My mother worked anesthesia for 40 years. No specialists or surgeons with privileges at her hospital(s) worked only 3 days a week. Maybe they're at their clinics only 2-3 days, but they're usually in surgery when they're not seeing patients, or making rounds to check on surgery patients, before and after procedures.

I've known a bunch of doctors, and one thing most of them didn't have was free time. I'm always asking my oncologist and cardiologist if they've been getting enough sleep, because they always look dead-dog tired when I see them. 70+ hour weeks are the norm for them.

Any doctor who has normal free time is either in a low-workload field, or a lousy doctor. You can almost always take that to the bank.

We became eligible for Costa Rican universal health care. The waits aren’t that long. Especially if really ill. Also, you can get treated for several ailments at one visit. Then if you need a specialist you may have to wait.

And their land mass is much smaller, too.

Might have something to do with the access to care. It's tougher to get a high doctor:patient ratio in a place with 330 million people, and in a country as enormous as ours.

Most civilized countries have universal health of some kinda. Including Canada.

I said zilch about universal vs private care, because that wasn't my point. I was referring to population and geography's impact on access, and you're the one full of bull if you think that doesn't have an effect on getting care here.

Because it does.

Population is one thing. Ratios of population to good care is another. Yes US has more geography and population. But US also has more doctors, hospitals clinics and tech equipment.

You seem to think universal health care is impossible in US.

Edit: obviously room for improvement.

Where does the US rank in universal health care?
last overall
The U.S. ranks last overall on the health care outcomes domain (Exhibit 1). On nine of the 10 component measures, U.S. performance is lowest among the countries (Appendix 8), including having the highest infant mortality rate (5.7 deaths per 1,000 live births) and lowest life expectancy at age 60 (23.1 years).Aug 4, 2021
https://www.commonwealthfund.org › ...
Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly | Commonwealth Fund

So the demand to see them is high. Some PCPs don't take any new patients at all, and specialists can be booked out 6 months!

Boy, I'm sure glad we don't have that socialized medicine where you can't get in to see a doctor........

We have a critical shortage of doctors in the US because we have a population of 330 million people needing care, but too many people who want to be doctors can't afford to make that investment of money and time to become one. Then there's the problem of even more of our population being too fucking stupid and/or lazy to get through medical school. Both factors create a deficit in cranking out new doctors to keep up with the population growth.

Meanwhile, the stupid people want zero immigrants, the only way to get any of the smart people in other countries to come here, either to get the education to become doctors, or, if they're already doctors, to bring their experience and expertise here. If that's not enough, the stupid people hate hate hate that the doctors or future doctors who are willing to come here to help us out aren't lily-white Europeans. The stupid people are too fucking stupid to realize that it's the rare European doctor who wants to come here, when he can have a superior quality of life right where he is.

So our doctor:patient ratio continues to plummet, adding to access woes already abominable thanks to high costs making health care available almost entirely for the fabulously wealthy or well-insured.

find another doctor.