That is no less common with private insurance: It is the nature of bureaucracy, not government, which is not the same thing (at all.) I got my first gray hair during the two months I spent fighting with my employers insurance carrier over whether or not an ER doctors discharge order stating, "Cannot return to work for at least a week," constituted a doctor taking me off work. Had I lost, I would have had thousands of dollars in medical bills, unemployed and in debt to said employer for medical leave pay they authorized on the expectation the insurer would approve it.

I spoke to my claims adjuster all of ONCE during that period: When I got home after my first day back at work and she called to say they rejected my claim because "you were never taken of work." I talked to a number of people after that, including sympathetic but impotent customer service reps, the customer service supervisor and, eventually, even the claims adjustment supervisor who finally acknowledged by doctors discharge order meant what it said. But I never spoke to with that claims adjuster again: Not when I left voice mail, not when I exercised the call back option, not even when (per the CS supervisors instruction) I exercised the option of a "mandatory" call back I was faithfully assured MUST be made within 48 hours of my request: That was in 2010, but I am still waiting for that "mandatory" call back.

I am just VERY glad that when they made the initial call to collect information about the claim I filed, and the CS rep on the phone asked who was my attending physician, I insisted on listing both the ER doctor AND the orthopedist to whom he referred me, even though the CS rep was "certain" they only wanted the latter: Because had I NOT included both, they would have had no record of the ER doctors discharge order forbidding my return to work for at least a week. Which would mean I would have been fired (and possibly prosecuted) for insurance fraud, as well as obligated to pay the full uninsured cost of my medical bills along with repaying a months wages to my former employer.

Any system where dozens or hundreds of people are responsible for millions or tens of millions must inevitably have bureaucracy. The difference between public and private health insurance is that the second is motivated by profit, not service, and allows beneficiaries little recourse against abuse (certainly not on the level of a congressional investigation.) In that regard, my own case was similar to that of my father when he had a cancerous lung removed: We could not even file a formal complaint, much less suit, because WE were not the insurers clients, our EMPLOYERS were.

I believe you meant to say "and people with money here have it pretty good." I cannot count how many of my relatives have died because even the most basic forms of our "really good healthcare" was simply beyond their means. My mothers grandfather, for example, died of an aneurysm because he could not afford the anti-coagulant a doctor prescribed him and Medicaid was not signed into law until two years later.

That is not to say I am insensitive to the plight of your girlfriends father, only to note that he has not one but (at least) TWO healthcare options: His native public one and those he can afford to travel to another country to obtain. That is a far sight better than no option at all, though it mainly reinforces my support for a hybrid system with universal public health insurance alongside private health insurance that offers far more bells and whistles for correspondingly more money.