I finally got through to a human at a doctors office who said they are taking new primary care patients and that they would call me back when they're able to make an appointment
They didn't say anything about how long the wait would be but that's progress I guess
I recognize that a lot of the complexity in these systems just has to be there in order to try to meet everyone's needs, but it's hard not to feel like there are barriers preventing people from getting help which wouldn't be there if we put more resources into it
They called me back and said I needed to call another office to give them my insurance card number which I did (required being on hold for 20 minutes to give someone 1 sentence of information); and that I needed to then call them back to tell them I was in the system and ready to schedule an appointment - which I did, then got hold for half an hour, and then kicked to voicemail, maybe because the office closed? It was 45 minutes before they said the office closes tho... I tried again 15 minutes later and it didn't even put me on hold but just went straight to voicemail
So I'm probably close to getting my shit figured out, but not quite.
the thing I'm stuck on is like. Imagine if I didn't have a job that doesn't care if I'm just tuned out of work because I'm making phone calls to doctors offices for like half the day during work hours... If I feel like this system is hard to navigate, there are so many people who probably need help who just straight up cannot access it