Comment by JaggerJo

20 hours ago

[flagged]

I’m married to a Brit and she is constantly in awe of how much better our healthcare is here in the US. And she paid for private insurance there too.

Quality of facilities, low wait times, quality of staff interactions, organization, etc.

She even freaks out about how we have free parking at our doctors and hospitals here!

We’re on corporate insurance.

  • So why are so many of your citizens without even basic affordable healthcare?

    • Define "so many". Most people have health insurance through their job, which translates to them having basic affordable healthcare. Not everyone has this, so I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's not some abysmal state of affairs where most of the country is suffering.

    • They aren't. Anyone can go to the ER, and if you're poor it'll be billed through Medicaid. When I was young and poor, I had a multi-day hospital stay and multiple surgeries that totaled to $3.50 out of pocket. Urgent cares are everywhere and affordable.

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  • What is the 'INSERTNAME' law that explains how all conversations on HN, which is ostensibly focused on tech, devolve (evolve) into the realm of the humanities?

  • UK isn't EU, especially when it comes to health system. I lived in the US for quite some time (from Fr), the healthcare is great... if you can afford an expensive health insurance AND pay some extra money when required. The avg US people can not pay and when you can not pay the experience is just far worth than terrible.

One of the big reasons we have no universal healthcare is because we socialized defense for other countries like your country. You guys are years if not decades away from being able to defense yourselves.

  • That’s not really true, as an American.

    We spend a ton on healthcare anyway, just inefficiently and in a way that causes stress and struggles for patients.

    • Yeah, the administrative overhead related to just the billing system is staggering. Many hospital systems have more billing professionals than they have beds.

    • We spend more overall because our healthcare is bifurcated. There would be waste regardless of whether or not we socialize our healthcare completely. Look at Medicare as an example

  • Defend against who? You?

    I am in Canada, and the USA recently threatened to invade us, basically.

    So we need to buy weapons from the USA in order to defend ourselves from the USA?

    Sounds like mafia protection schemes.

    • Sure, we are now a threat, but let’s not ignore Russia or China. Neither of them are breaking news and Russia is the immediate threat for most of the West, and until recently for you guys as well

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