Healthcare Industry 

Doctors go extra mile for uninsured patients

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USA Today
Summary: 

Doctors are increasingly are dealing with longtime patients who suddenly have lost their insurance or are now underinsured.  The problem is particularly thorny because many practices themselves are hurting financially as patients save money by avoiding care. But some doctors are responding the old-fashioned country doctor way -- reducing or delaying fees for their services, jawboning pharmaceutical representatives to provide more drug samples, or leaning on specialists to give their patients a break. Said Dr. Eric Ramos of Modesto, "What I try to tell (longtime patients) is that until our relationship is severed by either you or me, I'm your physician."

Results
Doctors find ways to treat uninsured patients
Richard Kipling, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | September 13, 2011
Modesto, Calif. – Practicing family medicine in one of the most economically depressed cities in the country, Eric Ramos has watched his patients make wrenching choices about health care. One couple, longtime patients, had to decide whether to maintain coverage for the wife, who had chronic kidney failure, or instead for her diabetic husband. "He decided to cover her," Ramos, 55, says of the husband, "and he's scraping by." How? With medications Ramos obtains from pharmaceutical representatives or elsewhere. Increasingly in California and other states, doctors such as Ramos are taking matters into their own hands, finding ways to continue care for patients who have no insurance and no money.
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