Grew up with UHC, now am in the US. I’d take UHC any day. The hassle of dealing with insurance if you’re not covered by an employer, and or switch employers, and knowing that the decisions about what should and shouldn’t be covered is determined by companies operating on the “the chief concern should always be the profit for our stock holders” principle is a lot worse than any issues in the UHC I left.
Which UHC system did you experience, and what happened?
I was covered by NHS in the UK for about a year, and I just had a couple minor things to take care of. It was just so easy! One of the things was a Hepatitis vaccination (forget which one) which you take the first shot, then you need to return several months later for the second.
I had the first shot in London and it took but calling the Institute of Tropical Diseases and Hygine (or something like that) and I was in the next week. Maybe I paid five pounds for the visit?
Then for my followup shot, it took me a month to navigate through the right channels in my HMO. Then I got an unexpected bill for like $200.
And man, when I’ve had important doctor visits here in the US since then, what a nightmare! Imagine getting a medical bill for $15,000, and calling your doctor’s office about it. They tell you it’s a mistake and to ignore it. Then getting another bill for $15,000 a month later, calling again… lather, rinse, repeat, it took like six months for that to get cleared up. I feared for my credit rating, thankfully it only took about 35 hours of being on hold spaced over half a year to get it cleared up that I didn’t owe my doctor a used car for no particular reason.
My daughter has bronchitis. She started wheezing in the night, I took her back n this morning.
There is a $5 co-pay for kids for the doc and the meditation. Little waiting time and we were out of there.
It’s not a perfect system, but it’s not bad.
My mother is in her 80s and needs to see various specialists. Her waiting time to get an appointment is at least as long as I’ve ever had to wait.
This is a really important point.
What’s the old saying, the perfect is the enemy of the good? NO system will ever be perfect. Health care will always be rationed. You can ration it with a UHC system, a single player insurance system, a you-get-health-care-if-you’re-rich system, or a hybrid, but there is no such thing as a free lunch, and interactions with a health care system are inherently
- Unpleasant, and
- Never quite as good as you could imagine them to be.
What matters is coming up with something that is generally pretty good.
I should perhaps clarify that you’re referring to an MRI facility physically located within a hospital, as most of them are, not to the experience of an in-hospital patient. For patients actually admitted to a hospital, there are of course no wait times for diagnostic imaging, whether urgent or not, and little or no wait times for urgent outpatient cases.
Exactly. Funny how the anti-UHC rants on Fox News always forget to mention those facts.
More enlightenment from Fox News. Another thing I learned from Fox News – I think it was from conservative health critic and noted lunatic Betsy McCaughey – is that over in the UK, the NHS will refuse treatment for macular degeneration until you have gone completely blind in one eye. And don’t forget the death panels they have in all UHC systems. Health care is a rough business, it seems, everywhere in the world outside the US of A. :rolleyes:
You should count yourself lucky you have two eyes to roll!
With a single payer system, the costs are effectively lowered for many people because the fees for given procedures are fixed. This means that the providers take a hit, but the users benefit.
When my father had cancer (and subsequently died from it), dealing with the insurance company was an absolute nightmare. It was a reputable company, but everything had to be resubmitted, questioned, billed and rebilled.
I don’t know how they decide things here, but there is so much less hassle.
There are things which aren’t covered which probably would be if you had good coverage in the States. There are typically three to six in a room for hospitalization, but you can pay more for semiprivate or private rooms.
I have high PSA numbers and MRIs are not covered, although biopsies are.
Compared to the best coverage in the US, it’s undoubtedly not the same but a far higher percentage of people are covered.
As an child / adolescent I suffered a form of sporadic tachycardia that required often going to hospital. Never had any issue with quickly receiving the treatment I needed. Finally I received an operation to correct the condition, which had about a 4 month waiting time – but bear in mind it was an elective surgery.
All free of charge. Which is great because my parent would not have been able to afford the treatments when I was young.
Are there Americans that really think other countries envy the US system?
A lot of Americans believe that they have the best medical care in the world. And the best school system. And the best universities.
A lot of foreigners do believe that, in fact, never having examined anything but what they hear in movies; often, those who think about “what part of this movie I’m watching is real and what is fake” will automatically discard parts which are real but unthinkable to someone under UHC (eg. having to pay for a transplant). A few times that the issue has come up I’ve asked people why they thought this or that university is so good: because they’ve heard the name in movies. So, Deusto, Compluto or Salamanca aren’t good, since they don’t get mentioned in movies? You could make a little video of them at that moment and use it to illustrate the meaning of “squirm”.
