>>When I have an immediate need - like a bad cold- I go to one of the many walk-in places around here that are staffed by salaried nurse practitioners. I'm in and out in no time.
Gotta say it: in most of the dreadful socialized healthcare nations out there that pay as little as half as much as the US per capita for healthcare, you get to see a physician with your bad cold.
You might not get a same day appointment if everybody else also has a cold, so you can go to a walk in place and be seen same day, again by a physician.
So you need to ask why you are paying so much more and not getting commensurately better service.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
