来源：《时代周刊》2023年3月13日刊
You haven't been feeling well lately. You’re more tired than usual, a bit sluggish. You wonder if there’s something wrong with your diet. You call your primary-care doctor’s office to schedule an appointment. They inform you the next available appointment is in three weeks.
你最近身体不太舒服。你比平时更累，行动迟缓。你想知道是不是你的饮食有问题。你打电话给你的初级保健医生办公室安排预约。他们会告诉你下一次预约是在三周后。
So, you wait. And then you wait some more. And then, when you arrive on the day of your appointment, you wait even more.
所以，你等待。然后预约往往会延后，你等的时间会更长。再然后，当你在预约那天到达诊所时，你会发现排队的人很多，你还得继续等待。
You fill out the mountain of required paperwork, but the doctor still isn’t ready to see you. You flip through a magazine for a while, then scroll through your phone until you’re finally called. You wait a little longer in a scratchy paper gown, then talk to your physician—if you can call it talking, since she’s mostly staring at a computer screen—for all of 10 minutes before you’re back out in the lobby with a lab order to have your blood tested.
你填写了堆积如山的表格，但医生仍然没有准备好给你看病。你浏览了一会儿杂志，然后翻看手机，直到终于有人叫你号。你穿着扎人的纸袍等了一会儿，然后和你的医生交谈——如果你能称之为交谈的话，因为她大部分时间都在盯着电脑屏幕——整整10分钟，然后你回到大厅，带着化验单去验血。
Then you call to set up your blood test, and the waiting process starts over. A few weeks after you get your results, a bill arrives in the mail. You’re charged hundreds of dollars for the blood work. The appointment was over in minutes, but your bank account will feel the effects for a long time.
然后你打电话去做验血，等待的过程又开始了。在你拿到结果几周后，邮件中会收到一张账单。验血要收你几百美元。看病几分钟就结束了，但你的银行账户会在很长一段时间内受到影响。
Going to the doctor may never be a fun experience, but surely it can be better than it is right now. In 2019, even before the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the foundations of health care, an Ipsos survey found that 43% of Americans were unsatisfied with their medical system, far more than the 22% of people in the U.K. and 26% of people in Canada who were unsatisfied with theirs. By 2022, three years into the pandemic, just 12% of U.S. adults said health care was handled “extremely” or “very” well in the U.S., according to a poll from the Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
去看医生可能永远都不是一件有趣的经历，但可以肯定的是，它可以比现在更好。2019年，甚至在新冠大流行动摇医疗保健基础之前，益普索的一项调查发现，43%的美国人对他们的医疗系统不满意，远远高于英国的22%和加拿大的26%。根据美联社-挪威公共事务研究中心的一项民意调查，到2022年，也就是大流行的第三年，只有12%的美国成年人认为美国的医疗保健处理得“特别”或“非常”好。
Americans pay a premium for the care they rate so poorly. The U.S. spends more per capita on health care than any other developed country in the world but has subpar health outcomes. Average life expectancy is lower in the U.S. than in other wealthy nations, and about 60% of U.S. adults have a chronic disease. About 10% of the population doesn’t have health insurance.
美国人为他们评价如此之差的医疗保健支付了大价钱。美国的人均医疗支出高于世界上任何其他发达国家，但健康状况却不理想。美国人的平均预期寿命低于其他富裕国家，大约60%的美国成年人患有慢性病。大约10%的人口没有医疗保险。
And the customer service sucks. U.S. patients are tired of waiting weeks or months for appointments that are over in minutes. They’re tired of high prices and surprise bills. They’re tired of providers who treat them like electronic health record entries, rather than people.
客户服务也很糟糕。美国患者厌倦了为几分钟就能结束的预约而等待数周或数月。他们厌倦了高昂的价格和吓人的账单。他们厌倦了那些把他们当作电子健康记录条目而不是人来对待的医疗服务提供者。
That could dissuade them from getting medical care at all—and if that happens, America may get a whole lot sicker than it already is. Patients are, in a phrase, burned out.
这可能会导致他们不去接受医疗保健——如果这种情况发生，美国人的健康状况可能会比现在更严重。用一句话来说，病人已经精疲力竭了。