Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It isn’t collapsing. It has collapsed.

100%

When someone goes to the ER with chest pains & is waiting in the waiting room for 9 hrs instead of immediately being taken to triage, it's a broken system.

When an elderly person is diagnosed with having had a stroke in the ER & discharged with orders to follow up with a neurologist within 7 days, but the earliest appointment you can get them is 8 months out, the system is broken. My sibling and I sat calling with our mom to try to get my dad an appointment & this was the result. We have him on a dozen different waitlists but we're still 4 months away from his appt. Terrifying.

A friend went through something similar in finding a Derm. Her Derm couldn't get her in until FEBRUARY 2025 and she had a worrisome spot appear that was rapidly changing. After finding none that could get her in, she went the concierge Derm route. Luckily she had the funds to do so, but what about those who can't go that route? We're going to get to the point where those without the funds to seek alternate treatments get sicker or die while waiting.

The medical schools and accreditation boards keep doctors in low supply to keep wages up.

Anonymous wrote:After some very complicated issues involving a family member I started following a subreddit for doctors and other healthcare professionals. They are highly critical of the situation with healthcare--mostly US but foreign docs chime in as well, sometimes to report what's bad where they are, other times to express their sympathy to docs working in the US.

Issues include corporatization of medicine such as huge mergers and vertical integration (United Health Group being an example), private equity (buying hospitals only to loot them--like the woman in Boston who died postpartum because the medical device to remove a blood clot in her liver had been repossessed), administration demands, treating healthcare like customer service, and also problems with patient populations (sometimes fed up with them, sometimes pointing to social determinants and other factors that affect patients). Also the politics relating to pregnancy and abortion and transgender care.

They fairly consistently say that the system is crashing or has crashed but not acknowledged. I wonder what the lay public (especially the well-informed public) thinks of all this--is it falling apart? If you think so, is it because of stuff you have personally dealt with or stuff on a larger scale you have read about (e.g. investigations of large insurers for Medicare advantage fraud, antitrust investigations starting with regard to private equity, other news related to healthcare).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It isn’t collapsing. It has collapsed.

100%

When someone goes to the ER with chest pains & is waiting in the waiting room for 9 hrs instead of immediately being taken to triage, it's a broken system.

When an elderly person is diagnosed with having had a stroke in the ER & discharged with orders to follow up with a neurologist within 7 days, but the earliest appointment you can get them is 8 months out, the system is broken. My sibling and I sat calling with our mom to try to get my dad an appointment & this was the result. We have him on a dozen different waitlists but we're still 4 months away from his appt. Terrifying.

A friend went through something similar in finding a Derm. Her Derm couldn't get her in until FEBRUARY 2025 and she had a worrisome spot appear that was rapidly changing. After finding none that could get her in, she went the concierge Derm route. Luckily she had the funds to do so, but what about those who can't go that route? We're going to get to the point where those without the funds to seek alternate treatments get sicker or die while waiting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It isn’t collapsing. It has collapsed.

100%

When someone goes to the ER with chest pains & is waiting in the waiting room for 9 hrs instead of immediately being taken to triage, it's a broken system.

When an elderly person is diagnosed with having had a stroke in the ER & discharged with orders to follow up with a neurologist within 7 days, but the earliest appointment you can get them is 8 months out, the system is broken. My sibling and I sat calling with our mom to try to get my dad an appointment & this was the result. We have him on a dozen different waitlists but we're still 4 months away from his appt. Terrifying.

A friend went through something similar in finding a Derm. Her Derm couldn't get her in until FEBRUARY 2025 and she had a worrisome spot appear that was rapidly changing. After finding none that could get her in, she went the concierge Derm route. Luckily she had the funds to do so, but what about those who can't go that route? We're going to get to the point where those without the funds to seek alternate treatments get sicker or die while waiting.

So much truth. I'm also helping my elderly parents navigate health issues and it's insane. You can't reach actual humans have have to wait for return calls. When you do get to speak with someone, there are no appointments for necessary specialty care in the time you need it. Patients are told to go to the ER if things get too bad. When you do that, the patient has to deal with long waits and is not able to get a room for days. It's terrible. I never want to hear people complaining about patients using the ER again - there isn't care available anywhere else.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It isn’t collapsing. It has collapsed.

100%

When someone goes to the ER with chest pains & is waiting in the waiting room for 9 hrs instead of immediately being taken to triage, it's a broken system.

When an elderly person is diagnosed with having had a stroke in the ER & discharged with orders to follow up with a neurologist within 7 days, but the earliest appointment you can get them is 8 months out, the system is broken. My sibling and I sat calling with our mom to try to get my dad an appointment & this was the result. We have him on a dozen different waitlists but we're still 4 months away from his appt. Terrifying.

