4 ms·

I love it when Americans theorize and hypothesize acting like healthcare isn't a solved problem anywhere else in the world.

tommymachine 5y ago
You're right. No one dies anymore in the rest of the world.
least 5y ago
The American healthcare system is exceptionally bad when you compare it against the United States' relative wealth, for sure; the rest of the world hasn't solved healthcare, though. Even if you zoom in on the few countries most people are talking about when they say "the rest of the world," there's still a tons of issues present, a lot of which are directly a result of the system that they chose to utilize. This is an issue with a lot of nuance and I wish people wouldn't make such reductive statements like this.
- curiousgal 5y ago
  As long as those issues don't include people going broke because of a snake bite (and they don't) I'd say they pretty much did solve it.
  - least 5y ago
    I think that you're not looking closely enough at the underlying issues of these systems if your only metric is people don't go broke from a snake bite, or more broadly, they don't pay immediate upfront costs for their healthcare, even though a whole lot of these places do have upfront costs as well. The healthcare industry has a lot of working parts, all of which require scrutiny, even in these mythical places of which you aspire American healthcare to look like. There's genuinely negative outcomes as a result of the policy decisions everywhere, too.
  - refurb 5y ago
    When you can't get the latest cancer drugs because your gov't can't/won't pay for it, is it still solved?
    - altacc 5y ago
      This is somewhat of a straw man fallacy often cited by proponents of profit centric healthcare. In reality it happens relatively rarely and is usually linked to the effectiveness of that treatment. In the UK, a typical example of state provided healthcare, some extremely expensive treatments which can only increase life expectancy for a few weeks or months are not approved as there is little benefit. But not every health insurance policy in the US will cover this treatment, especially without some copay. On the other hand, a treatment was recently approved for use which costs £1.795 million per patient. The cost to the patient for that treatment is zero. I find this argument not only provably less relevant than the poster thinks is is, but also it's not much different from dying as you can't afford to pay even the copay for your cancer treatment. The USA can't even sort out decent healthcare for children, who haven't yet had the opportunity to get a job to pay for their healthcare. No healthcare system is perfect but that's not a reason to not seek something better, fairer and more efficient.
      - refurb 5y ago
        It's happens more often than you think. In single payer system, those therapies aren't even discussed with the patient since the physician knows if it's not paid for by the gov't it's effectively out of reach. Sure, the US system isn't perfect by any means, but one reason why it's so expensive is they throw everything plus the kitchen sink at patients. And this is even for Medicaid which covers the poorest Americans. Having lived in 4 different country with 4 different healthcare systems, if I got diagnosed with a serious cancer you can damn well be sure I'll get treated in the US. I have a friend who got diagnosed with breast cancer who did the same, moved back to the US and with ACA subsidies was getting the latest therapies with a monthly premium of $200. And the drugs she received weren't even paid for in her home country.
        altacc 5y ago
ozim 5y ago
Hold your horses. Problems of national health systems in other countries are not "globally" visible like insane bills for Americans. Just go and read up how many British people are nagging about NHS. I expect that there is shitload of corruption in health care in other countries as well but I don't read or speak German or French. In Poland I heard about case of a doctor that died from overwork, she just collapsed because she was working 3 shifts for a month or something. Don't get me started on emergency crews that are treated like dirt and hired on as B2B contractors. Well I am not going to get a bill that will ruin me financially but I might end up with no professional health care to help me when I am in trouble because they don't get paid enough and are worked to the ground.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  > Just go and read up how many British people are nagging about NHS. Us British people are nagging about the NHS because we've had 10+ years of a wannabe-GOP running it into the ground in order to stealth-privatise it and bung billions into theirs and their corrupt chums' pockets. We love the NHS. We don't love austerity and corruption.
  - least 5y ago
    This is a consequence of the NHS existing, though. It's one of the genuinely big downsides to having public healthcare where quality of care will coincide with the controlling government's support and/or aptitude for governing it. Private healthcare also suffers from poor governance (it's one of the big factors in why the United States' healthcare system is so expensive) but its effects aren't quite as drastic.
- dv_dt 5y ago
  The broadest general measures of gdp per capita spent on healthcare as well as life expectancy would indicate that not only does the US pay over double per capita of what every other modern nation pays, it also has 2-5 year lagging life expectancy (not to mention the only modern nation with flat or declining life expectancy). As an aside, the NHS is indeed flirting with instability right now, but that is due to multiple Tory governments arguably putting policies in place to destabilize and privatize the NHS in the long term. It’s as bizarre as Brexit to me that the British voters are going with it. But there it is.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lend000 5y ago
It's so strange when Canadian and European dignitaries fly to the US for important procedures when they've already solved healthcare [0]. [0] https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Why-Canadian-premier-seeks-health-care-in-U-S-3198150.php https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Why-Canadia...
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  It's not strange at all, the US has the best healthcare system in the world ... that money can buy, so it's a huge benefit to the elites with f*ck you money who want the best care at any cost. Europe hasn't solved healthcare at all, there's plenty of issues ongoing and developing but the average joe need not worry of going broke due to medical bills so he can focus his life on other things.
- he0001 5y ago
  Why is that strange? Universal Health care doesn’t mean you don’t have options if you can pay or is that a sign of failure to you? Also the article mentions that 700k Canadians are waiting for health care (it doesn’t mention how long they have to wait). The US has 40M people not getting healthcare at all. I’d rather wait a bit than not getting it at all.
  - lend000 5y ago
    The point is that no one has solved healthcare, contrary to the OP's point. It is certainly more equitable in places like Canada, but of a lower quality at the high end in virtually every country compared to the US, and it often takes months to see a specialist (but everyone gets a chance, if they don't have an urgent condition, that is). America's healthcare system is terrible, but socializing it like other countries have done isn't going to solve the problem (root causes include a massive shortage of doctors, a norm of bundling insurance with employment, lack of pricing transparency, partially socialized healthcare, as described in the article, and a system in which it costs a billion dollars to get a drug approved).
    - he0001 5y ago

