American healthcare may be exorbitantly expensive, but it is the best in the world.
Isn’t it?
I’ve just been on the telephone to my family doctor’s office. I wanted to make an appointment. I was told the earliest I can see a “nurse practitioner” is in two days time.
I said I didn’t want a “nurse practitioner”, I wanted to see my family doctor, only to be told the first available appointment was on October 20th – in 22 days time.
Needless to say, I pointed out that if I died in the meantime they needn’t bother sending me a bill for a missed appointment.
Having lived fifty plus years with the UK’s National Health Service – yes, that’s right, the one Americans are so bloody scared of (socialist medicine = witchcraft) – I never had to wait more than three days to see a family doctor, and then I complained bitterly that it was too long. But, at least it didn’t cost me a hundred dollars for the privilege.
This country’s a bloody disgrace.
Filed under: 
Do better in a banana republic
That’s terrible, RJ. Same happens here if the doc is on vacation when an appointment is needed. No locums are brought in – patients simply have to wait for the resident doc’s return from his jollies…..or go to the Emergency Room.
Never happened in the UK, there was always a stand-in locum to deal with patients in their own doc’s absence.
So – what do you do if you need a Dr’s note for being off sick? Is a nurse practitioner allowed to dispense one of those?
No wonder there are so many complaints in the ambulance / medical blogs that I read about people going straight to the ER or calling 911!