Originally Posted by justthisonce
Hi ... I registered on this board just to add my two cents to this question.
I live in California, but grew up in New Mexico. When my parents retired, they moved to Grants Pass, Oregon. I believe that doing so ultimately killed my mother -- which I know sounds like hyperbole, so I will explain. The bottom line is that my husband and I will never retire to a small town, and I don't encourage others to do so.
The reason is entirely because of access to health care.
When you turn 65, you have to go onto Medicare. This is literally the law right now. You are not just ENTITLED to Medicare; you either have to accept it (and become ineligible for other insurance), or you have to give up your Social Security benefits -- both past and future benefits! There is a lawsuit being fought out about this (Google "Hall v. Sibelius" for details) right now, but currently, this is the reality.
The shortage of Medicare physicians in southern Oregon is pretty awful.
Yes, there are hospitals (and probably some wonderful doctors) in Grants Pass. But your choices (and access) are very limited. For example, my 73-year-old father has been exhibiting serious short-term memory loss for the last 8 months. Previously, he had been driving to Medford (45 minutes from Grants Pass) to see a GP. That drive became too much for him to handle (with his bad knees, he can't even stand being in a car longer than 15 minutes), so he'd stopped having regular checkups back in 2010. So I tried to find him a Medicare GP in Grants Pass. I quickly found that more than half of the some 20 "Medicare doctors accepting new patients" in Grants Pass, according to his Medicare Advantage plan, really were not ... they were just allowed to SAY that they were because they were continuing to see the existing Medicare patients they already had "on file" when they stopped accepting new patients -- FOUR YEARS EARLIER.
I finally found a clinic that would take him on ... but they would not schedule a "new patient" appointment for THREE MONTHS. He has still not been to see this new GP ... the appointment is in mid-August. Worse, because I know that there is a strong potential he is suffering from early-onset Alzheimers or some other degenerative dementia, I know that he needs to see a neurologist for a thorough assessment. I cannot make an appointment for him to see a neurologist until he gets a referral from his GP. I am told that at that point, it will take another two or three months to get THAT appointment.
This means that from the time I became concerned about my father's slipping memory and cognitive impairment, it will have taken over SIX MONTHS to get him in to see the doctor and get the assessment he needs.
And you don't even want to know how depressing it is to find that you have a choice of, say, two specialists who will take Medicare in the town where your parent who needs a specialist of that type lives ... and that both have gotten some pretty awful reviews on the Web.
Or that instead of getting to pick a particular doctor at the only clinic in town accepting new Medicare patients, you will be seen by the new doctor with a degree you may not be familiar with, who graduated from a one-star medical school and has next to no real-world experience.
The smaller your pool of options, the less choice you have. Think long and hard about whether you will want to have as much choice as possible if/when you develop a potentially serious condition. The likelihood that you will develop such a condition at some point during these, the Golden Years of your life, is quite high. Plan for it.
To some degree, this is the reality of Medicare anywhere, and of our overburdened health care system ... but the situation is really, really bad in small towns.
Now, to my mother's story ...
My mother went in for mammograms every six months. The clinic in Grants Pass missed not one but TWO (one in each breast) tumors. These unrelated cancers were aggressive. When she began experiencing pain, she tried to get an appointment to come back in for a follow-up. The clinic was slow to respond. By the time she had an appointment to come back in, the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. She came here to the Bay Area of surgery and treatment, but it was clear, given the degree of lymph involvement the surgeon found, that her chances were poor. She was dead a year and a half later.
Could this have happened in another town, even a big one? Of course. Would my mother have chosen the clinic she used if she had had lots of other choices and been able to really research and make an informed choice? Probably not.
Consider, too ... in the last four months of my 67-year-old mother's life, it became VERY difficult for her to withstand long road trips. Trips to Medford became tortuous and overwhelming, just as they have become for my father. It is a bad idea to assume that you can "always go to Medford" for medical treatment. The truth is that you may not feel well enough to have to travel 45 minutes to reach medical care.
Grants Pass is largely a retirement town, and there are lots of independent living, assisted living, and even memory/dementia care facilities there. Many of these offer "in-home" visits from medical personnel ... but so far, I am finding that this often means nurse practitioners and other not-quite-MD-level folks.
When my parents moved to Grants Pass, they were in their very early 60s, not yet on Medicare, and both felt quite healthy. I know they thought about health care issues (my mother in particular thought that my father's family history of heart disease was the issue to worry about), but they decided in the end that between Grants Pass and Medford, they would be adequately covered.
They were wrong.
I, too, used to dream of retiring to a quiet little town where maybe life moved a bit slower ... but now, I'm going to be very careful about considering long-term health care issues, no matter how healthy I may feel when I retire.
Grants Pass is lovely (a little small for me not to feel claustrophobic, overall, but my Dad has felt very comfortable there), and I've met some fabulous people there ... friendly, good-natured, good sense of humor. In no way do I mean to suggest the town or its citizens aren't good or nice.
But I do seriously urge you to consider the potential long-term consequences of seriously restricting your health care options by moving to a small town in general ... and this one in particular.
Thanks for listening.
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