Obamacare has a new message to seniors: Take two aspirins and find yourself a new doctor in the morning.
Just ask 84-year-old Dorothy Gaillard, a retired book binder and a patient of my father, an Upper East Side primary care physician, for more than two decades.
Gaillard could easily find a doctor near her Queens home, but she dutifully makes a 45-minute schlep to my father’s office for uniquely personal care. He takes her blood pressure himself and even schedules her next appointment, tasks that most doctors shunt off to assistants.
Last Saturday, Gaillard called my father, aghast about a letter she had just received from the Medicare Advantage program of UnitedHealthcare.
Gaillard, one of close to 900,000 aged New Yorkers covered by Medicare Advantage, was informed that my father’s contract was being terminated effective Jan. 1; she would need to find another doctor.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she recalled. “Something ain’t right.”
That something is Obamacare.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/seniors-hurt-obamacare-article-1.1504414#ixzz2jbBUlZ5i