Comment by bestouff
2 days ago
Whatever. Simply come to a decent EU country and see how much it costs you for a bad cold or a cancer. Then compare that to the same event in the US.
2 days ago
Whatever. Simply come to a decent EU country and see how much it costs you for a bad cold or a cancer. Then compare that to the same event in the US.
I've heard a horror stories about NHS and Canada's Medicare. Their systems are backed up, so treatment goes untreated for long periods of time.
Presumably healthcare professionals are performing as many surgeries as they can per day. Just because one person was denied, doesn't mean another person isn't approved.
For example, I'd rather get cancer in the USA than UK: https://www.politico.eu/article/cancer-europe-america-compar...
We're about to do to Medicare what the UK has been doing to the NHS. Government programs don't work when you cut all their funding. There are plenty of normal countries with functional healthcare systems.
when funding is cut, do surgeons perform less surgeries or the supply of healthcare remain the same, but there is lower demand due to limited access?
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Leaving aside that the article is about the EU and largely says less about where is better to have cancer and more about where you're statistically more likely to be an old smoker and get cancer, it says it's better to have cancer in the US when you're over 65 and therefore get the socialised healthcare.
Get cancer aged 25 and you may be in some trouble.
As long as you can get past your GP and actually get the diagnosis the system works pretty well. Get onto the Two Week Wait, and you automatically will if your diagnostic test is positive or falls into the needs further investigation category, and that's highly competitive with, say American time to intervention: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6396925
The typical UK "horror story" fuck-up is your GP fobs you off over and over until you turn up in (overwhelmed due to people who can't get GP or social care) A&E with advanced and now-incurable cancer, they scan you, say "why the fuck haven't you been referred months ago that's atrocious", and then you die. GPs are all private in the UK and get charged more when they refer to hospitals. Either it's a traditional small partnership where the GPs themselves are invested or it's a kind of consultancy where a company employs GPs on contract and puts pressure on them to improve returns/cut costs. Either way, that's where the profit incentive comes in and coincidentally, this area is what kills people.
The GPs aren't themselves at fault mostly, they also need more funding and staff, but both have been cut drastically. I am, however, deeply suspicious that companies cut from the same cloth as Serco, Capita and G4S will not have patient outcomes anywhere in mind except under "cost centre".
Did you read the article?
A big reason the US does better is Medicare (socialized medicine) not because we suffer for-profit insurance.