Leiter Reports: Guest Bloggers Benjamin Hellie and Jessica Wilson, Sept. 12-16: Our first encounter with socialized medicine.

This matches our experience of medicine in the Netherlands, too. But we also had doctors wiling to make house calls. But we also had doctors working under supposition that staying home until you feel better is a good thing.

I dread our doctors in Ann Arbor. My mother’s doctors are (except for her Dutch rheumatologist) too busy to spend more than 10 minutes with her, explicitly refuse to coordinate with one another, and cannot remember what they have said or prescribed from visit to visit. Which visits are often months apart, because of delays in scheduling.

We are being bilked; so, alas,are the doctors themselves. We were being charged $800/month for this degree of mismanaged non-service, the last time we paid for it.

And what exactly for? Risk?

Ours? Not likely. Some combination of the doctors’ legal risks, and the Pharmas’ product development and marketing risks, more likely.