 [ Symptoms ] my mother is currently covered by medicare but many physicians are not accepting medicare any longer she is concerned about whether to stay on medicare upgrade her coverage or try to figure out how these exchanges work and whether she should switch do you have any advice or suggestions [ Disease ] your mother is situation with medicare is becoming more frequent as medicare payments have not increased over the recent years more and more doctors are not seeing new medicare patients unfortunately the new health insurance exchanges under the health care law are not for medicare patients but one option your mother may want to consider is looking at available private health plans that serve medicare patients  so called medicare advantage plans the good news is that you can always stay with your traditional medicare coverage or go back to it if the private medicare advantage options do not work for you