"It is hard for me to believe that there are not Drs. around here who specialize in surgery for adhesions."
"It is hard for me to believe that my gyn knows that this is a problem for me; but yet he will not help."
HERE IS THE ANSWER:
I wrote to Dr. Jay Redan - a general surgeon at the NEW Adhesions Unit at the Community Medical Center in Scranton, PA - to tell him that I WILL NOT be able to have my adhesiolysis surgery at the NEW Adhesions Unit. WHY? Because hospitals in Pennsylvania WILL NOT ACCEPT Medicare patients - even if they can self-pay!!!!
Dr. Redan's letter provides the answer!!!
Dear Helen,
I was in Washington, D.C. in April talking to the Medicare people about this same problem. Our government people are outright stupid with no common sense or reason. You are 100 % correct on all your thoughts. HMO's are even worse.
This is obviously why Dr. Reich and I cannot take insurance assignments. They have no concept of what we do. This is also a large reason why other skilled surgeons do not do what we do since they cannot get paid appropriately for their time and skill. We can go on for days I'm sure and only be frustrated.
Hopefully, the government and businesses will get out of the insurance business and return it back to the doctors as a break-even business and not have all these HMO CEO's out to make money off of our patients.
Sincerely, Jay
P.S. Sorry you are caught up in this nonsense. I will be in NY for my privileges on 8/14/00. So I can get started there too. I love our center in PA; but Dr. Reich and I are working on getting things going in NY too.
MY FINAL COMMENT: Pennsylvania will not accept Medicare people as patients; BUT - NEW YORK WILL!! It doesn't make sense, does it!!