I've been on a 2-week quest to try to find a new doctor for my mother. I'll have to write a post about physicians and how they should be treating patients another time. It's because I felt my mother wasn't being treated properly by her physician that I went on this quest.

You know what? It's not as easy to find a physician as one might think. I started out researching geriatric physicians and found that there aren't as many as one might imagine. Those that were available weren't taking new patients. That's not a good thing for the aging population from where I'm sitting.

Next I decided to try internal medicine physicians, whom most of us think of as general practitioners; no one likes being referred to in that manner anymore. You know what; it's hard getting them to accept new patients as well. The few I found that would accept a new patient were looking out to November and December; my mother's medication wasn't lasting quite that long and she has other issues that couldn't wait.

Yesterday I called more than 20 physicians. In the days leading up to yesterday I probably called at least 25 to 30 others. This was astounding; I was feeling as though I was going to have to find a physician for her that was more than 45 minutes away, and since that was unacceptable I was looking at having to go to her physician's appointment the next time (we don't live in the same city) and daring her physician to treat her badly again, with the possibility that they might have parted that day without my finding another physician to treat her.

Luckily, salvation came in the form of one of my mother's friends, who actually sees my mother's previous physician. Mom had to leave him because back some years ago, before becoming Medicare eligible, the company that was paying for her insurance changed insurance companies, and he wasn't a participating physician. She called that office, found that he wasn't able to take new patients, but the person he worked with was, and they would see her since she'd been a previous patient whom they liked; whew!

Elated that the trial was finally over, I went to Facebook to mention that success had been achieved. One of my friends there said that it was because of the national health plan that she was having trouble, and that a friend of hers had been told by a physician to take precautions now because fewer doctors would be dealing with Medicare or Medicaid patients once it kicked in.

Here's the thing. The new health care plan has nothing to do with Medicare and Medicaid directly. Those programs are totally separate from the new plan, and the only possibility of a crossover might be in reimbursement. That is, if there are changes to how the national plan is funded and it still goes through after the Supreme Court has had its shot at it, it's possible that some money could be diverted from Medicare and Medicaid to help fund it. It's remote, but it could always happen.

Once again, this points out just how much misinformation there is out there about the health plan. I've gone on record saying I don't think it's perfect and that I have some reservations about a few things here and there. I've also gone on record as saying that the idea of almost everyone having health care is a good one, something that should be supported for so many reasons.

In this case, if the plan had been available many years earlier my mother wouldn't have had to change doctors and I'd have been spared this consternation of having to find someone new. That's an irritation I could have done without.