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>Also, if people get the medical attention they need on time Unclear whether that would bear fruit, given how socialized healthcare systems have a bad reputati

by gruez 2y ago

>Also, if people get the medical attention they need on time Unclear whether that would bear fruit, given how socialized healthcare systems have a bad reputation of long wait times.

semi-extrinsic 2y ago
I think this is an incorrect impression caused by cherry-picking data. E.g. in the dataset linked below, while some European countries have longer waiting times for elective surgery, they have between 2x and 10x shorter waiting times than the US when it comes to seeing a primary physician. Which is arguably one of the most important metrics for getting people medical attention on time. Furthermore, in many non-US countries you have "controversial" things like emergency contraceptives being prescription free, so people don't even need to see a doctor in the first place. Imagine how much more efficient that is. https://www.statista.com/chart/33079/average-waiting-times-for-a-doctors-appointment/ https://www.statista.com/chart/33079/average-waiting-times-f...
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  That page says the lowest waiting times for surgeries are the USA and Switzerland, which has a mostly private healthcare system and private health insurance. It also claims waiting times for a GP are only ten days on average in the UK which doesn't sound right given the difficulty people have even getting an appointment booked at all lately. I wonder how they compute these numbers.
darth_avocado 2y ago
One thing I don’t like about discourse around healthcare is that we automatically talk about socialized healthcare systems being bad. Asking for more transparency and accountability in insurance companies is not unreasonable. You pay thousands of dollars every year to these conpanies only to have your medical procedure delayed because the insurance doesn’t think it’s necessary. If you can’t set up a system that requires insurance to fulfill their duty, make health insurance non mandatory and set up a public system with more accountability. Right now these companies want to have their cake and eat it too.
- krupan 2y ago
  That's funny because I am disappointed that so many people talk as if socialized healthcare is the miracle cure for all our woes. There are a couple things you just can't get around in any society. The Law of Supply and Demand, and that corporations serve their customers. That second one is the number one problem we have currently in the US. We, the patients, are not the customer. We are are basically a cost of doing business for the "insurance" companies and medical providers. Socialized medicine aims to solve this problem by removing all insurance companies and becoming the single customer for all medical providers, and then dictating how much they will pay. Due to Supply and Demand, if this single customer doesn't offer to pay enough, then the supply of medical care will go down. Again in this scenario, you and I are not the customer. If we don't like this reduction in supply, we don't have much we can do. We aren't allowed to offer to pay more to get what we want. If the government offers to pay more, the supply of medical care will go up, but where does that money come from? You and I, but again, we have almost no say in this.

by gruez 2y ago

>Also, if people get the medical attention they need on time Unclear whether that would bear fruit, given how socialized healthcare systems have a bad reputation of long wait times.

semi-extrinsic 2y ago

I think this is an incorrect impression caused by cherry-picking data. E.g. in the dataset linked below, while some European countries have longer waiting times for elective surgery, they have between 2x and 10x shorter waiting times than the US when it comes to seeing a primary physician. Which is arguably one of the most important metrics for getting people medical attention on time. Furthermore, in many non-US countries you have "controversial" things like emergency contraceptives being prescription free, so people don't even need to see a doctor in the first place. Imagine how much more efficient that is. https://www.statista.com/chart/33079/average-waiting-times-for-a-doctors-appointment/ https://www.statista.com/chart/33079/average-waiting-times-f...

mike_hearn 2y ago
That page says the lowest waiting times for surgeries are the USA and Switzerland, which has a mostly private healthcare system and private health insurance. It also claims waiting times for a GP are only ten days on average in the UK which doesn't sound right given the difficulty people have even getting an appointment booked at all lately. I wonder how they compute these numbers.

darth_avocado 2y ago

One thing I don’t like about discourse around healthcare is that we automatically talk about socialized healthcare systems being bad. Asking for more transparency and accountability in insurance companies is not unreasonable. You pay thousands of dollars every year to these conpanies only to have your medical procedure delayed because the insurance doesn’t think it’s necessary. If you can’t set up a system that requires insurance to fulfill their duty, make health insurance non mandatory and set up a public system with more accountability. Right now these companies want to have their cake and eat it too.

krupan 2y ago
That's funny because I am disappointed that so many people talk as if socialized healthcare is the miracle cure for all our woes. There are a couple things you just can't get around in any society. The Law of Supply and Demand, and that corporations serve their customers. That second one is the number one problem we have currently in the US. We, the patients, are not the customer. We are are basically a cost of doing business for the "insurance" companies and medical providers. Socialized medicine aims to solve this problem by removing all insurance companies and becoming the single customer for all medical providers, and then dictating how much they will pay. Due to Supply and Demand, if this single customer doesn't offer to pay enough, then the supply of medical care will go down. Again in this scenario, you and I are not the customer. If we don't like this reduction in supply, we don't have much we can do. We aren't allowed to offer to pay more to get what we want. If the government offers to pay more, the supply of medical care will go up, but where does that money come from? You and I, but again, we have almost no say in this.