Amazing healthcare access.

I'm astounded at how much better my healthcare access is where I live now.

Like, I realized this fall that I had a strange mole on my back, and right away I could get a GP appointment, then the referral to the dermatologist was prompt and smooth, and then the news about slight abnormalities in the biopsy came back in a week, and then I was able to get another follow-up appointment for removal within another two weeks.

Like, that's insanely easy and efficient.

If I was still in the city that I used to live in, I'd have to locate my new GP that year (networks change so much!), then try to figure out a dermatologist from the bad and narrow listings, and then maybe have to travel for over an hour-and-a-half to get there, and who knows when I'd even be able to get an appointment anyways, and then by the time you have a follow-up appointment, you might be in the next calendar year and you'd have to find a new provider etc. and ensure carry-over of paperwork and care.

Like, one of my healthcare providers this year scanned through my medical records, and he was like, "Yep, that's a lot of different providers."

It's just astounding to me how basic ACA insurance has lost basic functionality in so many major metropolitans (or so I've read, and saw with my own eyes in one). Like, the networks are so narrow and fly-by-night, that the sheer onerousness of it all discourages basic care.

I don't know if it's the smaller size of the place that I live in or the tight insurer-hospital network relationship like they have in some places, but if it's that or if it's something else entirely, whatever it is, I'm thankful, because now my basic ACA insurance is back to like how good it was when it debuted, and maybe actually it's even a slight hair better than that, believe it or not.