I have a very conscientious GP aka primary care physician, which I gather from looking at the news lately is actually pretty hard to come by these days.

Apparently there’s a vast GP shortage.

I guess to go all the way through medical school and only become a GP could be kind of a letdown. I can’t imagine even going to medical school in the first place, much less spending lots more time and money in medical school, and becoming a specialist, which medical insurance companies now are not so found of paying. Sort of a catch-22 for folks going to medical school, if you ask me.

I don’t like going to specialists, it means something could possibly be wrong. I’d rather just go to a GP.

Once, a while back, I was feeling particularly hypochondriac like, and mentioned an “ailment” to my very conscientious GP. Bad move on my part, let me tell you.

My very conscientious GP tested me for every terrifying thing in the book. You name it, if it was terrifying, we found out whether I had it or not. This could also be called CYA, but I’m not sure. Thankfully, I didn’t have any of the terrifying, life threatening or fatal ailments that I was tested for.

Showed me. Now the when my very conscientious GP asks me if anything is “wrong,” I think about it for a mila-moment and then say, “Nope, everything’s just fine.” I don’t care what possible ailment, that I’ve conjured up in my brain, that I think I might have. No more terrifying tests for me, thank you very much.

And insurance companies should learn from this. Instead of saying, “No, we’re not going to test you for x, y or z.” Take a different approach. A person comes in and complains of burping, you scare the shit out them, and then they never ask for anything ever again. Sort of like dealing with a wayward two year old or difficult teenager. You know, reverse psychology.

But, no, as I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve gotten very, very used to getting missives (if not just down right taking them from granted, anticipating them even), disguised as expensive looking brochures, informing me that, nope, guess what, we said that you were covered for x out of x, y and z, but guess what.. x is now out. Lucky you.

In fact, last week I get a long letter from my medical insurance agency letting me know that, oops, some patients thought that their doctors were part of this insurance company’s insurance plan. But guess what, in 3 long weeks, bye-bye doctors. Got to go find some other folks. Not that this is the medical insurance agency’s fault. Oh no. The doctors want to be paid an actual living wage, and that is too much to ask of the medical insurance agency. You got to give these medical agency people a break, come on.

So I’m hoping that my very competent GP, aka primary care physician doesn’t get deluged with all those patients, betrayed by their greedy doctors, wanting to actually get paid something decent for a visit to the physician, GP, specialist or whatever.

I still like having the option of saying, “Nope, everything’s just fine,” but knowing that if something actual isn’t “just fine,” there is someone out there who will scare the shit out of me, trying to find out what the hell might be going on.