I wanted to get travel vaccinations in New Orleans. In my ignorance, I just looked up a clinic and went. Apparently I don't understand the coding for black clinic.
It was a shack with 30 poor rural black women sitting motionless on mismatched folding chairs. We sat and sweated for an hour; no practitioner or even receptionist appeared.
I don't think there was a phone at that shack. There weren't many cars about, so those women probably walked a decent distance to sit and wait.
One of them had an enormous tumour on her face.
It could be that we just killed the vibe. But these women were motionless. Like waiting was all they did. I believe they waited in that shack for days in a row.
We went to that clinic from a bar where we'd been drinking seven-dollar beers while a waspy college band played poor-hillbilly music to oyster-guzzling yuppies in raybans.
I've generally found Americans to be smart, humble, funny, kind and warm. But when I encounter an American being arrogant or self-centred, I think about that New Orleans shack.
I am not defending either system - I would strongly prefer something like the rest of continental Europe, which is a pragmatic mix of private and public healthcare. However, the idea that fully-public healthcare (a unique experiment in the world) is a sustainable model is a joke. It's hard to defend, when our current standard healthcare at the point of service could charitably be called "usually better than the 3rd world".
I went as a young man. I may have misunderstood how it works. I don't know how cost-effective it is.