I hate the healthcare industry

I would like to pretend that this is a new feeling, but it is not. For the longest time my hate of the healtcare industry was based on how they treated people close to me or from my time working in healthcare. Now that I have been diagnosed with a chronic illness my hatred is a lot more personal. Like a lot more personal.

My personal chronic illness is truly minor in the grand scheme of all chronic illnesses. But it still sucks. I get to see a rheumatologist(I want everyone to know that I spelled that correctly out spell check) all the time and she has been wonderful, their office staff is great, and they have been every helpful. It is just everything else involved in my care that makes me twitch.

For instance I need to get a Nerve Conduction Study done on my right arm because I have been getting random pinging pain my my right pointer and middle finger. Probably some sort of nerve problem, hence the Nerve Conduction Study. The referral was sent, by fax of course, last Thursday (or maybe Wednesday) and even though faxes are pretty instantaneous I received no call about it. So I called. Thrice I called. One my first call today they had finally received my referral. I thought, “Yay now I can get this test and hopefully figure out what the hell is causing my pain.”

I thought wrong.

The person I talked to told me that they couldn’t schedule my appointment. Like, at all. Not in a week or a month or a year. I had to go on to a waitlist and they would call me when an appointment opened up. WTF. When I asked why they didn’t have any appointments and that I was fine being put way out just to get the appointment on the schedule. She was very clear that there was nothing she could do and they would call me about an appointment. I figured that would be about as good as them calling me when they got my referral.

Needless to say I was pissed and I let it ruin my day. That was all I could think about.

Then I rage checked my email (becasue I was rage doing everything today) and I had a message from local hospital system saying " We just got your referral and you can call to schedule your appointment." What. So I called.

This person was much better and much more helpful at scheduling my appointment for Oct 3rd. Which means I get to live with nerve pain in my dominant hand until then. I asked if I could be put on the cancellation list so I could possible get in sooner. Apparently, unlike every other procedure from this system, they are unable to do that. Like what? Are they trying to make sick people sicker by making everything hard?

All of this to say that anyone who doesn’t think that the healthcare system in America is fucked has never been in need of actual healthcare and is probably an idiot. And anyone who thinks that cutting public health budgets is good for anyone is also a fucking idiot.