Want to know why we're screwed regarding healthcare?

[daredtowork]

91. My local clinic has been crappy for a long time

You can never get an appointment. You don't even know when the doctor opens her calendar. She triple books. The appointments are 2 hours late and last 15 minutes. You can give one symptom. If you have a complex condition, you're screwed. If you need solid diagnoses or a doctor's support to work with some State systems like Social Services or SSI, you are also pretty much screwed, because the doctor doesn't remember you or ever have time to ever think about your case: she just keeps trying to refer you out to a specialist. I now tend to over-utilize the ER when I have problems, and they give me the stink eye when I ask them if they can provide a diagnosis: they say their job is to stabilize me and that I need to go back to my medical clinic (where I will have to wait months for an appointment...).

Today I found out the reason for all the chaos. Apparently all the Primary Care doctors except mine and one other (who has handed in his resignation, and is thus not taking on any of the other patients who were set adrift) quit last year. And the clinic hasn't been able to replace them. So my doctor has been trying to hold down the fort, doing the work that is normally done by 4 doctors (actually should be more since they took on all the new Medi-Cal enrollees...). Ay caramba.

I don't even know what to say to this. I feel sorry for the situation. I want the clinic to survive. It's near my house. I think under better conditions, my doctor is a good one. But patients don't get proper care like this. And the patients who are dealing with State bureaucracies at the same time can really be shafted if they can't get fine-tuned coordination of medical care and paperwork. And by shafted I mean homelessness, starvation, crushed into literal roadkill.