> First of all, the idea of a “wait list” is terrible in and of itself. That’s called rationing. What do you want to do? There are only so many operating theat

> First of all, the idea of a “wait list” is terrible in and of itself. That’s called rationing. What do you want to do? There are only so many operating theaters, and only so many surgical teams, and demand is greater. So you have two options: - offer the procedure to whoever pays the most / has the best insurance / has good connections - prioritise patients based on how urgently they need the procedure I prefer the latter -- grandma had to wait a few months, but she got her new knee joint. She gets the same medical treatment as the president. You could pay extra to get a nicer room in the hospital, but you can't pay to get better medical care (At least in theory -- we have some amount of corruption just like everywhere else) Of course, it would be even nicer if nobody had to wait! I don't know what the situation in the US is like. Do hospitals in the US not need to "ration" certain procedures? Do they have enough capacity to treat everyone who needs a joint replacement without any waiting time? I've read that a lot of people in the US don't have good health insurance and can't afford the care they need. To me that sounds like rationing care based on who has the most money. Your other point, that most medical innovation originates from the US, sounds implausible to me. People from the US only hear about US achievements, so they think nobody else achieves anything. For example, take the wikipedia article on fetal surgery: It lists 3 hospitals in the US that perform fetal surgery, and 1 in Canada. So clearly the US is the world leader in fetal surgery! But then you look at the German wikipedia page, we see a list of 5 hospitals in Germany and 2 in the US. Obviously Germany is the world leader in fetal surgery! (Neither article bothers mentioning Austrian hospitals that perform fetal surgery)