When it comes to medical providers, a reader has a question:
What is this “relationship” with a doctor of which your friend speaks? That only happens in my dreams. Nobody but the lucky or the rich can afford such a thing today with health insurers regularly stirring the pot, and making each visit more expensive and less productive.
While I cannot speak for them, I think it’s clearly an idealization. As a personal anecdote, I typically get an hour with my G.P. at my annual checkup, a long conversation, a few jokes – although we do clip right along. That said, I know my Arts Editor has a far different – and more negative – experience.
So I’m tempted to suggest that as our medical experience, as it were, reaches a breaking point and we consider moving farther along the single-payer solution, the situation may ease and once again have real human interactions with our medical providers.
Yet, it occurs to me to wonder – if everyone’s covered, do we have enough doctors, or at least G.P.s, to achieve the reader’s ideal – or are we so undermanned that what we see today is of necessity, not greed?
