Seashell, once again you are getting to a core issue that is glossed over simply because health is such a complicated issue. I am in a one horse town with ten doctors though. 24 hours is about as long a wait as there is. Neurological is a little longer.
Therapist is once a month.

Good, good post. I hope it gets a lot of action because I would like to see what it is like for others.

P.S. I deliberately linked to Jesse's blog from mine, this morning, to make sure his did not completely disappear.

I have Kaiser in Oakland, CA. I can see a doctor immediately if it is determined that there is an emergency; other appointments take longer. It depends on the interaction between the caller and the nurse on duty and/or the e-mail communication with your doc! Yes! E-mail the doc! Mine responds to me in hours, usually to tell me to exercise more. Seriously, when I had some indication of a possible heart issue, he scheduled a stress test on the basis of what I told him, in 24 hours. Negative!

Here (Canada) inside a week for a GP.

Had major life-threatening emergency a year ago, immediate treatment, 4 days in hospital, endless tests etc. - no cost. Walked out.

Booking specialists is harder, depending on the condition. 2-4 months for mine - none serious, pretty much just wanted an additional opinion on a couple of things.

So, not perfect... but waiting times are going down steadily, now that they're focussing on it.

I live in a small town in kansas and I can ussually get in to see a doctor the next day two at the latest. Now my son who is diabetic has to go to wichita a lot and it can take up to three or four weeks to get an appointment.

Rural area. For an appointment to monitor one or more of my 4 pre-existing conditions it's about a 2 week wait. For immediate needs, usually I can get in the same day. Quite often it will be with a physician's assistant or nurse practitioner. If my ailment is serious enough, they will run and get the 'big doc' so I consider myself well looked after.

Specialists are virtually non-existent in this middle of nowhere where I live. The ones we do have are imported from the larger cities 50+ miles away. A days worth of appointments are set up ahead of time and then a specialist will drive to the area and 'take over' consulting rooms for that day and see patients then. Sometimes if your GP determines that your condition warrants seeing a specialist asap, an appointment is made for you from the GP's office. Depending on the severity of need, you can be seeing a specialist the next day....after you drive the 50+ miles to their offices.

We also have rural clinics here. After hour walk-in. Costs are the same as regular doctor office hours and way cheaper than emergency room visits.

Here's another butt pain for republicans: My Auzzie friends doctor actually makes housecalls.

Who goes to doctors?

Portland, Oregon - We have Kaiser, and as noted before, they are there for emergencies and urgent care. Urgent care can be a four to six hour wait, same day (super crowded), but if you go to the ER, the people are usually very very very sick and depending on your illness it can take a lot of time (not good when you are so sick). My partner had heart problems and after waiting several hours! got seen. If you try to make a regular appt. with your primary care doctor or a dentist, the wait is 2 to 3 months.

BUT Kaiser’s email system is excellent at the moment. We always use it now because you can speak directly with your doctor to describe symptoms and s/he will order tests (walk-in, very short wait) or prescribe antibiotics etc. same day or next. All your records are online and encrypted. This system works well for us for the flu or minor illness, but sometimes I wonder if all the bases get covered – I doubt it. Plus, many people don’t use or own computers so they have to go the long wait to the doctor. I also can’t imagine our doctor being able to keep up if everyone had email - already overloaded with patients. But phone waits take forever to speak with an Advice nurse. However, because of the email system, Kaiser works better for us than most HMO’s we have PURCHE$ED for non-emergency care. We can make appointments online, look at our medical history, find resources etc. They also have a mail-order pharmacy for ongoing meds. It’s a pretty good model in some ways, terrible in others. I vote for single-payer universal health care now, please. We are lucky to be covered at the moment, but so many others have none - and they NEED it.

strato, I think you are one of a small number of people (relatively speaking) that have the only, or one of the only, well run (again, relative) healthcare organizations in the United States.

I have really been impressed with Kaiser's commitment to reform and the amount of resources they have contributed to the movement.

But, in the end, the only system where everyone has access is single payer. And you just re-affirmed that. Thanks.

The World Health Organization rates the United States 37th in quality of health care. That's shameful. Absolutely shameful. We can do FAR better than this.

Mine has about a month wait, with the twist that they only schedule appointments 2 weeks ahead. So to get a month followup, you have to wait 2 weeks to call for an appointment 2 weeks after that. It's like making an appointment to make an appointment.

