The Doctor Won't See You Now

PATIENTS ARE GIVING UP ON A LOUSY SYSTEM. WHICH ONLY MAKES THINGS WORSE

- Jamie Ducharme

YOU HAVEN'T BEEN FEELING WELL LATELY. You're more tired than usual, a bit sluggish. You wonder if there's something wrong with your diet. Or maybe you're anemic? You call your primary-care doctor's office to schedule an appointment. They inform you the next available appointment is in three weeks.

So, you wait.

And then you wait some more.

And then, when you arrive on the day of your appointment, you wait even more.

You fill out the mountain of required paperwork, but the doctor still isn't ready to see you. You flip through a magazine for a while, then scroll through your phone until you're finally called. You wait a little longer in a scratchy paper gown, then talk to your physician-if you can call it talking, since she's mostly staring at a computer screen-for all of 10 minutes before you're back out in the lobby with a lab order to have your blood tested.

Then you call to set up your blood test, and the waiting process starts over.

A few weeks after you get your results, a bill arrives in the mail. You're charged hundreds of dollars for the blood work. The appointment was over in minutes, but your bank account will feel the effects for a long time.

Going to the doctor may never be a fun experience, but surely it can be better than it is right now. In 2019, even before the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the foundations of health care, an Ipsos survey found that 43% of Americans were unsatisfied with their medical system, far more than the 22% of people in the U.K. and 26% of people in Canada who were unsatisfied with theirs. By 2022, three years into the pandemic, just 12% of U.S. adults said health care was handled "extremely" or "very" well in the U.S., according to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.