Comment on A tense moment.
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks agoHaving worked for advocacy groups for my disease, this is literally a universal issue and affects even the best systems. The only cases where this tends not to be an issue are extremely expensive private doctors who take all the time in the world to investigate for you.
OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
Yeah, even with a great public system not every doctor can look after a patient with the same amount of care
I would assume that, however, private hospitals have better services in countries with better public healthcare since they would have less customers and would be inclined to serve the best of what’s possible
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
It tends to actually be a worse problen in europe than the US.
In the US the problem is more that doctors tend to diagnose you with something you don’t have and prescribe drugs that won’t help you (pharmaceuticals thanks).
In europe, where the government strongly controls the medical system, the government has promoted rules that minimise the costs of disability benefits and delegitimise disabling illness as “hysteria” or whatever, so that the government doesn’t have to pay as much disability benefits.
Take the UK for example, Sir Simon Wessely, who based his career on claiming ME (and now Long COVID) are all in the mind, which was disproven later on. Where is he now? He was knighted by the Queen, serves on the board of directors of the NIH, leads the government’s Science Media Center. Oh and he also earns massive commissions on being a consultant for disability insurance companies.
His famous quote, which is linked to him advising UK parliament in the 90s, is “[disability] Benefits will actually make these patients worse” (because he believed they were malingerers). A quoye that probably led to hundreds of deaths of people with ME starving to death.