

It took a lot of persistence and luck. I had found my wife a new doctor to do her medication management and I ended up just politely hounding her staff explaining calmly but firmly the catch-22 I found myself in.
The trick I’ve learned over caring for my chronically ill wife, who I love with all my heart, is to be very nice to the front line medical people but to never give up. They take crap all day from angry people, so I make it my mission to never yell at them, never get cross with them. I just explain what’s going on and my goal is always to get them on my side, be my person on the inside.
That worked here too. After calling a couple times and being nice, one person working the phone remembered me and I could tell they wanted to help. I just kept asking them for options, people like it when they can be part of solving the problem. They got in the doctors ear about this and suddenly if she did a virtual evaluation of my wife she could write a preliminary prescription to fill the gap.
Is this how things should work? No. Should you have to beg and cajole and get lucky that someone will help you? Absolutely not. But this is how I’ve figured out how to navigate this broken system.
Tl;Dr - Be very nice to office staff, be persistent, make it a problem you can solve together, keep reminding them that you are advocating for a flesh and blood human being you care about and that them just suffering will never be a good enough answer.
Also don’t get frustrated if you don’t make progress and need to call back, I think it only took calling 3 days in a row for them to figure out they better help me or they were going to have to talk to me every single day
Look the government just doesn’t have any money. None for usaid, none for Ukraine, none for science or education or healthcare, there’s just no money.
Except I guess for performative bullshit like painting over this mural.