I am not doing well at all healthwise due to a now possibly diagnosed illness. A few weeks ago, I was at the Mayo Clinic, one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country for rare illnesses, the sort of place you would expect House to work.
I was there ten days and saw three doctors for about an hour each. As I said, it’s now possibly diagnosed and, therefore, there’s a possible route to go down, but that and a bill were all I got.
It’s far from only in the US. In my experience, hospitals in Germany are far worse in this regard. It depends greatly on who is getting paid how much for what. The US is far better for this, but unfortunately it is not affordable for most.
Imo, you’re dead wrong. Doctors in the US have no incentive to actually cure anything. They spend minimal time with patients and try to cram as many appointments into a day as possible. I’m the type of person that only goes to the Dr if there’s something seriously wrong. I had an ear issue. Took 3 months to see an ENT after multiple failed urgent care visits and an ER visit. The audiologist (not even the Dr) is the one who pointed out I had something clogging my ear canal after multiple Drs and PAs said it was fine. She thankfully got the Dr to pull out a big ole wad of dead skin and wax. Dr says it was likely infected at some point, and my ear made all that dead skin, and that caused that. Have a follow up appointment scheduled which he said I could cancel if the pain went away. The pain went away temporarily, but came back. Follow up is with a completely different dude, and he tells me my ear is fine, and I need to see someone about “pain management”. It’s very clearly not fine because I’m still seeing you doc. I don’t need 600 mg ibuprofen tablets, I need my ear to not hurt.
My theory is that either the ear is still infected, and the drops I had weren’t penetrating the ear canal due to the big ole wad that was blocking my ear, or there’s still a bit more wad blocking the ear that they need to pull out. I’m ready to self prescribe my old eardrops which I still have leftover to see if it works.
Doctors in the US love to kick the can down the road. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly diagnose that, you need to see a specialist. Let me give you a referral.” Then you see the next dickhead who says oh actually u need this other specialist, let me give you a referral.
I’m not in some podunk town either. This is a world renowned hospital I’m talking about. Our healthcare system in the US is absolute ass.
Sorry about your ear problems. That sounds bad and a terrible thing to live with.
The US heathcare systems have many problems as you pointed out. I also am well aware of them as I lived there for 30 years both with and without insurance. The only thing that I can give is my lived experience in both systems. The problems that you pointed out among many others exist in most health care systems globally. Despite and including these problems in my experience the US still gives better care. That may be hard to hear (no pun intended) but the grass is not always greener.
Now don’t get me wrong. I prefer the system here in Germany but not because it’s better, but because it is available to everyone. People here don’t go bankrupt with medical debt like in the US.
I mean its like being in tech support. Losing weight and not eating shit is the equivalent of “Have you tried turning it off and on again” it should be obvious but its not.
I had a couple seizures several years ago. Full on grand mal with an ER trip and all that fun.
The response from doctors has consistently been “yeah, sometimes people just have seizures.” They did CT scans, didn’t see anything abnormal and aren’t really interested in investigating more. Solution was that I’m just going to take anticonvulsants for the rest of my life.
Sorry to hear that. Are you better now?
Yeah - as long as I’m on Keppra I don’t have them.
It was just terrifying to wake up out of nowhere being carried by EMTs, spend a day in the hospital, be told “yeah idk go see a neurologist” and then just have to figure it out? Follow up with a neurologist was “yeah sometimes it happens, just don’t drive for the next six months.”
Cost money/time to cure people. Cheaper to just manage conditions.
Tell that to the doctor that said I had a blocked salivary gland and to “just suck on some sour candy”. I had a tooth abscess (I even told the doctor that) and ended up in the ER for nearly a week. Costed insurance 28 thousand dollars for a procedure that normally costs a couple hundred at most (tooth pull).
Costed insurance 28 thousand dollars for a procedure that normally costs a couple hundred at most (tooth pull).
Would a doctor do a tooth pull, or a dentist? I don’t think it’s a reasonable expectation to expect a doctor to pull a tooth, but instead a dentist would do so.
Also, one thing you have to realize is that they don’t look at the cost just at the atomic per incident level, but they look at it through the whole life of the customer/patient.
They play the odds, and they do literal risk management, when deciding how to spend money and when to spend money, specially for big money spending like operations.
So in your case it might have been a matter of a risk management decision, of the odds of you getting better without having to have the tooth pulled and spending the money to do so would be good, but you just got unlucky.
