Private healthcare is how. It’s a system the prioritizes profits for investors over care for patients. It influences every recomendation. It’s why doctors prescribe what’s advertised in their offices. Never forget that a doctor is a business and what’s best for you isn’t what’s best for their bottom line. You go to them in vulnerable state and they seize that opportunity.

I'm reluctant to share this as it's going to be of no practical use to OP but I also fell off my bike and broke my collarbone, this was back in April.

My front tyre was under inflated and I took a downhill left hand corner on a bike path too quickly. The front wheel slid out and I hit the concrete hard on my left elbow. I rode home in a lot of pain, took a shower, decided it was serious and got a friend to drive me to the ER at the local hospital. I live in Melbourne, Australia.

It was around midday on a Wednesday and the ER was quiet, I saw the admissions nurse, and had to wait about an hour to get an X-ray and was given painkillers. I'd broken my clavicle in 2 places. I spoke to an orthopedic surgeon who said while the bone would eventually heal on its own he strongly recommend surgery as the outcome probabilities were greater and the recovery times were less that way. There was a chance I could be fit in the next day and I was admitted to a ward overnight.

They gave me some dinner but after that I wasn't allowed any food in case the surgery was going ahead. The next day I had a couple visitors and at 3pm I was confirmed for surgery just before 5pm. I was given a general anesthetic and woke up in a recovery ward. I stayed overnight and ate some sandwiches.

The next day I was told I could go home in the afternoon and my brother came and picked me up.

I wasn't allowed to lift anything heavier than a cup of tea for 4 weeks then had appointments with a physiotherapist every few weeks for 3 months or so. I've gone got a brand new scar and a piece of aluminum screwed into my left collarbone. It looks a bit funny.

The whole experience was pretty shit. I was in-between jobs at the time and it was about 4 months before I was able to get working again. I'm a chef. I lived off savings.

The medical care side of things tho just wasn't an issue. When I left the hospital I paid about $30 for some paracetamol and a small amount of oxycodone for the pain.

Like I said I know this story won't help, and I'm sorry you're going through a tough time, but as a fellow bike crash collarbone breaker I thought I'd share.

I want to take a slightly different track than talking about how awful the US healthcare system system is (and I can and do rant at length about it since I’m a former healthcare worker). One rare but significant outcome of fractures is that because bone shards are really sharp, they can sometimes nick or sever your veins or arteries. Part of keeping you “under observation” was to make sure you were in a place to get care at the speed you would need in the case this happened to you. Doctors (especially EM doctors) are trained to consider the worst case possible outcome and mitigate that.

Push through it, you are a capable human being. You got this.

The US spends most of their budget on healthcare, significantly more than defense. We spend this much to get the worse healthcare out of all the developed countries.