Going to the doctor is certainly different than it was when I was young. As I had terrible excema as a child, my father would take me to the local doctor where we would sit in a full waiting room until seen, usually about 9:00 p.m. His wife was the nurse and she brought the children with her and they were our entertainment while we waited. They would sit in the room, push the buzzer, and then run out the front door, or be ushered into a back room where they slipped out the back door and came back in the front. I never saw my father pay a bill, but he would promised to pay up when he sold the next house that he was building. When the office burned, my doctor lent me his field ultra-violet light for my rash to use at home. Then he stopped at the warehouse and bought a new office lamp on the way home from the hospital so he could give me the treatments in the back room that wasn't burned. I went to specialists in the city who tried creams that only made me worse, but eventually I saw a specialist to gave me radiation treatments that healed me temporarily. He also gave me Cortizone shots that messed up my menstration cycle and I gained weight, but recovered eventually. They didn't always have the answers but they tried everything they could, and we lived through it and eventually got the bill paid by installment. The doctor misdiagnosed my father with arthritis and he died of lung cancer a couple of months later.. He smoked so we were not surprised.
Our access problems today are based on Medicare only paying the doctors 80% of the cost of the care, which is too high anyway.
I predict that a few doctors will go back to private practice and I will be first in line to get an appointment. My son has a healthcare savings fund which is deductible, and I have started a savings account. I would like to die in style, comfortable, if possible. Dorisena