Comment by petesergeant
2 years ago
Again, with the caveat that I much prefer the British system...
> nearly 40% of americans from being forced to put off needed medical care
Hard to interpret UK NHS waiting-time figures, especially given the political weight given to them, but these[0][1] paint a picture of 6 month to >1 year waiting times.
0: https://www.boa.ac.uk/resource/boa-statement-on-nhs-app-show...
1: https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/news-and-events/media-centre/press-...
> Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy
Medical debt for non-elective treatment feels barbaric, although digging into the figures (2m personal bankruptcies a year, 60% medical) gives 0.3% of the US population declaring medical bankruptcy a year, possibly going up to 1% if you do fancier maths involving households vs people.
It might be worth stressing for US audiences that the UK NHS waiting times quoted are for elective non life threatening procedures; osteoarthritis surgeries that decrease pain for people already with a degenerative joint disease, hip and knee replacements, etc.
The long wait times, 22 weeks mean average, > 63 week in 8% of extreme waits, are regrettable but not indicitive of waiting for urgent emergency life threatening required non elective procedures which are relatively prompt and immediate for the most part.
I don't think your portrayal captures the reality of this well. Again, generalizing about numbers when it's such a hot political issue is difficult, and it's super-easy to cherry-pick, but take three NHS trusts in the South East, which for non-Brits is the rich part of the country -- I've chosen these three because I'm somewhat familiar with the hospitals themselves, and they're all big enough to have multiple specialties. I suspect if anything they understate rather than overstate the problem.
0: https://www.myplannedcare.nhs.uk/seast/royal-surrey/
1: https://www.myplannedcare.nhs.uk/seast/oxford/
2: https://www.myplannedcare.nhs.uk/seast/buckinghamshire/
For each specialty, there's a waiting time, which is the time between you seeing your local doctor and then seeing a specialist, and then there's a waiting time given from when the specialist refers you for a treatment -- they need to be added together. Cardiology is 17+21 weeks, 10+12 weeks, and 25+28 weeks, urology is 12+18 weeks, 18+23 weeks, and 25+20 weeks. Orthopedics (for your osteoarthritis example) is at 17+24 weeks, 22+46 weeks, and 20+25 weeks.
> not indicative of waiting for urgent emergency life threatening
Hospitals in the US can't turn you away if you show up presenting urgent, emergency, life-threatening symptoms either, and I suspect those are not the types of medical care that people in the US are generally putting off for cost reasons (although I'm sure there are a few cases where they are).
> I don't think your portrayal captures the reality of this well.
"My" portrayal is a summary of the information in the links that you provided.
I’ve used emergency care in the US and U.K. waiting in the U.K. was half an hour, in the US was 4 hours. The U.K. was of course free, the US was $2k
Same problem, same prescription.