tommymachine 5y ago

You're right. No one dies anymore in the rest of the world.

least 5y ago

The American healthcare system is exceptionally bad when you compare it against the United States' relative wealth, for sure; the rest of the world hasn't solved healthcare, though. Even if you zoom in on the few countries most people are talking about when they say "the rest of the world," there's still a tons of issues present, a lot of which are directly a result of the system that they chose to utilize. This is an issue with a lot of nuance and I wish people wouldn't make such reductive statements like this.

curiousgal 5y ago
As long as those issues don't include people going broke because of a snake bite (and they don't) I'd say they pretty much did solve it.
- least 5y ago
  I think that you're not looking closely enough at the underlying issues of these systems if your only metric is people don't go broke from a snake bite, or more broadly, they don't pay immediate upfront costs for their healthcare, even though a whole lot of these places do have upfront costs as well. The healthcare industry has a lot of working parts, all of which require scrutiny, even in these mythical places of which you aspire American healthcare to look like. There's genuinely negative outcomes as a result of the policy decisions everywhere, too.
- refurb 5y ago
  When you can't get the latest cancer drugs because your gov't can't/won't pay for it, is it still solved?
  - altacc 5y ago
    This is somewhat of a straw man fallacy often cited by proponents of profit centric healthcare. In reality it happens relatively rarely and is usually linked to the effectiveness of that treatment. In the UK, a typical example of state provided healthcare, some extremely expensive treatments which can only increase life expectancy for a few weeks or months are not approved as there is little benefit. But not every health insurance policy in the US will cover this treatment, especially without some copay. On the other hand, a treatment was recently approved for use which costs £1.795 million per patient. The cost to the patient for that treatment is zero. I find this argument not only provably less relevant than the poster thinks is is, but also it's not much different from dying as you can't afford to pay even the copay for your cancer treatment. The USA can't even sort out decent healthcare for children, who haven't yet had the opportunity to get a job to pay for their healthcare. No healthcare system is perfect but that's not a reason to not seek something better, fairer and more efficient.
    - refurb 5y ago
      It's happens more often than you think. In single payer system, those therapies aren't even discussed with the patient since the physician knows if it's not paid for by the gov't it's effectively out of reach. Sure, the US system isn't perfect by any means, but one reason why it's so expensive is they throw everything plus the kitchen sink at patients. And this is even for Medicaid which covers the poorest Americans. Having lived in 4 different country with 4 different healthcare systems, if I got diagnosed with a serious cancer you can damn well be sure I'll get treated in the US. I have a friend who got diagnosed with breast cancer who did the same, moved back to the US and with ACA subsidies was getting the latest therapies with a monthly premium of $200. And the drugs she received weren't even paid for in her home country.
      - altacc 5y ago

