Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Gatekeepers that block access to potential treatment pathways until you can convince them it’s worth a try. You assume they actually know what needs to be done. In my experience, you can see they don't have a clue and aren't willing to do research to learn. They just hand out their usual prescriptions, etc and sometimes hope an exam will give them an obvious answer. On top of that, most doctors only have a very nar…
I‘m really not trying to sound snarky, but - is this the supposedly high quality treatment that U.S. citizens get that is so much more expensive as opposed to the „socialized“ insurance we get in Europe that is cheaper for everybody and supposedly therefore not as good/cutting edge?
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).