I like my doctor a lot but things like check-ups need to be scheduled well in advance. Were I seriously injured or if I became suddenly sick, he'd no doubt do his best to squeeze me in but I don't know that I can 100% count on that -- he can't do everything, after all and if I break my arm in the middle of the night, he ain't getting up to open his office!

People worry that a public system would cause "rationing." Doesn't the private system ration too, though?

It isn't clear if changing the reimbursement system will have any impact on waiting times for appointments. Waiting time for appointments is purely a function of the number of appointments vs. the demand for appointments.

Universal coverage would increase, not decrease, the demand for care and increase waiting times without an increase in providers.

Emergency demand would go down However many doctors are currently 'maxxed out' and aren't even taking more patients.

Waiting time decreases only if more clinics and doctors/providers are in place and ready to go, especially primary care. Accomplishing this would take long term planning and changes to the output mix of our health care education system.

Interesting post and great comments, I found them very educational. I am a Family Practice physician and I will share a few observations:

#1 - You are going to have to wait to see your doctor unless you are very ill. Most offices spend the day juggling the schedule to get the really sick people in. They are doing their best and won't let you wait longer than is medically necessary.

#2 - The comment above from NobleCommentDecider is absolutely correct, a very concise and true statement.

#3 - One thing medical clinics fail at is educating patients regarding clinic procedures.

#4 - Very few people seem to appreciate the value of Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants.

#5 - While the US has a lot of doctors compared to other countries, we have fewer Primary Care doctors, so you are going to have to wait longer to see them.

#6 - To the Canadian commenter above who said something like, "I walked out of the hospital and had surgery and didn't pay a thing" - trust me, you paid.

#7 - If the perceived personal cost of medical care drops, the demand will rise. Medicaid patients go to the doctor a lot more than people with regular insurance.

You want to hear stories in support of universal health care? Stories that prove the arguments against universal health care wrong? Go to http://healthcareforamerica.blogspot.com/ or http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=daj+mythbusters&aq=f.

Although most sites are collecting health care horror stories, expats are so eager to tell their stories about health care, too, because we know how the systems can work.

I'm an American living in Japan, and can tell you my wait times are minimal. Whether going to the major hospital in my country town for specialty care or my general practitioner, my waiting times vary from 10 minutes to about one hour--and that is with no appointment. If there is an appointment, there is never more than a 10-minute wait.

Every single objection by conservatives about universal health care is wrong. My taxes are not significantly higher than what I pay at home, the care is exemplary, even in my small country town, there are no long waits, I alone choose my doctor, I don't abuse the system by going to the doctor every time I get a sniffle, but I am able to go to the doctor when I want, without having to wait until it becomes a crisis. I've been lucky enough to live in Europe and Japan, and say with no hesitation that national health care, even though it certainly has some problems and no system is perfect, is far and away superior to the American system.

In contrast to comments above, when I lived in the US, my insurance carrier determined which doctor I was able to see, I always had to see a GP before being referred to someone who could solve my medical problem (that means two visits instead of one), even with appointments, the doctors were so overloaded that I had to wait between 1 and two hours, and the billing procedures were so complicated because every step of the way brought a new bill from a new company which I then would have to fight with my insurance company about coverage. How anyone can defend this system is beyond me.

"I always had to see a GP before being referred to someone who could solve my medical problem (that means two visits instead of one)"- bylatti

It is exactly this sort of thinking that is causing health care costs to rise. A primary care doctor is necessary to diagnose your problem first. Primary care doctors can also treat most things they can diagnose. We have a glut of specialists in most urban areas of the US.

Doctors get paid very little for the diagnosis. Also, primary care doctors get paid less for treating you than a specialist does - for the exact same treatment. That is why your primary care doctor has to see a lot of people during the day. Failure to diagnose correctly or in a timely fashion is also one of the most common reasons for malpractice lawsuits.

The relationship between the primary care physician and the patient is where the "rubber meets the road" in healthcare. If that relationship is not fundamentally changed, then healthcare itself will not change.

Yes, see it's interesting in other countries they look at quality health care as a right, and in the U.S. we see it as a commodity, something that can be bought and traded. We look at patients as consumers, if you look a lot of Republicans use the words "consumer-based", but should we profit off people's health? You hit the nail on the head. I recently went to a lecture by Dr. Bruce Bagley at the American Academy of Family Physicians, and he presented a model of health care that is patient centered and uses IT effectively in treating patients, it was very interesting.