I've been fighting a cough and sinus pressure for like a week. I haven't taken an antibiotic for anything in probably ten years, but I've been generally miserable. Add in the messed up sleep during Diana's time in the hospital, and my body is generally unhappy.
But for as shitty as United Healthcare is, they do have access to remote healthcare, with no co-pays. So I fired up the old browser and within five minutes was talking to a nurse practitioner. She prescribed the usual mix of antibiotics and cough stuff, and a bit later I was going to Publix to pick up the goodies. It's the sort of thing that does not require seeing a doctor in person, who probably bills insurance a hundred bucks and makes you wait in a cold office.
This is a rare win in an incredibly shitty system. I really thought that we were headed for some kind of meaningful change during the pandemic, when we saw the system nearly collapse. It's not that the quality of care is necessarily bad (Diana's caregivers were amazing), it's the the financials of all of it are totally fucked up. We pay twice as much per capita as the second most expensive country, with far worse outcomes. And nothing changes because the lobbyists have convinced everyone that the system is fine, and any change to it will be worse, because freedom or whatever. It's insane.
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