[sprucely]

Kaiser is great for critical care and general practitioner stuff. But they do most of their cost-cutting in specialty care; the stuff that is rare or tends to not be easily diagnosed while having a major impact on patients' quality of life. Just lookup lawsuits and Kaiser mental health.

[smsm42]

Same experience here: routine care is ok, emergency care is great, hospital also pretty good, but trying to get them to refer you to proper specialist and figure out what's wrong when you yourself don't know it (e.g. not a cold or broken leg when it's obvious but kinds of conditions where you may need to ask several specialists to figure it out) is a long uphill battle and they are very reluctant to cooperate. It's a bureaucracy which likes doing what they know and hates complex cases and exceptions.

[henryfjordan]

There is an art to navigating specialist care at Kaiser for sure. Personally I don't think you are likely to have a significantly worse experience at Kaiser than you would with the average Dr, but you will also never have the _best_ experience. You do have to know when to be pushy and when to demand a different specialist.

That said, a lot of the reason the specialists costs are lower at Kaiser than other offices is because they don't all have their own little office and staff. Many specialists in the US are expensive because they have to have a secretary and an accountant, etc. At Kaiser they are just part of the system, so the costs look a lot lower.

[chillacy]

I get the general feeling that KP tends to under-prescribe care, but other doctors definitely over-prescribe care. That's what the financial incentives are for each anyways.

[borkt]

Also terrible with mental health from what I hear.