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I think all the countries with "free" healthcare end up with having absurd waiting times The irony is that we also have absurd wait times in the USA for our pa

by warent 3y ago

I think all the countries with "free" healthcare end up with having absurd waiting times The irony is that we also have absurd wait times in the USA for our paid healthcare. At least other countries get it for free. This is such a common trope that the USA tradeoff is that we pay to get higher quality expedited care, but it's just not true

graymatters 3y ago
US healthcare is absolutely horrible. Both outrageously expensive and utterly lacking in availability. This is why average longevity in US is declining while it is growing in other developed countries. It’s not health-care, it’s health-don’t-care.
- adventured 3y ago
  > Both outrageously expensive and utterly lacking in availability. US healthcare is easy to access. I've used it at every economic tier and it has never been difficult to get access to proper care. It is obnoxiously expensive. > This is why average longevity in US is declining while it is growing in other developed countries. It's growing in most, not all of course. Britain as one example is seeing something between stagnation and decline in its life expectancy, despite their vaunted NHS. And for seven decades it has lagged increasingly behind its peers, being ahead of only the US in its peer group. Universal healthcare will only take you so far. "Life expectancy in the UK has grown at a slower rate than comparable countries over the past seven decades, according to researchers, who say this is the result of widening inequality. "The UK lags behind all other countries in the group of G7 advanced economies except the US, according to a new analysis of global life expectancy rankings published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. "While life expectancy has increased in absolute terms, similar countries have experienced larger increases, they wrote. In the 1950s, the UK had one of the longest life expectancies in the world, ranking seventh globally behind countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden, but in 2021 the UK was ranked 29th." [0] --- "A new analysis of global rankings of life expectancy over seven decades shows the UK has done worse than all G7 countries except the USA." [1] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/16/life-expectancy-in-uk-growing-at-slower-rate-to-comparable-g7-countries https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/16/life-expecta... [1] https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2023/uk-drops-new-global-ranking-life-expectancy https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2023/uk-drops-new-gl...
  - thfuran 3y ago
    >US healthcare is easy to access Emergency care is typically easy to access. Non-emergency care is pretty easy to access in some places and quite inconvenient in others.
  - spiralpolitik 3y ago
    The NHS has been driven to the point of bankruptcy over the last 13 years with austerity and underfunding. In the UK if you can afford it, you go private for most common procedures. Most people can’t so are stuck with long waiting times and worse outcomes.
- nradov 3y ago
  Life expectancy in the US has been declining due to other factors like substance abuse (fentanyl poisoning), obesity, violence, and vehicle crashes. The healthcare system can have only a limited impact on those.
  - one_level_deep 3y ago
    [dead]
jojobas 3y ago
The idea that Australian healthcare is "free" is rather ridiculous. We have Medicare Levy of 2%, Medicare Levy Surcharge of up to 1.5% (both calculated on your income _before_ income tax), plus according to my latest tax receipt about 20% of the income tax goes towards healthcare as well. On top of that (and in conjunction with Medical Levy Surcharge) the government pushes everyone to have private health insurance, and it makes a huge difference in terms of wait times for "elective" hospital procedures (i.e. anything that won't kill you very soon). All in all, last year I paid some AUD16k getting no medical services at all. Paying all that you're still out of pocket for anything serious, as specialists (anesthetists, urologists, gynos, you name it) are typically charging way above Medicare standard fees and private insurance doesn't cover that completely.
- bandrami 3y ago
  The US's Medicare levy is 2.9% and 30% of the total Federal budget[1] is spent on healthcare (that doesn't include state and local spending). The US spends more taxpayer money per capita than Australia and gets much, much less to show for it. [1] Sorry: 30% of Federal outlays are spent on healthcare, only some of that is part of the "budget"
  - jojobas 3y ago
    I'm not arguing that the US system is better or that Australian system sucks, just that Australian healthcare is in no way "free".
    - bandrami 3y ago
      In the sense that the public library is also not "free", which is to say, an extremely silly sense. There are people in the US who say "I cannot afford to go to the doctor" when they are sick; this does not happen in Australia.
      - jojobas 3y ago
        It does. Dentistry is excluded from Medicare entirely, and with many "elective" procedures (i.e. ligament repairs, endometriosis removal, tonsillectomy) you might have to wait it pain for months until you're seen, unless you have private insurance and are willing to pay the "gap". That doesn't mean to say that it's as bad as in the US, but it does exist. I'd also go out on a limb and say that there are more poor people in the USA than in Australia per capita, which might factor into how many people can't afford healthcare.

