An incredible story

from a patient’s perspective at Acid Test (via Galen via Arnold Kling). Well worth the time.

The writer concludes that the organization of our medical system is to blame for what she perceives as the problems with her care (overworked nurses and doctors, incomprehensible bills, etc.) I agree to some extent, but I’m not sure how a single payer system would make things better. Medicare, which allegedly has low administration costs, is constantly threatening to slash payments to doctors and hospitals.

I agree with Galen:

Instead of raging against the system, I think she should pause for a second and think very deeply about how incredibly lucky she was. She could have very easily lost her vision or worse, and much of the rest of the world would kill for all the resources at her disposal

To the authors credit she is honest about when advice she rebelled against turned out to be spot on.

I also thought it was interesting how her view of the health care system improved as her heatlth did.

I'll have more thoughts about the activist care issue later.