Yes, I DO want “The Government” to run my health care!

Despite being fully vaccinated, double boosted, and fairly compliant with my K95 mask, on the morning of August 20th, I felt a bit off and decided to test for Covid.  There was a faint pink line that confirmed, I had the virus.  Fortunately, my symptoms were mild but as a 67 year old man with hypertension and a history of asthma, this was not to be taken lightly.
My local health care provider was closed as it was a Saturday.  I called in an effort to reach the on call doctor.  I knew there was a drug called Paxlovid that President Biden had taken recently and I recalled that it is important to take it early.  My quest to reach a doctor took hours. It began at eleven AM.   A private answering service would take my call after I was on hold for about fifteen minutes.  I would give the person my name, date of birth, and all the rest.  They would tell me that a health care provider would call me within fifteen minutes and if not, I was told to call the answering service.  I played on this merry go round for several hours, as a health care provider never called and I’d call the service again, go on hold again, give them the information again, and call them back after thirty minutes because a health care provider never called.   Finally, at six o’clock that afternoon, I gave up.  I was exhausted.  However, a triage nurse did call me at 7:00 PM.  Overjoyed, I gave her my vitals and condition.  She called me back about an hour later and said they were going to call in a prescription.  The pharmacy was closed but opened the next morning at 10:00 AM.  With excitement and relief, I called the pharmacy at 10:30AM only to discover that the prescription was not called in.  My guess is that the nurse ignored my statement that my local pharmacy (the one on file)  was closed on weekends and so I gave her another pharmacy to call.
Now, twenty four hours later, I was back to calling the answering service of my health care provider, being put on hold, giving them all my information and advised that a health care provider would contact me in thirty minutes or less, and to call the service back if no one called.
At the time of this post, it has been almost two hours and no one has called.

On the bright side, a fried of mine who was familiar with the system, told me of a State of Massachusetts website where I could get a tele visit and a prescription.   The web site was easy to navigate and within minutes, I was in the queue for a tele call.  In less than fifteen minutes, I had my tele-call and received a follow up email confirming my prescription was sent in along with instructions with other meds I am on that needed to be withheld during the time I was on the Paxlovid.  I have also just received a call from my pharmacy that my prescription is ready for pickup.

And no one from my private health care provider has called yet.

Please share widely!

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