How It Works

My wife has a UTI. She had one about a month ago, went to an urgent care, and was prescribed antibiotics. Apparently, it hasn't cleared up, so she went to our PCP office this morning. She was told the doctor wasn't there, and the only nurse practitioner was unavailable. So, she went back to the same urgent care, saw a doctor (he's a really good doctor) who prescribed a different antibiotic, which requires a longer time for the medicine to work, and if the culture indicates, will be substituted with another antibiotic. 

I'm beginning to wonder why anyone has a PCP, other than it allows insurance companies to keep a tight rein on them, and patients. They're supposed to handle the little problems, such as a UTI, but seem to be more unavailable than in the past. That, and they have so many patients, getting 10 minutes of their time during a visit is unusual. While it may seem I'm blaming the doctor, I can't fault them for trying to keep up the with paperwork, sometimes brutally inept staff, unavailability of procedures or test report, Medicare requirements, and  insurance codes that would confound a genius. That, and keeping up with medical journals filled with "research" that is peer reviewed by people that not only are just rubber-stamping the research, they don't even try to find out if the experiments can be repeated to verify the reported results.

This is where we are. Insurance is filled with fraudulent charges, medical professionals are surrounded with incompetence, medications may do more harm than good, research is filled with fraud, and to top it off, the bumbling, bureaucratic cesspools called government agencies not only create more problems, they piss-off money faster than taxes can cover the waste.

Bleh!