What I've seen from others and what I've read in attempted quantitative reviews is that Kaiser quality, perhaps not surprisingly, varies by region and facility.

What I've seen from others and what I've read in attempted quantitative reviews is that Kaiser quality, perhaps not surprisingly, varies by region and facility. I don't know if anybody has invented a management strategy which can truly remove this variance. Qualitatively, as a patient, I'd say the biggest difference with Kaiser is that you engage something more like a government bureaucracy. You do not get complicated billing adventures when you go to your Kaiser clinics, hospitals, etc. But, you do get some long waits, occasional referral limbo, and sometimes indifferent treatment from overworked nurses or clerical staff. Of course, there are still individuals involved in each care event. I have seen two different family members have different levels of satisfaction and frustration from the same facilities, and my take is that the personalities of the patients had more to do with the different experiences than the facility or staff. I liken Kaiser to going to the DMV for treatment. This is most true as a young to middle-aged person, where your common care needs might be for unplanned, urgent care rather than periodic checkups or predictable chronic care. I know others who have used Kaiser in the same regions for more chronic and acute conditions including psychiatric, metabolic, and geriatric care. I have been reasonably impressed and would like to keep myself in the same system when I retire and grow old. I may be biased by having known the system since I was a child, but I prefer this to the non-HMO US experience I know mostly second hand. Instead of the DMV, I've had friends and relatives liken their healthcare to engaging a car dealership or some boutique investment firm, with every interaction transactionalized and tinged with financial worry.