ozim 5y ago

Hold your horses. Problems of national health systems in other countries are not "globally" visible like insane bills for Americans. Just go and read up how many British people are nagging about NHS. I expect that there is shitload of corruption in health care in other countries as well but I don't read or speak German or French. In Poland I heard about case of a doctor that died from overwork, she just collapsed because she was working 3 shifts for a month or something. Don't get me started on emergency crews that are treated like dirt and hired on as B2B contractors. Well I am not going to get a bill that will ruin me financially but I might end up with no professional health care to help me when I am in trouble because they don't get paid enough and are worked to the ground.

zimpenfish 5y ago
> Just go and read up how many British people are nagging about NHS. Us British people are nagging about the NHS because we've had 10+ years of a wannabe-GOP running it into the ground in order to stealth-privatise it and bung billions into theirs and their corrupt chums' pockets. We love the NHS. We don't love austerity and corruption.
- least 5y ago
  This is a consequence of the NHS existing, though. It's one of the genuinely big downsides to having public healthcare where quality of care will coincide with the controlling government's support and/or aptitude for governing it. Private healthcare also suffers from poor governance (it's one of the big factors in why the United States' healthcare system is so expensive) but its effects aren't quite as drastic.
dv_dt 5y ago
The broadest general measures of gdp per capita spent on healthcare as well as life expectancy would indicate that not only does the US pay over double per capita of what every other modern nation pays, it also has 2-5 year lagging life expectancy (not to mention the only modern nation with flat or declining life expectancy). As an aside, the NHS is indeed flirting with instability right now, but that is due to multiple Tory governments arguably putting policies in place to destabilize and privatize the NHS in the long term. It’s as bizarre as Brexit to me that the British voters are going with it. But there it is.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lend000 5y ago

It's so strange when Canadian and European dignitaries fly to the US for important procedures when they've already solved healthcare [0]. [0] https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Why-Canadian-premier-seeks-health-care-in-U-S-3198150.php https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Why-Canadia...

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
It's not strange at all, the US has the best healthcare system in the world ... that money can buy, so it's a huge benefit to the elites with f*ck you money who want the best care at any cost. Europe hasn't solved healthcare at all, there's plenty of issues ongoing and developing but the average joe need not worry of going broke due to medical bills so he can focus his life on other things.
he0001 5y ago
Why is that strange? Universal Health care doesn’t mean you don’t have options if you can pay or is that a sign of failure to you? Also the article mentions that 700k Canadians are waiting for health care (it doesn’t mention how long they have to wait). The US has 40M people not getting healthcare at all. I’d rather wait a bit than not getting it at all.
- lend000 5y ago
  The point is that no one has solved healthcare, contrary to the OP's point. It is certainly more equitable in places like Canada, but of a lower quality at the high end in virtually every country compared to the US, and it often takes months to see a specialist (but everyone gets a chance, if they don't have an urgent condition, that is). America's healthcare system is terrible, but socializing it like other countries have done isn't going to solve the problem (root causes include a massive shortage of doctors, a norm of bundling insurance with employment, lack of pricing transparency, partially socialized healthcare, as described in the article, and a system in which it costs a billion dollars to get a drug approved).
  - he0001 5y ago