Health care in America is broken and the chief reason is the government. In 2009, when Obamacare became part of the President's agenda, I said we should just write out the check for trillions of dollars and nationalize the industry. My reasoning was that anything else would mean we have worse access and much higher cost.

Instead of doing that, or extending Medicaid to the 700,000 who could not get insurance, we went straight to worse access and high cost. In California, the scenario is even more dire because the state mandates you must have health insurance, while refusing to engage in any tort reform or lessening regulations so more doctors move here.(1) As a result, the first question you will be asked is what kind of health insurance you have, and if it is Obamacare, there may be no openings.

Yet when scholars writing in journals talk about patients who finally got help when the situation was dire, they fall back on 'they didn't have symptoms', 'they were too busy', 'the cost', etc. and ignore that you have to pass out and go to the Emergency Room otherwise.(2)



A recent analysis found that women spend a lot more than men for health care. Some of that is that women believe in woo more than men, they go to chiropractors and naturopaths, they tell doctors they have more pain than men.  They go to therapy more. Outside premiums, 65% of women spend over $1,000 on out-of-pocket expenses while only 54% of men do.

As a result, the health insurance monster that government created charges more for women. Companies report that they have to pay about $1.6 billion less for men.

It may not be that because women pay more, there is health care inequity for them, it may be inequitable for men because of the hassle. It may be that men won't go to the doctor enough, so the difference in spending is a false flag.

It is instead that men need to visit the doctor more and might, if it were possible in the health care mess we created.

(1) Despite spending $30,000 a year in premiums for Blue Shield, I think only politicians in California have better-reading health insurance, it is an 11-month wait from my referral for a colonoscopy to getting a consultation. Because referrals expire after a year, my PCP will have to issue a new one for the actual colonoscopy. Imagine the wait poor people face now. My PCP isn't even an MD despite my high spening. My choice was a PA or DO, and I chose PA because DOs in California have an inordinate number of woo merchants in their ranks so if I am using someone who didn't go to medical school, it will be a PA, to reduce my odds of crackpottery.

(2) And if they don't admit you, you'll pay for the ambulance. My son had a seizure and passed out in a McDonald's, someone called 911, an ambulance arrived, they took him to the ER and called me, the whole process, from McDonald's employees to customers to medical staff was great. But he wasn't admitted, so he got a bill. Then a 3-month wait to see a neurologist, it was so short in California health care time because we were willing to drive a large radius.