I have employer provided health insurance. I'm an immigrant from India and routinely postpone non urgent care to my annual trips there. One does need pointers to good clinics. I get great care at low cost. With none of the bureaucracy and arrogance I see in my adopted country unfortunately. When I get my additional blood tests, I never have the blue bruise that I usually get here at Quest or LabCorp. This year I'm going to get a wisdom tooth extracted. My amazing family doctor answers questions on Whatsapp for a very nominal fee.
Healthcare in the United States is broken. Avaricious profit mentality from all the players broke it. We need to vote for leaders who are not on the payroll of these players, to fix this very serious problem. I don't have much hope. Even educated people as on HN keep quoting the same tired capitalist propaganda.
cash generally. there is insurance, and i’m sure many folks use it, but for most things it’s not worth the paperwork. total end-to-end cost for most things is less than what someone in the US would pay for a co-pay for the first appointment to even consider being treated.
most indian gov’t healthcare is horrendous and severely broken
(vastly oversubscribed and underfunded), but private is very effective and quite affordable. there are some parts of gov’t healthcare that work okay (vaccinations).
"The rest of the world just shakes its head at the US healthcare system."
Perhaps on the cost, but the US has the best doctors in the world. If I need major surgery, I know I can get it in a reasonable amount of time. In many other countries in Europe or even Canada, the government gets to decide if I need to get it or not and the wait time could be in years.
Everyone says the elderly in the US will go broke after a single major surgery. My dad is on Medicare with a low-cost supplemental insurance. He's been in multiple hospitals for the last 6 months and short-term care for the last 6 weeks.
He was treated for sepsis twice and got a pacemaker installed (this doesn't include drugs, meals, everything else that comes with his stay). His cost out of pocket? $0.
My elderly relatives have to wait many months to get surgery in Canada. The UK also has a failing healthcare system. The issue is that in times of economic downturns, socialized medicine gets cut.
I don't think I've seen a single example of socialized medicine that doesn't end up with long wait times for major surgeries or the government making health decisions for you.
A better system would be to have no insurance on procedures that are extremely common (where the free market can reduce the costs, like Lasik eye surgery) and only have insurance on ones that aren't so common and won't benefit from the competition.
> If I need major surgery, I know I can get it in a reasonable amount of time
Do you have much experience with this major surgery in a reasonable amount of time, or are you just taking it on faith? Because my experience is the US system has the exact same "government gets to decide if I need to get it or not and the wait time could be in years" and "government making health decisions for you" - only that government is made up of private corpos and isn't even nominally democratically accountable. My experience with the US system is that each step of a process gets booked 2-6 months out, and any kind of major surgery will require many steps of referrals - testing/imaging, follow ups, first line treatments that need to be tried, etc. So time can most certainly add up to years from first could-have-been-diagnosed until actual treatment.
And excuse me for getting personal, but have you been in the hospital with your dad advocating for him? Or at least through the phone? Because my experience doing that for multiple family members has made me see the system's failings in galling detail, to the point that I would never write a comment saying our healthcare system is effective. And FWIW, "sepsis twice" seems like a possible red flag that his care isn't as good as you might think it is
Wait times for healthcare are insane in the states, getting gall stones broken up with ultrasound (lithotripsy) is something that is booking 9 months out in the Pacific Northwest.
Need a CPAP? The mandatory sleep studys slots for 6 months from now are all full, and calling the programs 3 to 7 hours drive away to see if you can get a slot there is the same deal.
At one point I had to call over 50 different medical practices looking for any doctor that could see my partner in a cast from a broken bone. So many lied about having multiple Orthopedic specialists on staff, and the few I found were booking months out. After a month I got lucky finding an appointment free due to a cancellation, but we had the best healthcare possible at the time and full coverage to see nearly all of the Orthopedic specialists licensed in my state.
US Healthcare is a bad joke and only those with the energy to hustle and fight for their healthcare stand a chance of having a reasonable quality of life if you have anything not immediately treatable in urgent care or an ER.
All of the Primary Care Physicians are booked out 5+ months for one of our HMOs, but at least you won't get 5 different bills mailed to you from LabCorp and others for $1 to $5 each months after a blood test with no way to track or pay them online.
> Everyone says the elderly in the US will go broke after a single major surgery. My dad is on Medicare with a low-cost supplemental insurance. He's been in multiple hospitals for the last 6 months and short-term care for the last 6 weeks.