A friend went through something similar in finding a Derm. Her Derm couldn't get her in until FEBRUARY 2025 and she had a worrisome spot appear that was rapidly changing. After finding none that could get her in, she went the concierge Derm route. Luckily she had the funds to do so, but what about those who can't go that route? We're going to get to the point where those without the funds to seek alternate treatments get sicker or die while waiting.

Anonymous wrote:Is it really good anywhere?

Last week there were big complaints in the UK about the NHS computer system that led to unfavorable health outcomes and deaths.

My friend couldn't find a PCP in Toronto for months.

Other countries are losing doctors to higher paying countries and don't produce enough specialists. People wait years for joint surgery, or months for oncology appointments.

How much of this is because medical science can do more so demand is higher for an increased number of treatments.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's an absolute sh!tshow.

I am a patient. Because of my condition, I have had several organs removed and my altered anatomy is often a consideration in treatment of other issues.

Because of this condition I need regular access to specialists. Primary care doctors typically punt anything even remotely related to my underlying condition to specialists. I have not seen an adult primary care doctor attempt to "coordinate care" among these specialties in decades (our kids' ped is better at this.) We recently attempted to find one who would actually do this work, at concierge rates, and could not.

About a month ago my GI attempted to prescribe a medication. This required a prior authorization, an appeal, and my giving my physician "power of attorney" to appeal for me--via fax. This was the only way they accepted the documents: fax.

The Rx was successful. I had a "discount card" for the copay so I paid $0. The charge to my insurer for the drug, which is available for $100 for a 30-day supply in generic in India, Canada and other nations where generic meds are routinely produced at high quality, was $5600 for a month.

Several other medications I use, which are not obscure, have been in shortage states or unavailable entirely in the last couple of years. (None of these are stimulants, by the way--I know folks are aware of those shortages; these are additional.)

Another family member has post-acute COVID and is seen by a doc in the GW Long COVID clinic. The doc is great but absolutely swamped. This family member has also needed care from across a range of specialties: cardiology, pulmonology, gastroenterology, urology, neurology, physical therapy. There is a protracted wait for each. The integrated institutional supports are nonexistent (I'm actually watching a National Academies webinar on this right now--their report is here: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/27756/chapter/1#ii) and I expect this to get worse and not better.

The waits are longer. Many specialists are leaving practice. My insurance (United Healthcare) just experienced a hack that prevented adjustment of claims for almost three months.

I am white, heterosexual, highly educated, and have made handling our health care an additional quarter-time job (sometimes more). The experiences of people who are also experiencing racial and other bias in docs' offices must be tens of times worse--let alone people who do not have platinum-plated health insurance (I have throughout) and/or lots of experience navigating this system.

It's falling apart. Large parts of it are irredeemable already. I don't know of a provider who doesn't also think this.

The grim reality is that if you require long-term medical care and services, it is more financially profitable for you to die.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other thing that's stunning is the cost of medication in the USA. I know people who go on trips abroad just to stock up on their regular medicines that are 1/20 of the price in other countries.

If the cost of medication was the same globally only the us could afford it

Anonymous wrote:To the medical professionals and admins who have responded to this thread -

We can someone do - today - in the DMV to access better care?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was on a girls trip and all of them were doctors from the UK and Canada, except for my friend who is an American in the UK and a clinical psychologist. They could not wrap their heads around our healthcare system. They did not know how any America could sleep at night when one illness could send you into bankruptcy.

+1 for all that's wrong with the NHS and Canadian healthcare, most of their citizens don't worry about medical bankruptcy.

Great medical care in the US is for the rich.
Good or decent medical care in the US is for the UMC who have good insurance.
Everyone else is just screwed.

You are aware that the majority of people who declare medical bankruptcy have insurance, right? Healthcare is only for the rich for serious medical problems. My sibling declared medical bankruptcy and makes over $150k a year. If one gets cancer, MS, or some rare disease, you better be rich!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep and you know Trump has an amazing bigly plan to replace the ACA right??
LOL

Anything is better than Obummer's Unaffordable Care Act.
But hey, "free" health care for all these illegal migrants tight?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It isn’t collapsing. It has collapsed.

100%

When someone goes to the ER with chest pains & is waiting in the waiting room for 9 hrs instead of immediately being taken to triage, it's a broken system.

When an elderly person is diagnosed with having had a stroke in the ER & discharged with orders to follow up with a neurologist within 7 days, but the earliest appointment you can get them is 8 months out, the system is broken. My sibling and I sat calling with our mom to try to get my dad an appointment & this was the result. We have him on a dozen different waitlists but we're still 4 months away from his appt. Terrifying.

A friend went through something similar in finding a Derm. Her Derm couldn't get her in until FEBRUARY 2025 and she had a worrisome spot appear that was rapidly changing. After finding none that could get her in, she went the concierge Derm route. Luckily she had the funds to do so, but what about those who can't go that route? We're going to get to the point where those without the funds to seek alternate treatments get sicker or die while waiting.