People can't ignore you as effectively if you're in their physical space. When it comes to your health or the health of your family, do not back down. Doctors are used to nuts who googled the symptoms or joined a Facebook group and have all the answers already. Make it clear you have NO answers but NEED them asap.
One of the things I've learned is to apply the Socratic method, preferably in front of their colleagues if they try to brush you off. Also, if you've got scary symptoms, demand they write down what your symptoms are on your record and why they aren't concerned, then demand a copy of all relevant records (it's your property) -- this often gets them to reevaluate your risk in terms of their career.
Worst case scenario, you can make up medical history. I had a family member pass recently from colorectal cancer. They had symptoms but their PCP kept insisting they were too young. My family member suddenly "remembered" her aunt died of CRC when she was a kid. This got her referred to a gastroenterologist, and they found out she was stage 4...after her PCP delayed her diagnosis for like a year. She actually had grounds for a malpractice suit but who's got the energy or money for that when they're fighting stage 4 cancer?
Also, know your state's agency responsible for policing health insurance. This family member's insurance company routinely tried to deny life saving procedures, but a call to the right govt agency set them in line each time.
Here in Mexico, i can get to doctoralia and make an appointment with a high specialist , like a Vascular Neurosurgeon. All by myself. The first visit will to maybe $200 usd (and that's very high) and normally it's a week away at most. No waiting on the private health option.
Of course if you go with public health, it's a disaster and a shame.
I often try to go cash pay, since in many cases at this point it's actually cheaper, absurdly enough, and get told that I can't even get an appointment that way. I actually got kicked off primary care at a regional (fairly large) practice because they couldn't take my insurance, would not bill out of network, didn't service uninsured people (!!), and would not take cash, credit, barter or trade.
The advantage of the less developed countries is that you can get pretty good private medical care for a reasonably price. The quality may not match the very best care available in the rich countries, but in many cases, it is adequate.
What is a "reasonable price"? Relative to a rich country, the price may be low. But relative to the average income to common folks in that country it is likely just as expensive as a comparable private option is in a rich country. Apples vs. oranges.
Iow, you are describing the perspective of a rich person in a poor country. I don't think a rich person in the U.S. (top 0.1 percentile, let's say) minds the health case costs in the U.S. either.
Of course the top tier private hospital and specialists can be pretty expensive, but is not that expensive to avoid the public/government health system.
> Doctors are used to nuts who googled the symptoms
When you were there, did you have anything else to come with than the symptoms of your family member? In other words, how did you look different to the doctor than somebody who just googled their symptoms? (Or, to put it differently, without meaning disrespect, in which way were actually different from cases you referred to in the above quote?)
A good shorthand is that unless a doctor has positively identified something through imaging or biopsy do not trust them when they tell you what something is or what to do about it.
If you aren't sure how best to advocate for yourself, use AI to help figure out what tests and referrals to ask for. You might feel like a jerk, but don't expect anyone to care about you more than you do.
Oh my. I did not expect this.
I'm glad you caught it early, and I hope you have the best outcome you can, and thank you for sharing your story.
But GP's point is otherwise true. It's just a job to them. They see dozens of sick people every day. There's no way to be empathetically engaged with all of them or really any of them and still be effective. It's not personal, and they aren't ignoring you. You're a bug report in their ticket system. Understand that and you'll be able to deal with the system more effectively.
The exception to this rule is if you are in an HMO like Kaiser which force you through "level one support" (your GP) or if the specialist is so busy they require a referral to screen out the social media schizos.
The next important one is to find the best doctor you could afford. I didn't have a lot of faith on my local oncologist, especially when he said that my cancer (nasopharyngeal carcinoma) is rare and had not much experience with it. I was able to get ahold of the chief surgeon at UCSF, purely by luck. Felt a lot better when he said that this type of cancer is pretty common for south-asian descent. He has dealt with it quite often due to a large concentration of asian in the bay area.
The treatment sucks, but small price to pay considering I can spend more time with my family.
And people like this are typically not that difficult to get in contact with via email.
Hell, I’ve successfully used LinkedIn to get an appointment when calling the main office didn’t work.
Get creative and trust no one.
By all accounts is amazing to her patients, but god the amount of work thrown at a PCP and the deluge of emails and just how little life the system gives you (at least while in residency, I guess I'll see what happens after)... like I have to imagine our care could be so much better if we weren't trying to optimize the system and had more resources.
My mom is a teacher and it's similar there, she loves kids so much and after a few decades she absolutely cannot wait to be done. She was excellent at the start of her career and got kudos from absolutely everyone but now she's just getting by until retirement because she can't take it anymore.
Don’t forget, Doctors are just well read mechanics
I should have mistrusted the doctor and trusted the AIs more, unless they gave me compelling reasoning. Don’t give up your decisions to anyone, incompetence is abound.
Canada introduced MAID for this reason.
You’ve dealt with every health system on earth as a patient?
> There are no specialists in all of the government-run systems
This is completely inaccurate. Every government run system has specialists.
Everything you have said is incorrect.
That doesn't sound great to me (read: broken), because it means its not evenly accessible across your society. I wouldn't count that as a good system to be honest.
I have limited experience with the New Zealand and Japanese medical systems, and from a similarly arms-length engagement with them, I think I would prefer them over everything I've read about the US system. You still have the same issues with having to advocate for yourself, but you can at least get access to good healthcare across the board - and if you go private (which as a late 30s / early 40s guy, cost around NZ$60 / month), you can get access to care at private facilities much faster than via public.
It is most definitely imperfect, but it _is_ designed to be accessible to everyone.
You read that where? What evidence do you have? In my experience, Americans are often blissfully unaware about how poor their health services are.
As someone who has seen many health services up close (from founding a health tech company and literally visiting myriad health establishments around the world, over the past few decades), the US hospitals and clinics always struck me as the most run down. But as soon as I walked in the boardroom at UHG or HCA, it suddenly all became a lot more glamorous.
And whilst the US does ok with cancer outcomes, so do other nations like Germany, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Most advanced nations have universal healthcare with similar outcomes to the US, but for significantly less money. They also don’t leave citizens destitute for having the unmitigated gall to impose an unexpected health emergency on themselves.
The US system funnels profit, it doesn’t provide better healthcare.
In the rest of the world, it's controlled by extended wait times. In the US, it's cost. You can have moral arguments about what's fair, but that's the economic reality.
At the time I as studying this (early 2010's), the average wait time of diagnosis to first treatment for breast cancer in the US was 12 days. In NIH, it was 5 months.
No they didn't.
There are tons of specialists in Canada. You're talking out of your ass.