In contrast, to America working for a good employer:
1. Schedule with GP. Say I am in pain. Get in within 2 days.
2. Get a referral to Physical Therapy. Asked if I have any preference where to go. My doctor knows my network and gave me a number of choices that were within network (a number of which were within walking range of where I lived).
3. Call PT office. Schedule an appointment. They apologize that their next opening is a week away. Gladly accept.
Physical Therapy is interesting in that it is semi-free market and rather competitive, so it tends to work a bit better than some other scenarios.
Just to add another perspective also working in America for a good employer:
1. Schedule with GP, get appointment very quickly.
2. GP has no idea who is "in network" for you and doesn't seem to care very much. They also don't understand the different insurance plans so have no idea if you're covered for certain types of referral.
3. Schedule appointment with a specialist. Ask for up front cost estimate for consultation/procedure given your insurance plan. Unable to answer.
4. Go to appointment anyway as you don't have many other choices.
5. Receive astronomical bill for some obscure billing code that is not covered by your health plan.
6. Spend time calling doctors office and insurer to figure out the situation and try to avoid or reduce bill.
I've experienced the NHS too - for all its flaws, the peace of mind living in the UK from a health standpoint is worth every penny of the associated taxes IMO.
> In contrast, to America working for a good employer:
> 1. Schedule with GP. Say I am in pain. Get in within 2 days.
> 2. Get a referral to Physical Therapy. Asked if I have any preference where to go. My doctor knows my network and gave me a number
> of choices that were within network (a number of which were within walking range of where I lived).
> 3. Call PT office. Schedule an appointment. They apologize that their next opening is a week away. Gladly accept.
> Physical Therapy is interesting in that it is semi-free market and rather competitive, so it tends to work a bit better than some
> other scenarios.
Speaking from recent experience, on Obamacare:
1. Live with pain for 6 months because you know you're not getting out of a specialist's office for less than $750.
2. Cave in when the pain becomes unbearable and see a specialist.
3. Make an appointment for PT with a provider who doesn't take insurance at all, because the transparent pricing means no surprises.
4. Pay out of pocket for PT appointments.
5. Spend the next 4 months getting bills for your one specialist visit. Half of these are coded wrong so insurance won't pay. Spend 2h every week on the phone trying to get it sorted out.
If you talk to whoever does the specialist's billing at any point, you'll find that they're totally unable to estimate the cost of services. You might as well not even try to figure out how much it costs in advance.
Two days to schedule with a GP? That's insane... In Australia (with our universal healthcare) it's pretty much always same-day for a GP... X-rays and blood tests are generally same day and free, I've even had an MRI scheduled for next-day (just a knee thing, not an emergency) and again no out of pocket cost.
Another Australian report - I don't go to the doctor often, but can usually get a GP appointment the same day (they're often running late and waiting is boring, but that's the worst of it). When I recently needed a blood test, I showed up without an appointment and was finished and out of there within 10-15 minutes.
GP is same day for anything important, and if I am willing to see any GP I can go to a walk in clinic (urgent care). My GP is rather popular a it can take a day or two to get in and see her. The 20+ minute appointments are super nice though.
Chronic pain is an extremely tricky phenomena. A lot of US health care been "dealing" with it by handing out opioids and we can see the devastating effect of that. Even a given physical therapist may not be able to help a given patient (assuming some body of some sort could at all).
Similarly, a smart consumer may be able to find a massage therapist with skills in a bodywork subdiscipline that happens to really help them (I favor trigger point and Shiatsu massage after sample a bunch in my area). This is cost effective compared to just about everything and something I imagine someone in UK could find in the larger cities.
1. Schedule with GP. Say I am in pain. Get in within 2 days.
2. Get a referral to Physical Therapy. Asked if I have any preference where to go. My doctor knows my network and gave me a number of choices that were within network (a number of which were within walking range of where I lived).
3. Call PT office. Schedule an appointment. They apologize that their next opening is a week away. Gladly accept.
Physical Therapy is interesting in that it is semi-free market and rather competitive, so it tends to work a bit better than some other scenarios.