Scottish-born David Gray, a creative director based in Brooklyn, was
“doubled-up coughing in the snow” when he fell out of love with the US
healthcare system.
Gray, on his employer-provided health insurance, needed a US doctor for a checkup. A colleague recommended a doctor’s office housed in “a really grand building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Full floor, incredible views – it looked like a movie version of a New York doctor’s,” he says. “It was just about the friendliest, fanciest place I’d ever been.”
A chatty, relaxed doctor and a glamorous receptionist greeted him on that visit. Though the office was devoted to plastic surgery – the shelves replete with cosmetics, glossy leaflets about Botox treatments and dermal fillers – they treated Gray.
A year later, the reception he received was quite literally chilly. Gray, suffering from a chest infection, cold, exhausted and weak, headed out in a snowstorm and stumbled along to the same doctor’s office.
When he handed over his insurance card, the receptionist’s dazzling smile faded. His employer had changed healthcare providers without Gray’s knowing it. “Sliding the new card back across the desk, she said ‘this is not insurance we accept.’ She turned away. Sixty seconds later I was back out in the snow, bent over double coughing,” Gray says.
Read more: Exposure to US healthcare system leaves British expats appalled, baffled and enraged
Gray, on his employer-provided health insurance, needed a US doctor for a checkup. A colleague recommended a doctor’s office housed in “a really grand building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Full floor, incredible views – it looked like a movie version of a New York doctor’s,” he says. “It was just about the friendliest, fanciest place I’d ever been.”
A chatty, relaxed doctor and a glamorous receptionist greeted him on that visit. Though the office was devoted to plastic surgery – the shelves replete with cosmetics, glossy leaflets about Botox treatments and dermal fillers – they treated Gray.
A year later, the reception he received was quite literally chilly. Gray, suffering from a chest infection, cold, exhausted and weak, headed out in a snowstorm and stumbled along to the same doctor’s office.
When he handed over his insurance card, the receptionist’s dazzling smile faded. His employer had changed healthcare providers without Gray’s knowing it. “Sliding the new card back across the desk, she said ‘this is not insurance we accept.’ She turned away. Sixty seconds later I was back out in the snow, bent over double coughing,” Gray says.
Read more: Exposure to US healthcare system leaves British expats appalled, baffled and enraged
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