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A Medicare mess

by Mike Ross
Monday, Nov. 19, 2007

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Senior citizens in Alaska are facing a Medicare mess.

Many are discovering that when they turn 65, doctors won't accept them as patients because they're on Medicare, forcing many elders into a desperate search for health care.

What seniors thought would be the golden years of retirement and a time of life in which they could the benefits from years of hard work, is instead turning into a time full of questions and uncertainty.

Many rely on Medicare as a primary form of health insurance. They never thought they may be discriminated against because of it.

"There are two times that being an American has been obnoxious to me," Medicare patient J.R. Edwards said. "One time was when I got spit on when I came back from Vietnam. The other was when I became a Medicare patient."

Volunteers with the Older Persons Action Group, or OPAG, make daily calls from a small Downtown office building, searching for doctors who will accept new Medicare patients.

Over and over, the answer is no. The main problem is finding a family practitioner.

Senior's Advocate Rita Hatch says what they find when they call doctor's offices is astounding and disturbing.

In Anchorage, there are more than 700 doctors in private practice. Of them, zero are accepting new Medicare patients, according to OPAG.   

Hatch says that is leaving older folks in a desperate situation.

"You can be going to a doctor for 20 years, the same doctor, and at age 65 they're gonna tell you 'I'm sorry I can't take you anymore,'" Hatch said.

Gayle Hunter has proudly called Alaska home for more than a half-century. The 76-year-old's collection of Fur Rendezvous pins is one of her most prized possessions.    

Hunter has struggled for the past two years to find a doctor who will accept Medicare.

She's says she's called 30 doctors, asking if they take Medicare.

"I have not gotten an answer from any of them," she said.

Hunter has lived in the same house for 53 years. Now, she's reluctantly considering a move to the Lower 48.

"I wouldn't want to leave, not at all," she says.

But Hunter says she might be forced to leave Alaska because of the Medicare mess.

"It makes me furious because I don't want to move down to the states," she says. "Yet when you get to be my age, as many of us are, your parts start having problems. They wear out."

Sharon Hanek has faced the same problem.

She says she called the Medicare offices in Washington D.C. to ask for advice on how to find a doctor.   

The 70-year-old says their advice is to visit an emergency room.

"If everyone went to the emergency room just imagine how much it would cost us taxpayers," Hanek said.

With no private practices taking new Medicare patients, there are few options left for area seniors.

Many say the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center, a non-profit, low-income clinic for underinsured patients, is the only place in town that continues accepting new Medicare patients.

Patient Ellen Cole had to resort to coming to the clinic even though she has private insurance to supplement Medicare.   

"I would never have imagined that this would have happened in the United States," Cole said.

She says she's met many people who have faced the same problem, people who've been dropped by their doctor after turning 65.

But even at the Neighborhood Health Center, patients say they have to sometimes wait weeks to get an appointment. And the flood of Medicare patients who can't find doctors anywhere else is putting a strain on the clinic.

"It's not a tsunami, but it's a very strong tide and it's hard for us to keep up," Dr. Tom Hunt, medical director of the clinic, says.

The problem has become so acute, Sen. Lisa Murkowski held a special congressional hearing in Anchorage earlier this year.

"I've called it a crisis -- a crisis in access to health care in the state of Alaska," said Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Doctors acknowledge that seniors in Alaska are being shortchanged.

"Our elders -- the ones we love and care for, the ones who have invested their lives in building the country that we have -- they've worked their entire lives, fought the wars and when they reach 65, they find themselves out in the cold," said Dr. Paul Davis, president of the Alaska Academy of Family Physicians.

Many doctors don't want to turn away Medicare patients but insist it's a matter of economic survival for their businesses.

They say the federal Medicare program doesn't pay them enough to meet their expenses.

To their dismay, many seniors in Alaska are discovering that primary health care has become almost impossible to find just at the point in their lives when they need it the most.

There are few alternatives for Medicare patients.    

Some nurse practitioners in Anchorage will accept them and some clinics and doctor's offices will take a limited number of Medicare patients on an urgent care basis only.     

But to find them often takes hours and hours of phones calls. Many seniors say it's a frustrating process and they often lose hope and just give up trying to find a doctor.

Contact Mike Ross at mross@ktuu.com