America's Amazing Healthcare System - A love story

So, As I mentioned in my last post, I've had some recurring health issues showing up in my life.

I have heavy autoimmune flareups (RA diagnosed, suspect something else undiagnosed), thrush (sign of impaired autoimmune system), and fatigue/misc issues (glossing over the details here).

So I've been back and forth involved with the medical system here trying to get something done about it.

I've gone to several doctors and gotten dozens of tests done - none of which have really come back with anything remarkable. But.... that'll happen when you're testing for unrelated things as a shotgun test when you shrug your shoulders and turn off your brain to what your patient is saying.

I'm not even 30 years old, I should be in pretty good shape. I eat better than and exercise more than most people I know my age... I should be doing all right.

But it certainly doesn't feel like I am, you know? And I'm not just being a hypochondriac, you can't fake thrush and I'm already previously diagnosed with RA.

And the doctors don't want to entertain the idea of anything that I say. They want to test me for AIDS or Diabetes or COPD, or whatever nonsense I most certainly don't have.

I think that's the problem with contemporary medicine though. We're not listening to our bodies, and they're not listening to their patients.

Not educating their patients.
-- Not being educated themselves.
Or worse -- having outdated education.
or even worse -- having corporatism based medical education

All I ever wanted in going to these doctors is to have JUST ONE stop ruminating for 5 minutes and listen to me.

My image of a good meeting with a doctor goes like this:

• We sit down, and they ask "What's going on?"
• I give them a somewhat long detailed explanation of what I am experiencing.
• And they say hmm, that could be a number of things... I have some ideas, but let me ask some questions to flesh out those ideas
• then they, you know, use all those pathology courses they took to try and come up with some preliminary hypothesis's
• then they explain: "okay, we're going to figure this out for you. I'm going to give you some recommendations/medication/etc that will likely be beneficial and not harmful to you while we conduct some tests to figure out what's going on."

I feel like that's a pretty basic expectation.

But it has literally never gone that way in my experience.

I have gone to so many doctors who have honestly soured me to the entirety of American allopathic medicine.

My next step is to try a Doctor of functional medicine, or to go to one outside of the country. At least if I go to one outside of the US it won't have an exorbitant price tag for me to waste my time, and I'll get a vacation out of it.

Anyways, I've been to 3 different doctors regarding this stuff, waiting 2-3 months between each appointment plus waiting for testing and test results and such. Then, even with the government mandated - crony capitalism health insurance that I had, I would have to pay out of pocket over and over for care (copays and test fees).

I know people in the medical profession all across the country, and I can safely say... these facilities are not remarkable in any way, and the wait times are clearly not great. One of the big complaints that we have on the rhetoric table here is that the wait times will be horrible if we actually make a fair, contemporary health care system.

but it's trash.

I had to wait 2-3 months for every single appointment, and if you factor in insurance premiums into the costs, each appointment cost me something like $900. (considering 4 appointments per year) And that doesn't even include the extra costs/copays associated with any tests they run. I'm sure it'd be less per visit if I could actually get in more often, but that doesn't really happen.

So, I'm not even asking for a free ride health care system. Just stop the government from being bed with the pharmaceutical companies so we can have some cost control in this freakin' system. Or better yet, let's do what every other country does and directly cost control health care.

I've gotten health care in multiple other countries, and while I can't say the care was amazing... it wasn't really any worse than I've had here. but it was a heckuva lot cheaper.

Only thing I can say about the rhetoric that is true, is that if you've got a lot of money or some sort of magic golden absolute exception to the rule insurance -- you can actually get really amazing top rate care.

But if not (ie. 95-99% of the country) Good luck. At least that's been my experience and the experience that I've heard from many people in many different situations, including people who work in both the medical and insurance industries.

I could be wrong though -- Open to other opinions here.

Sorry for the kind of ranty post, writing my last piece kind of brought up this rant in my head and I'm not done with my next thing.

Thanks for coming by and being awesome,
What's health care like wherever you are from? I'd like to know.

- Guurg

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