The Hollow Men of Hims

I see a lot of complaints about "the healthcare bureaucracy in America".

And I don't doubt that it exists. But I will say the limited number of times I've needed to interact with the system it was surprisingly cheap and downright pleasant.

The only negative experiences I've had is interacting with government run health systems (the VA).

Even if it isn’t cheap or pleasant, does that mean we should all turn to supplements and quackery? I’m really surprised at the replies dunking on this article. The fact that anyone can just go out there and make claims about and market their snake oil “medicine” should be worrying to more people.

Doctor visits usually aren't so bad. But if you ever go to the ER or have to do something major like stay in the hospital, you will be surprised how expensive that gets.

Yeah, they're real good at doing needless work with a smile on their face.

Next time you go to a GP's office for no reason other than to gatekeep a specialist you know you need ask yourself what all those people are being paid for any why the situation deserves anything more than someone on the order of an RN saying "yeah looks like an infection to me" via a screen, to pick but one example.

Like all bureaucracy, every single part of the system has some skin deep reason to justify its existence or scope but when you take a step back and look at it all you'll find that huge swaths are either redundant or completely unnecessary, and that the industry is rife with this BS from top to bottom and we're all made effectively poorer for it.

One thing about people in the US is that they really don't have as much bureaucracy as other developed nations and culturally we put a huge premium on service. So I think for a lot of people healthcare (or other forms of insurance) is the where they encounter it. That said, this is something I like about the US and I would like to see healthcare be more service oriented.

You might not even notice it just from dealing with one referral. It really starts to gall when you see the pattern of nearly every actor in the system doing the least amount possible and then quickly passing responsibility on to someone else, often via yourself. The only exceptions I've seen are hospital doctors when there is an immediate acute problem that they can't just punt, and pediatrics where frequent repeating followups can be justified. Healthcare workers join this system because they want to help people, but the administrative parasites grind up their attention into tiny pieces until it is all but meaningless.