neverbeencool

Yesterday, as you might recall, I had a little reminder of exactly why I generally refuse medical attention and rely on my own wits, guile, and general imperviousness to keep me going.  Well, this morning, the fun continued.

For those of you too busy and important to follow the above link, the gist is that I have a wee bit more cholesterol in my system than one would normally like to see.  If that person wanted to live past 35, anyway.  So I had a fun-filled followup appointment with Herr Doctor yesterday, one filled with long waits and incompetence, and was told to come back in this morning when the clinic’s lab opened to have some blood drawn for another cholesterol test.

There.  We’re all caught up.

OK, well, this morning, I dutifully showed up at the clinic at 8:03, just moments after the lab opened.  I walked inside and was greeted by the dozen sick and/or elderly (is that redundant?) people clogging the waiting area, all waiting for their turns to have strangers stab them with hollowed out metal tubes and suck their life-giving fluids from their systems.  I signed in on their little sheet and took the closest available chair, barely close enough to hear the staffer on duty calling off names.

About twenty minutes later, the big-haired woman at the counter hollered for “Justin” and I came a-runnin’.  She verified for my full name, double-checked my date of hatching, and asked which doctor sent me there.  I thought I’d aced her little pop quiz until, after tapping away at her keyboard for a moment or two, she gave me a “Hmmm…” and a puzzled look.

“Looks like they forgot to put any work for you in the system.  I’ll have to call them and find out what they want done.  Have a seat and I’ll call you back up when I hear from them.”

Fuckingshitasscockballs!!!!!!

Yes, folks, the same inspiring jacktards who let me rot in the waiting room for an extra hour the morning earlier simply because they forgot to click the Check In button after taking my copay and insurance information also neglected to update my records in their system after said appointment, thereby leading to the what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-here-wasting-my-time response from the lab tech.  Sweet.

So back to the waiting area for Our Hero, back to watching more and more sick and/or elderly patients arrive later and leave sooner.   About fifteen minutes after that, they called me back up, took me into the backroom, jabbed me with a needle, and sent me on my merry way.  Time spent waiting:  30+ minutes.  Time spent on the actually procedure:  roughly 1 minute.

Now, being so close to ‘Merican Independence Day, I’m probably risking a long vacation in Gitmo for daring to question our great nation, but come the fuck on.  Why don’t we have better, less expensive health care for everyone by now?

OK, for me, personally, it’s not that expensive, but I’m one of the very few people lucky enough to work for an employer who covers 100% of the medical/dental premiums for myself and my family.  Sure, I have a small copay ($20 for a normal office visit), but all said, we’re pretty lucky in this department.

Still, though, for the rest of the country, the costs are outlandish.  We spend 6 times as much, per capita, compared to Western European nations.

And the waits?  In the past two days, with an appointment scheduled in one case, I spent about 90 minutes in waiting rooms for a total of 6 minutes of medical attention.  Granted, that was the result of general incompetence by a few people, but something tells me that, if I’m batting 1.000 in the getting-screwed-by-tards-in-the-health-care-industry department in just two visits, it probably happens pretty often.

Oh, and while I was sitting in that waiting room, I overheard the receptionist telling callers that they only had one doctor accepting new patients in that office and that he was booked for the next month.  A new patient needing non-urgent attention would have to wait 30 days for his 5 minutes.

Yet so many people are afraid of national, universal health care because they think it would be too expensive for the country (see that we’re-already-paying-6x-as-much figure above), we’d have long waits for basic medical care (see 30-day-wait-for-new-patients), and/or they think that a government-run service automatically means it’d be manned by idiot bureaucrats (see 90-minute-waits-because-of-staff-incompetence).

And our current system…  Expensive?  Check.  Long waits?  Check.  Incompetence?  Oh, hell yes.    Who needs that commie universal shit when we can realize our fears through our All American FUBAR’d system! U-S-A!  U-S-A!

And…  end rant.  I feel much better now.

Actually, though, there was a plus to sitting those extra minutes in the waiting room this morning.  If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have pulled up to the coffee drive-through in time to hear the manager telling the assumedly new staff member womanning the window “You’re doing really good, like a 250 degrees turn-around!”

Sounds like she’s about ready for a career in our health care industry.