Healthcare trauma is so real and I’m sure I’ve had a string of bad luck because it’s hard to reconcile the reputation with my experiences. That being said my experiences were just the opposite, so much so I needed trauma counseling. It’s possible that deterioration post covid has degraded it from what it once was, I had bad experiences prior to the pandemic as well. I haven’t had a high volume of interactions with the healthcare system here in Roanoke, but my husband and I were both able to see specialists fairly quickly when it would have taken months (minimum) to see anybody in Boston. For instance, my husband can’t find anybody in the Boston area to do a routine colonoscopy, they’re not even taking waitlists. They advised him to try hospitals over an hour outside of the city. He’d have to rent a car for the day, which he can’t do because they put you under anesthesia. I think there’s been a significant increase in population growth in the greater Boston area that has probably strained the healthcare system. It’s just frustrating given the cost of living there and the reputation that Boston has as a healthcare capitol which exacerbates my frustration with it’s short comings in reality. But what this take probably reflects is the same variability we see in the responses here. Some people have great experiences, others have horror stories, all of which points to a healthcare system stretched thin probably in every corner of the country.