I’m guessing you’re not familiar with Kaiser Permanente.
It’s a humongous HMO, bordering on what socialist medicine would look like.
Inexperienced, pill-pushing doctors (Kaiser has it’s own pharmacy) with extremely full schedules. No provision for extraordinary ailments. They are loathe to do any costly testing. Communication is poor. Bureaucracy is enormous. Waits are long.
And they repeatedly called one of my family members to try to bully her into aborting her son because there was a remote possibility that he might inherit hemophilia. She didn’t and he didn’t.
What is the difference between Group Health and Kaiser? We had the Group Health PPO for years and it was excellent. Then, one time my husband needed to go to an emergency room when he was out of town, and called a cab. The cab driver asked what hospital he wanted to go to and my husband said that he didn’t know, the closest, just the closest one. The cabbie said, well, Kaiser is just around the corner, but you don’t want to go there unless you want to die. He took him to Long Beach Memorial instead.
When my husband spoke to the Group health insurer, they asked why he didn’t go to Kaiser. We didn’t even know that we were supposed to go Kaiser.
Otherwise, Group Health was excellent. We had our pick of local doctors and access to the best specialists in Seattle.
“And they repeatedly called one of my family members to try to bully her into aborting her son....”
O.M.G.
I hope she gave them hell and I’m glad her baby was OK.
No, I’m on the east coast, we don’t have these fine providers on this side of the country.
And thank goodness!
I love Kaiser...never have had a problem. My sister and myself were born a Kaiser and my daughters were born at Kaiser. No complaints here...