A standard to response to criticism of the American health care “system” is that it is the best in the world. In a sense, this is true–if you have the money, you can buy the best health care (mostly). However, the quality of a system is not just a matter of what can be bought at the top. To use an analogy, if a restaurant was considered the best because its most expensive meal was the best, but everything else that most customers could afford was not so good, then it would be odd to consider it the best restaurant for everyone. Naturally, the American “system” could be praised as the best for those who have the resources to afford it, but that would be somewhat dishonest.
One serious issue with health care, at least for those who cannot afford to have their own doctor on call, is the matter of time. For most of us, there is a wait before we can get an appointment, then we wait at the office to see the doctor. This can be problematic for people with schedules that lack flexibility and people who need treatment sooner rather than later. I have good insurance, but it took me two months to get an appointment with a new primary care doctor. Having more medical professionals would reduce these delays, but this is a problem that has not been addressed.
After a long wait, a patient typically gets very little time with the doctor or medical professional. For example, I have usually gotten 10 minutes with my primary doctor or nurse for my physical–I spend far more time in the waiting room. This is not to say that these doctors did not care–they did and did the best they could with the time allocated.
Part of the reason for the short time is that most medical professionals have too many patients and too little time–as such, they can only allocate so much time to each patient. In other cases, the medical facility is a for-profit business first and a place of medicine second–the faster customers can be dealt with, the more customers can be seen, thus increasing profits. Whatever the reason for the short time available to patients, this can certainly impact the quality of care, especially if a patient has questions. Because of this, patients are often on their own in terms of educating themselves about their health concerns. Obviously, having people with no medical training doing this can be problematic (and it helps explain the huge market for dubious supplements and remedies).
Since part of the problem is the need for more medical professionals, steps should be taken to encourage and enable more people to enter the field. Since part of the problem is the for-profit approach, this should be addressed–while it is often assumed that the purpose of life is to make money, applying this to medicine results in worse rather than better health care. This is not to say that medical professionals should not be generously compensated for their work, just that the for-profit business model of medicine needs to be modified. At the very least.