Technology is supposed to simplify things. Simplify and speed up. I was all for that when I moved back to the U.S., because making a medical appointment in Italy often felt like an exercise in molasses-grade futility. For some requests you had to call between 11:00 am and 12:45 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, except if there was a holiday the days might be Wednesday and Friday. Not at all in August of course.
By the time I left two years ago, some appointments could be made online. That was a huge time saver and it also lowered the risk of misunderstanding. When it worked.
INPS, the Italian equivalent of Social Security, had an online presence but our questions felt more complicated in the Italian language. We preferred to thrash them out by phone, but that was useless because no one seemed to answer. Fortunately, we lived in a place where INPS had an actual office. Before the pandemic, you could go there and put your questions to a real live person who — sometimes — was well-informed. The obstacle there was actually getting to the front of the line before the office closed for the day. You were gambling with your time when you chose that path. You know: Tik-tok. Tik-tok. The Peter Pan crocodile smiling at you from behind the empty counter.
A similar gamble had to be calculated when you wanted to see your medico di base, your…