> I don't think I've seen a single example of socialized medicine that doesn't end up with long wait times for major surgeries or the government making health decisions for you.
Do you love socialized medicine or not? I can't tell.
> I don't think I've seen a single example of socialized medicine that doesn't end up with long wait times for major surgeries or the government making health decisions for you
Your own dad just had one?
> My dad is on Medicare … [and had a good + cheap health outcome]
> Perhaps on the cost, but the US has the best doctors in the world. If I need major surgery, I know I can get it in a reasonable amount of time. In many other countries in Europe or even Canada, the government gets to decide if I need to get it or not and the wait time could be in years.
With unbounded money, perhaps.
For the average person, the difference in life expectancy suggests perhaps not.
> Everyone says the elderly in the US will go broke after a single major surgery. My dad is on Medicare with a low-cost supplemental insurance. He's been in multiple hospitals for the last 6 months and short-term care for the last 6 weeks.
The elderly? Medicare in particular (I had to look it up) is for over 65s and a few other groups, not everyone.
> My elderly relatives have to wait many months to get surgery in Canada. The UK also has a failing healthcare system. The issue is that in times of economic downturns, socialized medicine gets cut.
The USA's government-funded healthcare costs more per capita than the NHS, despite only being for a subset of the population, supplemented by private insurance, and getting worse outcomes.
> I don't think I've seen a single example of socialized medicine that doesn't end up with long wait times for major surgeries or the government making health decisions for you.
"Under capitalism, man oppresses man. Under socialism, it's just the opposite." - old Soviet quote.
In the matter of "making health decisions for you", all you do is replace governments with corporations, hence what was carved onto the bullets that killed the CEO of United Health.
Yes, it seems the older generation of Americans have good social nets for Healthcare. That may be soon disappearing though. And the younger generation doesn't have that, and likely can't expect to when they are older. Just private, outrageous insurance that can be denied for any reason despite the immense premiums and doctors judgment. Healthcare In America, IS broken.
This is a facile approach to making an argument against US Healthcare--far too simplistic, imho. There are plenty of nations with socialism/communism where healthcare is either non-existent or impossible to get because of rationing. So it's not like that's some terribly invalid argument. Further, even with the more "civilized" Western nations, the cracks in those socialized systems are showing--the UK, Canada, and others. Finally, the countries with the allegedly great healthcare are pretty small compared to the USA. I can't speak for India, of course, but I kind of think that a nation that lacks flush toilets for a large percentage of its population would also be suspect in terms of broad applicability around what was stated. In simpler terms: If you're wealthy, you can get great healthcare almost anywhere. The US has its lumps, but there is no waiting for necessary treatments and while insurance is expensive, so is healthcare.
I guess I'm also happy that our government doesn't run it because just regulating it as much as has been done has led to what we experience today. Is greedy profiteering built in to the system? Undoubtably. But there are serious risks to reforming such a complex system.
I can say as someone who moved from Texas to Western Europe almost 3 years ago, the health insurance situation is certainly an upgrade in many regards. The monthly premium is reasonable and the yearly out of pocket max is also reasonable if you have a good salary. I also have the option to pay the annual deductible as a part of my monthly premium so all care is “free” for the year. If you live on a fixed income or have a chronic condition, I can see how that would be a plus.
My only complaint would have to be the insistence that everything can be solved with a couple of aspirin and bed rest. While they’re probably right on the whole, nothing feels worse than finally mustering up the energy to make the appointment and travel to the office only to be told to go back home and do nothing. I came to the office specifically because I tried the home remedies and they didn’t seem to be working! I’ve also heard stories from others about twisting an ankle and being told the same thing. No xray or sonogram to double check, just “go home and relax”. I see quite a few people walking around with a limp which is probably just some form of bias on my part, but I can’t help but wonder how many people were let down by the system because a GP somewhere decided it wasn’t worth putting more resources into unless you follow their playbook first to a T. IMO it goes to show how systems can work for general populations but often fall apart when applied to individuals.
Healthcare in the United States is broken. Avaricious profit mentality from all the players broke it. We need to vote for leaders who are not on the payroll of these players, to fix this very serious problem. I don't have much hope. Even educated people as on HN keep quoting the same tired capitalist propaganda.