#Microblog Monday 507: Loop Around
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One of the more annoying features of the US health system — and I’m sure the same is true in other countries — is that you need to wait at least one year from your last visit for certain appointments. So if you go on October 14, next year, your appointment has to be after October 15. The year after that, October 16, and so on. You cannot go October 14 this year, and go October 13 next year.
Of course, weekends and appointment openings mean that your yearly visit may get pushed very far off-course. Add in that the twins now live far from their doctor, which means their annual wellness visits have been moved to school breaks.
The visit this year is currently set almost six months beyond the year mark, and I realized that the visit after that will likely not happen at all. We’ll loop around back to summer and start the cycle over.
It would be lovely if you could call into insurance, explain the situation, and reset the timeline. Big plans for when I rule the world.
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4 comments
We just paid the copay to readjust for DC1. It was treated as a regular doctor visit, so unlike a mammogram we didn’t have to pay the full cost for going early.
This is something that drives me bonkers. I like to schedule the dentist over winter break when the kids are home from school and then in the summer. And I do all my appointments in August when they go back to school so that I can have free time and it’s so irritating when I have to keep pushing it all back further and further every year.
Okay, you had me going down a rabbit hole here trying to find out exactly what our provincial health plan here in Ontario covers (or doesn’t) and how often. I knew my annual physical had changed a fair bit in recent years, and now I understand why: since 2012, Ontario (and many other provinces) no longer recommends traditional annual physicals. Apparently it’s now called “the Periodic Health Visit” — as the name implies, it’s periodic and not necessarily every 12 months, and it’s not standardized but tailored to the needs of the specific patient.
Coverage for eye exams at the optometrist is once a year for kids under 19. People over 20 are no longer covered for an annual exam *unless* they have an “eligible medical condition” (e.g., diabetes mellitus, cataracts, glaucoma, etc., plus some “lesser” conditions). After 65, it’s once every 18 months, but possibly more often if you have one of those conditions.
Dental care has not been covered by the government until just recently, but there’s a new federal program that’s being gradually adopted. We have the same issues with the insurance coverage we have through our former employer. It’s officially once every 9 months, but somehow our dentist allots the eligible “units” so that we’re mostly covered for a visit once every six months.
We enjoy that our dental visits are twice a year, and the reset is the start of our work fiscal year. So you can schedule 2 visits any time within that time frame. Eevrything else is the very annoying 366th day.