he can reach them

Medicare IS required to screen for dementia. The MOCA is ONE of the screening tools the doctor can use - but not the only screening tool.

My doctor typically uses our conversations for the screening. He hired a new nurse and, for the first time this year, I was asked questions to make the assessment: name any president, day of the week, and maybe a third. She said she stopped asking for the current president's name because of the reactions she was getting.

I should have said similar tests.
The point is the same. Anyone without dementia passes.

All they have to do is make an assessment, including simply by my ability to carry on a coherent conversation during the exam.

I wasn't aware they were even making an assessment of me until someone here previously insisted doctors had to administer the MOCA. I knew I had never taken the MOCA test (or any other test) - and that my doctor's annual wellness visit is extremely detailed (and attentive to everything he is legally required to assess). So I looked the law up and learned it actually was an annual requirement, but that it could be done without me even being aware of it. Since the test adds to the already lengthy wellness visit, and he can assess gross dementia without using it - so why would he bother spending time to administer the test when he gets paid for making the assessment even if never spends time on a specific test.

Even many people with dementia can pass. My spouse is taking two Alzheimer's medications and still aces the test every year.

the bestest, the way Trump aced it the bestest?

I know he hasn't used them in my presence. He also never pretended the MOCA was anything other than a gross screening test. She had several hours of in depth tests spread over a couple of days before she was diagnosed with cognitive impairment.

And I'm pretty sure his results on the longer series of tests would be close to (or worse than) hers. There are more similarities than I'm comfortable with between the way her impairment manifests itself and his. As an example, one of the more thorough tests than the MOCA involved looking at a picture, hiding it, then drawing it from memory, then drawing it again from memory one or two more times later in the testing series.

She reproduced the image with a few missing or out-of-place things in the first memory draw. In each subsequent redraw, she accurately reproduced the first memory drawing with no new variations.

It was incredibly validating to have what I watch in real life demonstrated in the testing. Early in time she incorporates an alternate reality in a memory (something wilder, that makes a better story). After that time she retells the story exactly the same way every time. She really believes what she is saying is accurate, and cannot be dissuaded - no matter how many other people who were present at what she is remembering tell her she is wrong. This early-formed, persistent false memory from which he cannot be dissuaded is something I see in Trump all the time.

As I am sorry we all have to go through it as a nation.