Chirmoya: I have no insurance. Haven't had in years. So costs are important to me as well as quality.
Even though my income is below the "poverty line" declared by the U.S. Government, medicine as practiced in the DR (and cost) permits me to see 4-5 doctors before making a decision as to which I might use. That's something not "allowed" by governments or insurances elsewhere. It also permits me to get any test I want BEFORE seeing a doctor. Unlike most other states, test results in the DR belong to ME — and the people that administer the tests spend TIME with me to ensure that I understand the results.
Armed with hard data from the tests, a printed precis of my medical history, my status and requirements, I then see the doctors, telling each that I am the physician (ME), and THEY are my consultants. Can you imagine such a routine in the "advanced" countries? Costs shall above all prohibit it. Nonetheless, protocol and rules and regulations OUTLAW it in the "advanced" countries.
I always find at least two of the 4-5 doctors with whom I am happy to deal. I do the same with dentists.
Time? Instead of 40 minutes with staff and 5 minutes with the physician as you get elsewhere with your insurances and gummint 'help', in the DR — no bigger that most of the "advanced" countries' cities, I get up to an hour with each doctor.
Cost? While visiting the States in 2003, a $5 blood test, which I must have regularly, cost me $347. Also on the same trip, a sonogram for my wife cost over $800. We couldn't keep the results, nor were we briefed much on them. We repeated it in CRESA (Sgo.) when we got back for only $8 — and of course got to keep the results after an extensive lecture on them from the radiologist.
"Order de llegada" I'll leave aside. Not only can it be swifter here than the demand-driven wait times of the "advanced" countries, but it also depends heavily on the persuasion skills of the care-seeker. I wheedle well.
I could go on with anecdotal evidence from Sweden, UK, France, the U.S. and several Asian countries where I lived with my children, but it is after all anecdotal, and subject to pooh-poohing by anyone. Suffice it to say that if one can find good docs and good clinics here, and if, as I have experienced, they are available for 1% to 25% of the cost of the same elsewhere (not counting travel and living expenses) — well then, I'll take the DR, thank you.