@margo,
Too late for me to move to aussie land, but it's tempting, I'm sure I'd like the place.
I've been self employed (independent contractor) since 1982, living in California, US, and New Mexico, US. I've had, all this time, superb medical care, except for one 'accident' in surgery which changed my life, and one dolt at a clinic. But I could go on and on about the good care.
I think part of that is that I'm fairly smart re the system at teaching hospitals, having worked for years in one, and rather like Roberta, know how to get listened to and by whom. I've met Roberta, whom I just plain old love.
In the meantime, I've gone from being a creative person of middle class tastes and lesser budget because of my own choices re marriage and career, that I'm not sorry about. But I was handling it all, until the eight surgeries. I was insurance poor to start with, hey, hey, blue cross - and with the surgeries, broken by the system. Between the killer cost of the insurance itself, and the great lumps of money the insurance didn't pay, I was in deep doo doo, and still am.
I now go only to clinics, and thank my lucky stars (I'm not a star believer, but they're pretty) that my two key doctors are very very good at what they do. One handles a busy clinic for your basic impoverished crowd; she is a very practical woman. I admire her.
The other is my ophthalmologist at the University hospital, and he has my great respect and we have a kind of patient doctor friendship. I think of him as the best of american medicine (not saying that sarcastically).
