Medicaid, a major health care insurance provider has been under the gun recently for reportedly not paying physicians.
In turn, those physicians can't provide adequate service and are having to turn you away.
Dr. Fernando Malamud, a Panama City oncologist deals with a lot of patients on a regular basis, but for a while now, he's been having some problems with Medicaid.
"I have not seen a check for Medicaid or we have direct deposited in four weeks," Malamud said.
And, he's had to turn patients away who can't afford chemotherapy.
"As a doctor, how does that make you feel? Devastated, I know, despite the fact that he does not have a curative disease; the chemotherapy in his situation would improve the quality of care. I don't have the funds to provide that care," Malamud said.
After doing some investigative work, we found that it's not Medicaid who's really to blame, it's a new billing system called Electronic Data Systems or EDS.
When you finish visiting the doctor, he or she fills out the claim either online or by phone.
With the high volume of traffic, EDS can't respond fast enough to the claims.
"So down from providers submitting claims all at once, the time things got a bit tied up," Fernando Senra, press secretary for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration said.
"As of today, not a penny has been sent to me yet," Malamud said.
And it's those payments, doctors rely on to pay for your treatments.
"We had the old system for 18 years. So you know, you get used to the current system and changes. There are all types of things to get used to and of course we anticipated glitches and issues that we know are going to surface," Senra said.
Senra stresses, the problems within the system should be fixed within a month. "We're really finding as soon as we become aware of an issue, things are being turned around very quickly," he added.
"We have to purchase our chemotherapy as well as other biological therapy drugs out of our own pocket, then expecting a reasonably prompt payment. Otherwise, we will run out of money and be broke," Malamud said.
We spoke with other doctors Thursday and they tell us they haven't been paid by Medicaid either.