by warent 3y ago

graymatters 3y ago

US healthcare is absolutely horrible. Both outrageously expensive and utterly lacking in availability. This is why average longevity in US is declining while it is growing in other developed countries. It’s not health-care, it’s health-don’t-care.

adventured 3y ago
> Both outrageously expensive and utterly lacking in availability. US healthcare is easy to access. I've used it at every economic tier and it has never been difficult to get access to proper care. It is obnoxiously expensive. > This is why average longevity in US is declining while it is growing in other developed countries. It's growing in most, not all of course. Britain as one example is seeing something between stagnation and decline in its life expectancy, despite their vaunted NHS. And for seven decades it has lagged increasingly behind its peers, being ahead of only the US in its peer group. Universal healthcare will only take you so far. "Life expectancy in the UK has grown at a slower rate than comparable countries over the past seven decades, according to researchers, who say this is the result of widening inequality. "The UK lags behind all other countries in the group of G7 advanced economies except the US, according to a new analysis of global life expectancy rankings published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. "While life expectancy has increased in absolute terms, similar countries have experienced larger increases, they wrote. In the 1950s, the UK had one of the longest life expectancies in the world, ranking seventh globally behind countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden, but in 2021 the UK was ranked 29th." [0] --- "A new analysis of global rankings of life expectancy over seven decades shows the UK has done worse than all G7 countries except the USA." [1] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/16/life-expectancy-in-uk-growing-at-slower-rate-to-comparable-g7-countries https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/16/life-expecta... [1] https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2023/uk-drops-new-global-ranking-life-expectancy https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2023/uk-drops-new-gl...
- thfuran 3y ago
  >US healthcare is easy to access Emergency care is typically easy to access. Non-emergency care is pretty easy to access in some places and quite inconvenient in others.
- spiralpolitik 3y ago
  The NHS has been driven to the point of bankruptcy over the last 13 years with austerity and underfunding. In the UK if you can afford it, you go private for most common procedures. Most people can’t so are stuck with long waiting times and worse outcomes.
nradov 3y ago
Life expectancy in the US has been declining due to other factors like substance abuse (fentanyl poisoning), obesity, violence, and vehicle crashes. The healthcare system can have only a limited impact on those.
- one_level_deep 3y ago
  [dead]

jojobas 3y ago

The idea that Australian healthcare is "free" is rather ridiculous. We have Medicare Levy of 2%, Medicare Levy Surcharge of up to 1.5% (both calculated on your income _before_ income tax), plus according to my latest tax receipt about 20% of the income tax goes towards healthcare as well. On top of that (and in conjunction with Medical Levy Surcharge) the government pushes everyone to have private health insurance, and it makes a huge difference in terms of wait times for "elective" hospital procedures (i.e. anything that won't kill you very soon). All in all, last year I paid some AUD16k getting no medical services at all. Paying all that you're still out of pocket for anything serious, as specialists (anesthetists, urologists, gynos, you name it) are typically charging way above Medicare standard fees and private insurance doesn't cover that completely.

bandrami 3y ago
The US's Medicare levy is 2.9% and 30% of the total Federal budget[1] is spent on healthcare (that doesn't include state and local spending). The US spends more taxpayer money per capita than Australia and gets much, much less to show for it. [1] Sorry: 30% of Federal outlays are spent on healthcare, only some of that is part of the "budget"
- jojobas 3y ago
  I'm not arguing that the US system is better or that Australian system sucks, just that Australian healthcare is in no way "free".
  - bandrami 3y ago
    In the sense that the public library is also not "free", which is to say, an extremely silly sense. There are people in the US who say "I cannot afford to go to the doctor" when they are sick; this does not happen in Australia.
    - jojobas 3y ago
      It does. Dentistry is excluded from Medicare entirely, and with many "elective" procedures (i.e. ligament repairs, endometriosis removal, tonsillectomy) you might have to wait it pain for months until you're seen, unless you have private insurance and are willing to pay the "gap". That doesn't mean to say that it's as bad as in the US, but it does exist. I'd also go out on a limb and say that there are more poor people in the USA than in Australia per capita, which might factor into how many people can't afford healthcare.