Yes, you're a snob. Good for you that you can have the ability to go anywhere you deem fit for treatment or can get the $70K car and take off a day of work when needed, but you're completely ignore people's resources available to them - not limited to money as the only resource - and say that if they don't make the same choices as you, then you're not taking it seriously. Some people can't take a six-hour ride to visit a doctor, either they don't have access to a vehicle, their condition may prevent them from driving altogether, or they can't miss time away from work - farmers in NoDak have their very sense of being tied very closely to those farms and the abandon them in the middle of September might as well be like demanding you to give up your religion. A six-hour ride to the doctor is at least thirteen hours of commitment in one day, more likely sixteen to seventeen hours once you factor in meal times, waiting for the physicians, prep time in getting ready for a long-distance visit to a doctor, pure exhaustion from the stress of it all, and other factors. Chances are for a visit to a place like Mayo, people are not making that trip alone.
Adding the money factor into it, chances are better than not that a clinic six hours away from where you live is not covered as part of your insurance plan. That makes things very expensive for the Average Joe on the street, including a great many of those who live in places like North Minneapolis.
But of course, none of that matters. If it were serious, they'd make the trip to Mayo.
Also, all those inferior doctors my mother visited (three of them independently) who were not working at Mayo in Rochester diagnosed her with Alzheimer's back in 2004. We decided to make the trip down to Mayo, which required of her multiple follow up visits to see a panel of doctors, which in turn required time from her family that we happily gave, though not everyone has such resources available to them. Mayo diagnosed her as simply being too stressed out and that was leading to her memory issues. Odd thing is that when she was in the process of passing away over the next nine years, absolutely everything she experienced met every exact and gruesome detail as provided by the resources I read for Alzheimer's patients. The vaunted panel of Mayo doctors got it wrong. There's my anecdote compared to yours. Mayo is not infallible.
