This Country's Medical Insurance Systems Suck

I don't really know how things work when it comes to ordering expensive MRIs and other procedures, other than the fact that patients need to obtain pre-authorization...Well, according to one of Dr. Grumpy, (sorry, was unable to find the specific post), it sucks.  I'm pretty sure dealing with insurance companies from any side of the fence - provider or patient-side - sucks.  It's worse than talking to an outsourced AT&T customer service representative to resolve an internet issue, because when all else fails and you complain enough, the company will finally send someone to your house to check it out.  

I'm sick of playing this 9-month-long phone tag between my old carrier and billing center to try and unsuccessfully resolve a claim regarding my pink-eye-scare-that-wasn't-pink-eye-but-could-have-been.  I feel like a mediator forced to try and resolve a conflict between two formerly-best-friends-but-now-rivals, when really I just want to deposit them on a deserted island to duke it out like the kids in Lord of the Flies.  Ideally they would annihilate one another, but I would accept an ending analogous to what happened to poor Piggy.  

I hate that things are so fragmented and inefficient.  An hour of phone-tag before work is not how I should be spending my free time (I could be studying!), and people definitely should NOT be paid to play 8 hours of phone tag at work.  It's worse than Facebook wall-tag between my friends and I when we try to plan our huge Christmas-season dinner:

Person #1:  How about Friday the 23rd?

Person #2:  Nope, my flight comes in morning of 24th :(

Person #4:  Ok, how about Saturday?

Person #3:  Nope, I have to help out at the restaurant :[

Person #1:  Ok, how about 26th for lunch?

#5:  Nope! All-day family party :[

#1: Uh ok, 27th? 

#6:  Oh!  Alan wants to come too, but he can't do 27th!

[collective groans]

There must be a better way of doing things.  I wonder if other nations have similar issues with inefficiency - it doesn't seem like it, but I only know what I've read from T.R. Reid's observations in his book, "Healing of America," but his outlook is that of an outsider's point of view.