I was not fully disabled at the time I was assessed for dialysis.
I probably should be, now.
Not 65.
Have private insurance. And a long term medical trust account from my Daddy that I’ll dip into if it becomes necessary.
I tell Ivy all the time she’ll probably get it all.
But, yeah. I realize healthcare is not optimal in the US..especially for poor.
Historically, the poorest and sickest, most marginal have always suffered more.
What @Hari_Seldon is experiencing is just not right, in Canada of all places.
I keep hearing horror stories coming out of Quebec, and it’s unfortunate but it’s not typical of health care in the rest of Canada. Some of it is undoubtedly due to budget constraints, and the French language situation including draconian laws may discourage many doctors from going there. The Quebec government also seems to have a penchant for excessive bureaucracy – the part I quoted, for instance, is totally absurd and unheard of anywhere else. There’s no reason for it whatsoever.
It happens, but it’s rare, and I think the reasons for it are often misunderstood and then used by American conservatives as an argument against UHC. One thing that our health care system does really well in my experience is triage. If you have an urgent need, it’s handled urgently in the vast, vast majority of cases. Every once in a while somebody drops the ball because humans aren’t perfect, but it’s very rare. I have first-hand experience with people getting rapid access to procedures like orthopedics that, according to common wisdom, historically have long wait times.
One of the reasons people may choose to travel to the US for treatment is to go to one of the world-class specialty facilities that @Tibby mentioned. In some specific circumstances and depending on province, it may even be possible to get some or even all of it covered by your home province health plan. Another reason might be that a wealthy person just doesn’t feel like being wait-listed for non-urgent treatment. In any case, it’s not something that happens often and I don’t regard it as indicative of anything.
The difference is that in the United States health care is seen as a profit-generating business rather than a public service. That means Americans pay more for an equivalent amount of health care than people are paying in other countries.
That’s true, but it should be qualified by saying that payment for health care services is organized as a profit-generating business. There are other ways to provide health care funding, of which single payer is just one model. Another is very tightly regulated non-profits. The American model of relatively unregulated private insurance run as a business is by far the worst and the most costly while being the least productive. In fact it has negative value, because it effectively acts as a gatekeeper that may limit your treatment options and interfere with your doctor’s clinical autonomy while making you pay for that “privilege”.
Ever how it’s paid for, its a privilege to have any great healthcare.
We are spoiled to fact there are ways to get treated, usually as needed. Maybe with some obstacles.
It’s a testament to modern science, so much can be done to restore health or at least maintain. For so many.
Someone like our OP being so surprised it was a decent experience worries me. She was basically homeless last year.
Or Hari having so much trouble getting doctors. If I understand the backstory on his story, this is a long standing situation. And he has people in the medical community. His daughter-in-law?
So, nothing is perfect. But we already knew that. Right @Czarcasm?
@Beckdawrek, where did you get the idea I was ‘surprised’ by the quality and level of care I received? For most of my life, Medicare has provided me and my family with (for the most part, not always ‘perfect’) excellent medical treatment…it doesn’t surprise me. What surprises me is that the US still doesn’t do UHC, unlike the vast majority of the western world nowadays.
And secondly, yes, I was homeless last year. What does that have to do with my OP here? Is that some sort of sly dig, that homeless people shouldn’t have access to first class treatment?
I figured you were surprised because you offered such a glowing and detailed opening post.
If your used to this, why?
What is it with you?
I didn’t mean anything ugly.
I’m a bunch of things but sly ain’t one of them.
In fact I’ve said it many times the poor and disadvantaged and yes homeless deserve more care than they get anywhere. Even in good old Aussie land. I reread your thread about homelessness. Maybe you should look again about your complaints of your medical situation.
Why is it you went overseas for dental work, again?
But this is not good.
And it sort of contradicts the first quote.
How many patients are in your private hospital and how many are in the dreaded state hospital? And which hospital deserves endorsement?
As for the topic in the thread title ("health care, Country X Style):
–there is a good way to compare and judge health care systems in different countries..:
It is not by measuring medical statistics of country X vs country Y (how many MRI machines, how many premature babies are saved, how long the wait time is for surgery, etc)
The best statistic is measured in minutes: How many minutes of conversation people spend per year in worried and desperate discussions about whether they can afford health coverage, and how they will get access to it.
I live in a country with universal coverage. I have family in America.
Dinner conversation is wildly different in the two locations..
Over here, if somebody is in the hospital, we simply don’t have anything to discuss, except the welfare of the patient. In America, the conversation starts and ends with money and insurance problems, with a brief interlude to ask about the welfare of the patient.
.
I tore my achilles tendons, on separate occasions, once I had insurance through a major college, once I had no insurance, since I had just started at a new job. I got surgery when I had insurance, not when I didn’t. My calfs don’t match, the one with surgery got back to almost 100%, the other one is at around 70%. And I still owe money for the one that didn’t get surgery from MRIs etc, some 15 years later. An MRI and other tests with no insurance runs around $15000, or it did back then.
If you don’t have good insurance in the US you are screwed.
I assure you my conversation about “my” medical needs do not start and end with money issues.
I totally believe medical care for all humans is a human right that should “be”.
In 2025.
There different ways to get there. Universal health care sounds great. On the surface. But as we see in this very thread it’s not perfect.
I’m not sure Americans will sit still for the assignments of Doctors and the long long delays. I think that can be mitigated.
I’ll leave those decisions to people way smarter than me.
I’m not sure what you meant by my “contradiction”. You’ll have to elaborate.
My endorsement is just that, somehow I’m alive.
Alive! The other way is not where I wanna go. Today. I might change my mind another day.
I actually skipped the line for an MRI in Canada by going to the US - it’s a 2 hour drive me - for my frozen shoulder. USD$450 for an uninsured non-emergency MRI with a next day appointment.
Who pays for them in single-payer countries? The answer is the same, we all do - but in the other countries the private health insurance companies aren’t taking a huge cut.
Me, well partially. I’m glad for you that your insurance pays for all your stuff, but you can’t say that the US medical situation is tenable. I just had my first PCP visit in 20 years because I couldn’t afford insurance. And I was running a small company, making on the order of 200k/year. I should re-phrase that–gross, not net. The company, not me. Had I been paying for med insurance I couldn’t have made rent for the company.
