Okay, I know this is going to sound like a rant, but it is written with intention and careful consideration on my part. Our health care system is broken in many ways, but what I wish to address here specifically is how we are being treated and charged for inadequate care and mounting indifference. Healthcare has become impersonal and transactional, a business focused on providing a service for the highest possible fee, the doctor often spending more time at the keyboard than he does examining or listening to the patient. What happened to the medical practice that should have as its highest and only goal, the mental and physical well-being of each patient, meeting them where their needs are, regardless of age, race, gender, means or ability.

I sat in the waiting room early for my appointment, when an elderly gentleman, leaning heavily on his cane, hobbled to the receptionist’s window. I heard the receptionist tell him quite loudly and not too kindly that he was 15 minutes late for his appointment and therefore could not be seen until the next afternoon. He explained the traffic that had caused him to be delayed, but she was going to have none of that. No excuses, no allowances, no exceptions to the rule. Never mind a little compassion and respect for his age, or the distance he had travelled. I was tempted to offer up my appointment slot, but I had waited six months for it. Frustrated and defeated he slowly made his way out of the building.

I paid my $30 co-pay, and was left to wait for my doctor to discuss the results of the MRI of my kidneys. He entered the office, like a jack-in-the-box, all but high-fived me to tell me there was nothing to be concerned about, it was a normal cyst. He did not have to see me again. “But what about the complex cyst that they told me it was in the ER six months ago?” I stammered as he was already on his way out of the room. “Don’t pay any attention to what you were told: they don’t know what they were talking about. They are not urologists.” And he was gone.

Don’t you think they could have given that elderly gentleman all the unused minutes of my 15-minute appointment? Don’t you think they could have told me “this good news” over the phone and saved me the time and the $30 co-pay, and the $284 that was charged to my insurance? Is it any wonder that healthcare has become unaffordable and hence, unavailable to many of our citizens. It is simply shameful. We need to be treated with more dignity and our health prioritized over money, systems and institutions. Instead, we have become faceless, nameless, paying patient/customers, with little choice but to find the means to access the care we need. This could perhaps sound like an over-reaction to an isolated incidence, and maybe it is, except that I am still recovering from the neurology appointment where my husband was told he has PSP and then instructed to go home and “google” it.

I offer these observations (this rant) respectfully as I know there are countless well-trained, well-meaning doctors and healthcare providers who take good care of us in spite of their hands being tied, with no choice but to follow practice guidelines set by insurance companies that should have little to no say in how best to deliver care to patients. We are all caught in a tangled, increasingly dehumanized and potentially dangerous web, as individuals and as a society.

End of rant.  Now I feel better.