One year ago, Wildwood Family Clinic, 4901 Cottage Grove Road, started turning away new patients covered by Medicare, the national health insurance program for senior citizens and the disabled. Wildwood is the first clinic in Madison and maybe even the entire state to bail out of accepting new Medicare patients. Dr. Tim Bartholow, a senior vice president with the Wisconsin Medical Society, fears it might not be the last. “This is the canary in the mine,” he says. A massive report released just last week by the federal commission in charge of Medicare suggests he could be right.
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