2 ms·

Small(ish) OT, but after years and years of leaning in favor of a private healthcare system I have completely reversed my opinion. I will spare you the ethical

Small(ish) OT, but after years and years of leaning in favor of a private healthcare system I have completely reversed my opinion. I will spare you the ethical and moral reasons, and give you a practical one. Private healthcare, being a business, cannot afford the investments of public one. Instead it operates following the Pareto principle where 20% of services and treatments cover 90%+ of patient needs. Now this works with much joy over most of your life, but there are just too many edge cases over a life time where this will screw you. E.g. A close friend of mine gave birth in a private clinic. The most luxurious one with almost a dozen people following her. All of this: pointless. Her child had complications minutes after birth, and no single private hospital in our country has a pediatric intensive care unit, or, to label it more correctly a pediatric _reanimation_ unit. The only private hospitals that do? University ones, as they operate on slightly different financial basis and incentives. This goes beyond this example I have. It doesn't matter if you're in a country with good private healthcare (e.g. Switzerland) or a crap one, public healthcare is accepted to be a money loser for the greater good and will cover more services. Always. Mind you, I'm not saying that a single public hospital will offer everything and private is bad, just stating that there's many situations where it's easier to find the service offered in public rather than private health care.

xhkkffbf 1y ago
You say that only "big, public" hospitals can afford the NICU. But don't you just mean "big"? It's just a question of how often it is used, right?
- epolanski 1y ago
  In Switzerland *no single hospital* has a proper PICU. There's one in Luzern and St. Gallen but they are under equipped for all the emergency situations. They are essentially sub-intensive, and if your child has such a complication, good luck. The only ones that do are all university hospitals and they only do so because they operate on a very different financial non-profit model. And I'm talking about Switzerland. PICU isn't just an example of service and treatments where even very very rich countries with quality healthcare are relatively uncovered compared to much poorer countries with public health care. It's not even the happiest one, because PICU is still "relatively" common, so I don't want to focus on it. Other examples of treatments that are relatively common in public health care are organ transplants, ICU for infective diseases, post trauma (stroke-like) rehabilitation are just some of the examples of treatments you're gonna find in many public hospitals in a country but extremely rarely in neighboring countries with excellent private healthcare.

xhkkffbf 1y ago

You say that only "big, public" hospitals can afford the NICU. But don't you just mean "big"? It's just a question of how often it is used, right?

epolanski 1y ago
In Switzerland *no single hospital* has a proper PICU. There's one in Luzern and St. Gallen but they are under equipped for all the emergency situations. They are essentially sub-intensive, and if your child has such a complication, good luck. The only ones that do are all university hospitals and they only do so because they operate on a very different financial non-profit model. And I'm talking about Switzerland. PICU isn't just an example of service and treatments where even very very rich countries with quality healthcare are relatively uncovered compared to much poorer countries with public health care. It's not even the happiest one, because PICU is still "relatively" common, so I don't want to focus on it. Other examples of treatments that are relatively common in public health care are organ transplants, ICU for infective diseases, post trauma (stroke-like) rehabilitation are just some of the examples of treatments you're gonna find in many public hospitals in a country but extremely rarely in neighboring countries with excellent private healthcare.