> In many other countries care is free or cheap but you may die waiting This is a common criticism I hear from the US of other countries, but it comes with the

> In many other countries care is free or cheap but you may die waiting This is a common criticism I hear from the US of other countries, but it comes with the assumptions that a) all care is equally necessary or first come first served, and b) that paid care is not available. Both of these are false. In my experience with the UK and Australian healthcare systems, waiting times can be an issue, but in most cases urgent issues are dealt with urgently. I've experienced this personally, and also seen family members get fast cancer care when it was truly necessary. We as individuals are hard at triaging ourselves because it's a sample size of 1 and we're deeply invested, and in that it's not nice to wait for care, but zooming out, healthcare waiting periods are part of a complex triage process and tend to work. But of course if you've got the money you can also just go and get private care. This has advantages (for you) and disadvantages (for society), but probably improves the experience, even if medical outcomes aren't necessarily any better. The existence of free public healthcare acts as a fairly strong competitive force on private healthcare (US/AU), meaning that prices aren't too bad and service quality is generally very good (because they're competing on experience, not outcome). In summary, yes there are wait times, and there are a few awful cases of people dying while waiting, but the system is overall far better and it's not really a useful criticism made from the standpoint of the US healthcare system.