In the end it’s all about marketing and about what’s acceptable in different cultures regarding, in this case, mentioning specific names in order to provide specific background. Where a Spanish movie might be set at “the university” (which is never mentioned, although anybody who’s been there can recognize the campus of Autónoma de Madrid), or someone might be said to “have a masters from one of those fancy places”, an American one would use actual names. This works both to frame the character and to provide free marketing to those centers being mentioned as prestigious ones.
For the sake of pedantic completeness, the recommended treatment guidelines are easily available, in this case
No surprise that there’s nothing there along the lines suggested, though, if I’m understanding the guidelines properly, it’s possible that there’s anecdata that someone might have had degeneration in one eye for which no treatment would have helped, and no symptoms in the other eye that would have justified treatment. Without a quoted source from this lady I’ll have to assume her claim is, to put it as scientifically as I can, bollocks.
This is a fairly good paperon the realities behind the myth of Canadian use of US healthcare. I’d like to add that it would be strange if Canadians used US healthcare much. The out of pocket costs are much, much higher than any other developed nation, and the hospital error rates and results tend to be worse. Mainly, you’d go to the US if you needed a specialist in a rare condition, because smaller nations often don’t have the number of patients to maintain specialist training on the rarer things. Outside of that… you don’t go somewhere more expensive to purchase a worse product. Thats not how markets work.
Canadians who want to get out of pocket healthcare would do what 1-2 million Americans do every year and get it elsewhere.
Here is a bit on Americans using forged information to get free healthcare in Canada. It is old, and its a harder area to get numbers for. Because doing so is a crime, and most people try to conceal it (Sarah Palin excepted). But the people doing it tends to be desperate ordinary people, so no-one seems massively motivated to stop it or look at it too closely.
That’ll certainly be news to the two of my friends who suffered from that and got straight into Moorfields Eye Hospital within a day of diagnosis.
@Elbows - Seriously? People who don’t want to wait 16 weeks for an MRI are “people who feel entitled, by wealth or connection, to be served ahead of others.” Your ad hominum attacks are beneath you.
I can personally assure you that 4 years ago when my wife was told she had a possibly cancerous lump on her esophagus and we actually waited 16 weeks for an MRI at Princess Margret in Toronto, we were not entitled elitist queue jumpers. We’re a regular family who shit bricks and couldn’t sleep for 16 weeks wondering if she had cancer. No one should have to go through that. I’m very saddened your ideology makes you feel this is acceptable in 2019. My biggest regret is that I didn’t know there was a USA option then.
Your false dichotomy about there being only two options: single payer UHC or a US system is plain fear mongering. As noted by commentators who corrected me earlier - most countries have private overlays onto UHC. There are plenty of “best in class options” Canada can look to globally. To suggest we’re too dumb to figure them out or to implement them I find highly insulting. There are many brilliant and pragmatic Canadians. Please don’t denigrate us to being mindless US puppets just becuase we sleep next to the elephant.
So exactly what negative consequences were there to the wait? It was uncomfortable? Or were the Dr’s exactly right in their estimation that her case could wait? Seems like triage worked perfectly. Waiting is hard for everyone. Always. (I’ve waited for biopsy results myself!) In emerg you can understand that someone else’s case may be more pressing, but not otherwise?
More importantly, if you believe so strongly in the value of a paying for access option, if you so choose, why didn’t you? You could be on a plane and in Buffalo in under an hour to get that MRI, but you chose not to. Why is that? If you think it’s such a great idea and the waiting so unbearable?
Your own refusal to pay for it, in your own case, tells every Canadian how full of hot air proponents of a two tier system actually are. The Canadian system doesn’t need a second tier, it’s available right there across the border, at your disposal. And absolutely nothing is stopping you from opening your wallet and accessing it.
Maybe don’t be advocating to add a second layer to provide what’s clearly already available to you.
What province are you in?
When Bob had his seizure here, he went back to BC and talked to his PCP. PCP sent him to a neurologist, who he say within a couple of days.
Neurologist put him on a list for an MRI. By the time Bob got back to his apartment, he had already missed an possible appointment.
I hope my dripping sarcasm was obvious! Betsy McCaughey is a raving moron being paid by the health insurance industry to fearmonger about UHC. Fortunately, people like her are so stupid that most of their lies are transparently obvious and often downright comical. If someone believes that UHC in America will result in government agents coming to euthanize their grandmother, they’ve probably been listening to Betsy McCaughey. 