I'm transgender, and everything the top-level poster said about incompetent doctors, gatekeeping, and having to read literature and teach yourself about your own medical condition absolutely 100% applies to me and nearly every other trans person I've talked to (I remember printing out the Endocrine Society guidelines and taking a highlighter to them in order to convince a doctor that what I'm asking for is standard practice). I also have friends who have other chronic medical conditions, and their experience with doctors is pretty much the same as my experience and the experiences of other trans people.
And everything I've heard from people in Europe is that over there, it's even worse. At least in the US it's possible to doctor-shop and find someone who knows what they're doing—or who at the very least is willing to listen—but in European countries with single-payer healthcare you are entirely at the mercy of whatever doctor gets assigned to your case (yes, this isn't as bad in multi-payer countries such as France as it is in single-payer countries like the Nordics). And in some cases, the barriers aren't even the competencies of your individual doctors but institutional requirements doctors are legally required to follow even if an individual doctor is competent. Mind you, there are some exceptions: in parts of Spain and in much of Southeast Asia, for example, a good amount of medications that are Rx-only in most other countries are available over-the-counter, so at least you can self-med if you've put in the exhausting effort to research your own condition and figure out what you need (and even then, good luck getting blood tests to confirm your dosage is appropriate).
This isn't an endorsement of the US healthcare system, just an acknowledgement that the shit sandwich offered in the US has slightly less fecal content than the shit sandwiches offered in many other countries.
They have a system where you get evaluated by a general practitioner (or someone more relevant), and then they schedule you to see however many specialists you might need to see - all within a day or two.
It's not perfect, and I've found it's still hard to get them to drill deep on anything not life threatening or obviously testable. That said, I very much doubt that system exists anywhere with socialized medicine. You don't need a referral or anything else to go. You just call and make an appointment.
Within 45 minutes of arrival they had figured out what was immediately wrong and had me hooked up to an IV drip of stuff to fix it. An hour later, a specialist for my issue came and talked to me about the problem and had an idea for a root cause. I was held overnight for observation and had several more tests run; by the time I left the next morning I had a root-cause diagnosis and a prescription to fix it.
Those antibiotics, man. They work.
I see these comments all the time on Reddit and HN but never see the reverse from US posters. They just come across as insecure and snooty.
Then the financial problem is fixed, and Homer carries one of them, all the while spouting about the European health system, to the garbage can. He says "Time to take out the Eurotrash."
And considering that you can find a dentist to do a root canal for $300 without too much trouble, I'm surprised anyone would be able to fly to Croatia and get treated for that little.
The quality of the actual doctor varies on whether the doctor is a lifelong learner, a deep thinker, a good listener, is good at extracting information from people who are bad at introspecting how they feel, and communicating with people whose language skills and mental capacity are far below or above their own. They also leave out their personal biases about "what" the person they're treating might be (drug seeker, hypochondriac, malingerer, etc.).
If you visit a doctor and they don't have the ability or time to execute those non-medical training qualities, then you get a bad doctor.
The main issue is that the good doctors usually go to desirable places to live. This is often not in rural or even suburban areas of the country, and that's typically where the bad stories come from (adjusted for population density anyway - lots of stories from cities too but there are more people in cities).
They are not paid by outcome they are paid by referrals, tests, drugs sold and consulting
But you don't... that's the whole problem with the American Healthcare industry!
Which is to say: standard-of-care treatments can cost far too much relative to other countries; but also, if you’re willing to throw millions of dollars at private clinics, you can opt your own way into experimental treatments that don’t exist anywhere else in the world.
I am an American who has lived in several countries and had experience several medical systems.
The US has the best care… if you have access to it. This access can be limited by geography, insurance, money, awareness of the specific doctor, etc.
In a random provincial area with no university medical school nearby, the treatment will often be quite sketchy.
In other countries I’ve lived in, the best medical care was still in the large cities, but the standard in provincial areas was to a much higher standard (imho) than in provincial areas in the US.
If your lucky enough to have an accessible primary care physician who personally knows specialist and lives where there is a University hospital center, the system is awesome. If you don't, the system appears to be a special kind of administrative hell.