This is a far cry from the gravity of the post, but here's my personal anecdote about trying to navigate health care and insurance.

A month or two ago, I was trying to set up a pediatric dentist visit for my son. Not a medical emergency, but a matter of some urgency. I spent about three hours on a total of a dozen phone calls or so. Some to the insurer, and some to various dentist offices in the region to inquire about scheduling and logistics. I learned that I needed to switch my son's primary office before he would be eligible to receive care. This could only be done once per month. Fortunately, by luck, this would take effect at the close of business on that very day. Next I needed to find a covered provider. Of course, the insurer could not tell me which ones would have openings at short notice, so I had to call several. Then I learned that in order for a pediatric visit to be covered, it needed a referral from a general dentist. The pediatric office helped me find a dentist who could fill out this paperwork, which felt lucky. I verified that my policy worked with this dentist office. Several hours on the phone, but I had a sense of accomplishment for sorting it all out.

The day of the appointment came. The visit went smoothly. Then I found out that it wouldn't be covered because the insurance will not cover pediatric dentistry above the age of 6, but my son is 7.

I think I'm going to opt out of dental insurance altogether in the next enrollment. All the individual people seemed to be doing their best to help me, but the end result is a system that is impossible for me to use.

Insurance refused to cover imaging to identify my spouse's squamous cell carcinoma on an ovary because initial bloodwork didn't come back positive for ovarian cancer (squamous cell required different bloodwork, at least at the time).

It took a doctor offering to misdiagnose it as a dermoid cyst to get the imaging and hysterectomy ordered and approved, and that still took 2 months. By the time it happened, the cancer had metastasized.

The imaging would've cost a few thousand dollars. The hysterectomy would've cost about $20k-40k. Chemo was unsuccessful, and she died 9 months and about $2 million in medical bills later.

Similar story for our youngest - excuse after excuse. We just bought two round-trip tickets to Warsaw and paid privately. It was a little more but my wife and son got to spend time with friends and family for that extra. The effort we had spent in US we never got back. I hope it worked-out okay for your family as well.

I've seriously considered opting out of health insurance altogether and stuffing away the obscenely priced monthly expense into an interest yielding account. Insurance is nightmarish, and I don't really want to deal with it much anymore.

I know this might appear foolish, but fighting with a corporation whose incentives are adverse to my own (both on the medical side and the insurance side) makes me a little sick to my stomach.

Fortunately, out of pocket for relatively normal dental care isn't too bad... probably because Dental insurance doesn't really help much and often easier to just pay out of pocket.. though do shop around if you do so.

In France, land of free helthcare, the problem is ultimately the same but for different reasons. We do not have enough doctors (they lobbied a law to set quotas) and finding a specialist is a near miracle.

Then the doctors complain that they are overworked because of what their seniors put in place.

The problem is never the money, though.