Distance » Dr. A

hundred dollars per session although Medicare has a three hundred dollar rate that is publicly documented — transparency is an advantage of social medicine. I have never heard of anyone paying for it out of their pocket. Whether three or five, when you multiply by more than fifteen thousand, you get a very expensive yearly cost.

If you aren’t covered by medical plans or Medicare, different states have different levels of Medicaid coverage. Even with Medicare, transportation to and from a clinic may not be covered, in which case you can theoretically get dialysis but may practically be unable to get to dialysis. It would be like getting free take-out meals from a place you can’t reach. “Ironic”, as Alanis Morissette might say.

I told Mark about all these different aspects and gave prototypical examples of different kinds of patients I knew throughout the years. I mentioned Ms. Ramirez at the Medicare office as someone he could talk with to get more information. I happened to know her from both perspectives: she helps some of my patients and she is a patient herself at the Sunnyvale Voyager.

DISTANCE » DR. A.

“Yes, you can go to Sunnyvale.” Mark’s explanation is not particularly clear, but he says the commute is bad from Menlo Park to San Jose if he gets a position at the new Google campus, and would like to try the commute from down there. He only wants a couple weeks, and we can shuffle both vampires and patients around during that time, given the locations are only about thirty minutes apart. I guess an hour extra commute every other day is quite a bit of lost time. Probably much worse during rush hour.

Mark has been acting a bit distant lately, so I am hoping making him happy with this will help bring him back. It is almost like he is flipping personalities. One is his historically affable and sometimes loquacious