As a result of the vast sums of money that people in the good old US of A have to pay for health insurance, they do have more choice in terms of who treats them and what they are treated with. The fallout from that is that all the companies in question advertise to you to add to their doubtless overflowing coffers. At first it was a bit of a novelty getting letters from local quacks along the lines of “please come to this surgery – we’re really nice and we won’t hurt you – honest guv”. That’s in sharp contrast for all the cunning ploys their British counterparts undertake to stop all of us whining hypochondriacs from actually going to see them (only accepting requests for appointments between 4 and 5am on every third Tuesday etc) – you know the score…
What caused the novelty to rather rapidly wear off is all the print and particularly TV advertising. Not just the hospitals, but the drug firms too – peddling anything from cures for hay-fever, to heart medication, to kits for diabetics. Actually it is worse than that – any unpleasant problem your undercarriage can contract apparently has a drug to help alleviate the symptoms; a drug which needs to be brought to your attention with some quite graphic adverts *shudder*. The element of these that is both hilarious and alarming is the disclaimer that these ads have to carry – effectively all the small print, only spoken at triple speed. Regardless of the original problem, one of the possible side effects always seems to be death, invariably alongside a long list of other possible symptoms, all significantly worse than the original problem.
Related to this is the “results not typical”that flashes up in tiny print on any ads for diet products. Ie not in your dreams fatsos, but we’ll just show this girl in a bikini some more so you can continute to hope.
I guess the one saving grace in all this is that they ARE still advertising (typically 2 pages of small print following every one page of smiling happy, cured people) – which keeps the magazines alive.
I just dread the day when a quack asks what I’d like to take – urgh – that’s what THEY went to medical school for.