In The Netherlands, the joke (mainly amongst expats), well actually frustration, is that they just send you home with some paracetamol and come back after two weeks if the complaints don’t stop.

As someone from The Netherlands myself, I’m fairly frustrated with our healthcare system being like this, optimizing for GPs being the gatekeeper to the specialist healthcare system, and as such being super reluctant to actually help us.

To be clear: one of my siblings is a GP and they themselves are frustrated by this as well but can’t change the system. It’s the half privatized / half socialized toxic combination that stings here.

I had to go to another country to get some of my symptoms taken seriously.

To be clear: no amount of “but I’ll pay myself for this study” helps. It’s just not possible. It’s super moronic.

Never mind the fact that specialist healthcare is super distributed, without any central oversight, and you have to behave like your own project manager when you’re being taken care of.

Healthcare is a mess in most of the developed world, probably because it’s incredibly expensive.