problems with this program.