[landedgentry]

It's death by a thousand paper cuts. A lot of things simply cannot be depended on to work in the U.S., and you have to spend a lot of time chasing them down.

More examples: budgeting flexible spending accounts, choosing health insurance annually, finding doctors in your network (and checking again and again, with multiple sources), hotels losing your reservation, airlines overbooking flights, mail and deliveries disappearing, people promising and not returning calls, etc.

[FirmwareBurner]

> finding doctors in your network (and checking again and again, with multiple sources)

I have a similar problem in Europe too. Most of the good public state-insurance doctors are overbooked and my option is to keep calling every doctor on a 50km radius continuously, hoping to find a free specialist with an appointment, or pay up privately out of my already small paycheck for a spot at a private doctor.

>hotels losing your reservation, airlines overbooking flights, mail and deliveries disappearing, people promising and not returning calls, etc.

That doesn't sound like anything US specific but more like a collection of things from the "shit happens" category. Same things can happen in Europe too, and some have happened to me.

I think you imagine the grass must be always greener elsewhere. It's not. Every place has its own set of perks and problems.

[landedgentry]

I should've been clearer about the doctors. Whether a doctor is part of your insurance network can change unexpectedly when the contract/relationship between your doctor and the insurance company changes, even if you yourself don't change insurance. And this happens relatively often (annually and sometimes more). So you can get a surprising bill if you go back to the same doctor.

The databases that maintain this information are not always accurate or up-to-date. So the doctor might say one thing, the insurance company another, and both be wrong in subtle ways. Nobody knows what's going on. It's often a crapshoot what you'll owe after a simple doctor's visit, even if you've asked all the right questions and stick with the same doctors.

[dudul]

I fail to see how a lot of these things are US specific with maybe the exception of annual enrollment.