Harder Than I Thought

Finding a new doctor is so much harder than I thought. This new insurance has so fewer options than our old one. Of course, it does. The company my husband worked for finds the cheapest thing they can. Cheaper means fewer options always. Two years ago they switched to only CVS pharmacies. Yeah, my meds have been cheaper, but we went from having three pharmacies in town (two within walking distance) we could use to having three within the entire county. The closest one is 20 minutes away which means I can only get my meds filled on my husband's days off. Which is why I've been without my Ativan for a week now (going today to pick them up).

I'm running into the same problem with doctors. Plus I'm really confused about who is and isn't covered. The county-wide clinic we go to says it accepts our insurance, but when I look up individual doctors, they're not shown as covered on the insurance site. My shrink said I would be transferred to one of the other doctors in the mental health department. I looked up the two doctors she listed in the letter she sent and neither are shown as covered under our insurance. My doctor and one other in the practice are shown as covered. My doctor is leaving and the other isn't accepting new patients.

Now I don't know what to do? Do I chance trying one of the other doctors she listed (both men) and hope the insurance covers it? If the insurance doesn't that like a $600 bill instead of a $25 copay. That's an expensive screw-up if insurance won't pay for it.

I spent two days anxious as hell as I scanned through the available doctors in our network. Most are located in Oregon. I live in Washington, but my husband works in Oregon. Most of the Washington doctors are located closer to Tacoma and Seattle where the airport is, not in our little county down here. There were a bunch of doctors listed that all work together at one clinic, but when I checked the clinic website it didn't list our insurance as one it accepts. Which is it? I'm so confused.

My doctor also recommended another clinic to try which is the one I went to before I started seeing her. I left because the nurse practitioner they had me seeing told me there was nothing else he could do for me and that I should try therapy instead. I had been on the same meds for years without him wanting to try anything different. He told me there was nothing else I could try. My new doctor immediately put me on new things that worked better for me and listened to my concerns.

I could go back to that clinic and ask for a different provider, but they require you be in therapy along with medication management. I don't particularly want therapy. I hate therapy. I've never found a therapist that works for me. I have thought about seeing one again. It's been years since I stopped going because I didn't need it anymore. I could probably use some therapy to help me learn to deal with my chronic fatigue and not being able to do the things I used to. The problem is each visit is $25. That's two visits every month so $50. I don't know if we can afford that, especially after we had to have the roof redone (which was $11k).

I also found a clinic that does just medication management. That would probably be my best bet, but then I'll miss the more personal care my doctor was giving me with a little bit of talk therapy each appointment. The place I looked up seems to have quick visits that just make sure you aren't reacting badly to your meds then refills your prescriptions and that's it. In and out.

Then the few independent doctors I found had bios that talked about more holistic approaches or saying therapy is more important than meds and stuff like that which doesn't fit with my approach to treatment. I need my meds. Therapy is not going to treat my bipolar. I want to avoid doctors that are going to push me to go off my meds and seek therapy instead.

Sigh.

I don't know what to do. It's all so confusing, and things are made even harder because I can't use a phone thanks to my anxiety. So I can't call and ask questions like a normal person. I rely on my husband to make appointments for me and any other calls that I need to make. Sometimes I can manage to speak on the phone if he makes the initial call then hands me the phone, but it's hard, and I freeze up a lot. I have a hard time hearing over the phone which adds to the anxiety over the whole thing.

I just want to stay at the clinic I'm at. I know it. I'm comfortable with how they do online visits. Making appointments is all online and easy. No calls to make once you're established with a doctor. All your visits have follow-up documentation you can access all in one place so you and all of your doctors can see it (if they're all with the clinic like mine are).

I'm having the same issue with insurance and my sleep doctors. They're through the same clinic (I like it because it has all specialties under one roof) which says it accepts our insurance, but none of my doctors are listed as covered. On top of that, I need pre-authorization to be treated by the sleep medicine department. I went through that with my old insurance and have already established treatment and paid off my main equipment. Now I have to do that all over again with the new insurance, but I don't know how to go about it when I can't use the phone.

Made more complicated by the fact my husband only has one weekday off each week and doesn't want to spend it making calls for my useless ass. So nothing ever gets done. I was supposed to refill my cpap supplies months ago. I haven't been replacing them weekly like I should because I can't afford it and now insurance has to be redone for them (and possibly finding a whole new clinic to go to?).

I'm just confused and overwhelmed and scared I won't be able to find another doctor in either department. Eventually, my supplies for my cpap will run out and so will my meds for the bipolar. Then what?

I wasn't super stressed about the cpap stuff because everything else was running smoothly with keeping my meds and shrink appointments. Then my doctor dropped the bombshell on me. Why did she have to do this to me?

Great, now my anxiety is up just thinking about this stuff.

I just don't know what to do, and I'm scared of losing coverage again. I can't live without my meds.

Why does everything have to be so hard?