Other developed countries' public health facilities ration care based on medical need rather than ability to pay. There is always concierge medicine but it's no

Other developed countries' public health facilities ration care based on medical need rather than ability to pay. There is always concierge medicine but it's not nearly to the extent in the US. Rationing of care this way means fewer medical procedures on the whole. I've seen numbers to the effect that health outcomes are 30% genetic, 30% diet, 30% lifestyle, and 10% medical intervention. Frankly Americans don't need as many procedures done as they have done. Medical care is rationed everywhere and there is no way for supply to meet demand. The only question is how do you ration it. Turns out rationing by ability to pay leads to unnecessary procedures with no boost in outcomes. The hard part to accept is that the system that imposes a 3-6 month wait for non-life threatening treatments is better because some number of cases resolve themselves during that time period and reduce total demand. Overall medicine has limited tools to improve health compared to diet and exercise. We like to believe an intervention by someone else - surgical, pharmaceutical, etc. - can fix our problems, but that's not the case for many people. Medicine can really help with things such as pain management and trauma, but to an unsettling degree we rely on the body to heal itself.