It seems that if you’re really dealing with an issue, you almost have to basically stand up for yourself to get what you need or go from doctor to doctor to find one that will actually listen to you. Do you all experience the same thing? What is going on with that? It’s that common in other countries too?
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This is really common in general, and is even more common for women and especially for overweight people. My grandmother was told for ages that she just had irritable bowels, or that she had a gluten allergy, or she was just attention seeking any time she’d complain of stomach pain. Then, it turned out she had stage 4 stomach cancer. When they finally found it, she never left the hospital again.
Because they are businesses and want to sell you health at the lowest cost to them, leading to pushback on rationale for procedures, labs, imaging.
Insurance companies don’t want you to get care becsuse they don’t want to pay and doctors are overworked and tired due to fighting with insurance companies all the time.
We are their customers, not patients.
This is common for women. For FOURTEEN years I had an irregular heartbeat. FOURTEEN. It took getting a FitBit and showing them the irregular heartbeat notifications and that my heart would beat for 120+ BPM for HOURS at a time before I got tested and on medication. FOURTEEN YEARS. “Oh, it’s just anxiety.” I’m lucky I’m not dead or disabled from a stroke.
It’s you against the machine. Machine being an algorithm program of the administration and insurances to maximize profits. Doctors are nearly powerless to intervene.
We have only for-profit healthcare, and for-profit corporations running our “health insurance.” These companies literally make more money when they delay or deny us care, so that’s what they do. I waited a year for a new prosthetic, because they told me “a leg isn’t medically necessary.” Ponder that for a moment.
And what’s worse- we ALL hate it yet a shocking number of people seem PERFECTLY FINE with it. Like what the hell??
You have to advocate for yourself anywhere in the world. People like to do what’s comfortable for them, they won’t put the effort to do what you want unless you demand it and stand your ground. Very few people are considerate and caring on their own without needing to push them to be.
If you look at how the insurance market works-they can’t sell you less insurance than the one you’ve got, but they can choose to pay less by denying coverage. As everyone is saying-medical insurance is a business, and their way of making money is to fight you in your claims.
WHY? Because insurance companies are in business to make money! Insurance companies do not care about you/us!
$$$$$$$$$$$$ is their purpose.
I have advocated for many to get what they need as ‘medical necessity’ for the person’s healthcare.
I’m not saying taking a life is the action to take; that said, there will be more Luigis.
I haven’t experienced it . To get shots in my back I had to do all these other things first like physical therapy before insurance would pay for an mri but that’s it
Try to find a doctor that owns their own practice and not part of a hospital/ large medical group system. The bigger the system the more stringent that system is and has KPIs (key performance metrics) for that doctor to meet everyday. Like x amount of patients, x amount of referrals, etc.
Also, those systems make the doctors follow certain treatment pathways which don’t always make the most sense for the patient but seemingly make the hospital group a lot more money. Oncology is one where this happens a lot. One treatment is at home with pills while the other requires infusions at the dr’s center. Pills don’t make them money while infusions are $10k-$30k of revs.
Finding a great doctor is hard but is key for a good medical foundation. It’s like anything in life though. Mechanic, handy man, chef, etc. They all have horrible people working that suck at their job or unethical while others are amazing.
It’s a complete racket in the states
There are thousands of people applying to US med schools every year. The ones who are actually qualified and have a US undergrad degree with no red flags usually get rejected. Usually it’s the frat boys who share all exam answers with their frat brothers who get accepted. The ones who do domestic violence and child abuse get accepted too.
I feel like you should advocate for yourself in many situations, not just medical care, and regardless of nationality.
Do people in Canada, if their doctor tells them to jump off a bridge, just blindly follow their orders? I doubt it.
Doctors are of course smart, but they also make mistakes and maybe there’s something they don’t know that you can provide context to help them in order to make the best decision for you.
Definitely common in England.
I think doctors just go with the lowest common denominator as far as diagnosing people. They go with the diagnosis that they usually see and don’t really consider that you might be the rare exception.
Benign issues can have the same symptoms as serious issues and because benign cases are much more common than serious issues they always assume it’s benign.
Money.
There are more nuanced and detailed answers of course, but yeah. Money.
Who has heard that their insurance company is no longer covering GLP-1 medication (Ozempic, Monjauro, Wegovy, Zepbound, etc.) for weight loss? Do you know why? Because if their “customers” aren’t overweight they don’t need blood pressure medication, diabetes medication, cholesterol medication, etc. They were losing money because people were getting healthier!
That is so backwards! It’s not healthcare – it’s “practicing medicine”.
There is an appeals process and especially if you were on weight loss medication and it worked and then had to go off because your insurance stopped covering it – you can appeal it with help from your doctor.
I tried for a year to get someone to pay attention to my recurring bouts of pain after eating. Most people said it was my anxiety, or I was overweight. The last doctor I saw didn’t even bother to palpate my abdomen when I told her my symptoms, she just told me to try a diet of toast and applesauce till I felt better. 2 weeks later I wound up in the ER in the early hours of the morning in agony. I asked for a few hours for some relief, and finally when I started vomiting violently they gave me morphine and checked me out. It was a gallstone blocking my duct, and I had emergency surgery. I got lucky, because my mom was with me, and she works at that hospital, knows everyone, and is also a ball-busting Karen who uses her powers for good instead of evil, lol. And now, despite applying for financial assistance and calling repeatedly to the billing people, I’m having a time trying to even make a dent in the bill, and it was only $6000 (which is not cheap at all, but I’ve heard horror stories of $20,000+ bills, so funnily enough I was relieved at the cost). The nurses who did my pre-op and post-op were kind and attentive, but they were short-staffed, and at one point during shift change I waited 2 hours for assistance walking to the bathroom because things got messed up in the shuffle. The entire system is just collapsing, and no amount of caring medical staff or proactive advocacy can really patch up all the cracks 🙁
Medicine is about treating symptoms rather than causes because no one is incentivized in the right ways. Doctors have to see more patients in less time. So when appointments are 15 minutes or less, the focus becomes managing symptoms—what can be treated right now—rather than digging into what’s actually causing those symptoms. That takes time—time that isn’t reimbursed. So doctors are operating in a system that doesn’t give them the time, support, or incentive to dig deep.
And if you’re dealing with something complex and chronic, symptom-chasing can go on for years. It sucks.
At least in the US, they get to you before you die of your underlying condition… Unlike Canada