I legit avoid some stuff I should probably go to a doctor about not because of monetary cost but because it’d be five minutes with an old-school country doctor

I legit avoid some stuff I should probably go to a doctor about not because of monetary cost but because it’d be five minutes with an old-school country doctor (I’m filling in a trope for illustration’s sake) but it’ll be like three damn hours of my time (or more) with the current medical system, factoring in multiple appointments because family doctors don’t actually do anything but prescribe antibiotics and issue referrals anymore, generate a dozen pieces of mail I have to deal with, et c. And that’s assuming no insurance fuckery that eats a ton of my time making them do what they’re supposed to. And much of that time will need to be during weekdays during work hours, over multiple week days probably, and with so many unknowns about how much time it’ll actually take. I dunno how people without semi-flexible white collar work situations do anything with the healthcare system at all. I guess they either don’t, or they just have no vacation time left for actual vacation, ever. Especially if they have kids they need to guide through the same time-wasting bullshit. Interacting with doctors takes me like 45-60 minutes for every five minutes of doctor time, at best. It’s fucking miserable. That’s the actual main benefit of things like telehealth, at least I can get a referral spending only 2-3x as much of my own time’s as the doctor’s, and all I have to do is give up all the benefits of having an actual family doctor who knows my history and also a good chance of just being told to see a GP anyway.