I tried to cover for that with
“Of course this assumes a privileged position of private health insurance etc.”
and not that I disagree with the overall sentiment - my post was just meaning to indicate that things can and do take a lot longer in some of these other systems which has its own negative impact on health outcomes. I am not saying “you shouldn’t change because of that”, just that it’s an impact that I don’t see spoken about a lot.
The “some” is a quantity becoming smaller and smaller as time goes on. Right now, nearly 40% of Americans couldn’t handle an emergency $400 bill. Now imagine that emergency bill is for chemotherapy and the price of the bill is $40,000.
How many people can afford it now?
Nobody’s gonna go to that site. It reminds me of when Chapo mocked that PSA book for bringing up how they fought against anti-Obamacare messaging by building a website that nobody gave a shit about or even heard about until it was written in their book.
The Australian model for example works on kind of a hub and spoke system. You need a referral from your GP (PCP equivalent) to see specialists. So if you have a health condition that doesn’t have a straight forward diagnosis, they will send you to one specialist to evaluate, you wait for results to come back to the GP, they assess and if you have a plan you work to that, otherwise they refer you to another specialist to try and diagnose the issue.
Sometimes getting an appointment for a specialist can take many months. Colonoscopy’s for example have a 6-9 month waiting period in some capital cities in Australia.
From what I have experienced sometimes a GP can send referrals for two different specialists at once, so you can make an appointments with them and at least the waiting periods for both are happening concurrently.
Of course for a lot of people (probably the majority) in the US, having a longer waiting time for procedures/tests is much better than “I can’t afford to go to a doctor and find out what is wrong with me”. I believe free access to healthcare should be a basic human right. All I was trying to say in my earlier post is that I think a lot of people don’t understand that there are some serious issues with healthcare in the countries that offer it for free as well.
I still don’t understand why people go to medical school. There is just no way the payoff on the training time + debt is there (not to mention the insane hours). It’s twice as true for those who go into primary care. I’m all for killing the debt part of it and probably also for reducing the training time. The limited number of residency spots, which are funded by Medicare, seems to be a policy outcome of AMA lobbying. Although, it’s not that simple since there’s a real problem of doctors choosing to locate in desirable areas–a complex optimization problem with a lot of constraints for sure. Imagine thinking that a game show host could fix it.
People aren’t going to a website, just LOL. We are the exception. Most of these people (and by these people I mean persuadable voters) are infuriating button clickers who vote entirely on how a candidate makes them feel. They know absolutely nothing about policy.
I agree with all of this. Hopefully my most recent reply to Lawnmower_Man explains a bit better what I was trying to say.
I just read/hear a lot of comments (not on this forum) to the effect of “it works fine for these other countries” - but it feels more to me like it’s not “working fine” there either. I speak about Australian healthcare because its where I am from, and I know there are significant problems with it. To me though it is still much more humane than a system where people don’t even have a choice about whether to seek treatment because they can’t afford to.
Yeah - I know this is all a very complex probably that I have at best a very superficial grasp on - but it seems like for a medical practitioner your path is a long, expensive degree which then leads into a working position where being overworked seems normal. I know to some extent this must screen for people who see it as a “calling” but I personally have these angels on a really high pedestal and am in constant awe that they continue to persevere.
If you could plug that in and see your numbers, I think people would go. Especially if you advertised it well, or maybe that’s all it takes and they don’t go to the site… Just show average folks like “Wow I didn’t realize I’d save $4,000 a year AND get great coverage!” Then show a man in a power suit like “Whoa, my taxes don’t go up??? That’s awesome!”
It’s so gross. My aunt was really sick in the early 80s and ran up 7 figure medical bills. The bill collectors hounded my uncle so much he committed suicide.
Part of the problem is dealing with creditors is entirely jurisdictional so there is a massive difference in people’s rights from one place to the next. Some places you end up in defacto debtor prison, in others you tell them to get their shine box.
Old people watch Fox and post conspiracy theories on social media. Nobody who isn’t already a M4A advocate is going there. If anything, people who support it in principle might go, realize they’re going to lose money, and not support it.
100% this. Websites like that are bullshit - the average voter doesn’t care or have the time for it.
All you have to do is get people excited and make them FEEL like they’re going to benefit from it. You can present all the facts, sites and technocratic bullshit you want and in doing so continue to get slammed in elections. Don’t lie or mislead but most people don’t give a damn about the details or are too dumb to understand. They want the cliff notes in a way that shows how they will benefit and that’s it.
This is not accurate for the us health care system. Finding specialists covered by your insurance and getting appointments can take months and months in the US.
That used to be true several decades ago but once insurers seized control of the healthcare system that changed.
Bob just laid out a scenario where he got faster treatment in another country than he would in the US and he is right.
This is the way it is in the US too due to insurance companies. Most people can not just visit specialists, they need pcp referrals.
I think you’d have more people make the jman move to it than to move away from it. I still think that kind of advertising on TV would be powerful, too… And I’d run that shit on Fox News all day.
40 year old woman: “My mom struggles to pay for her prescriptions on Medicare, and the donut hole I’d expensive. I checked it out, and she’d get better coverage under single payer AND save $4,800 a year.”
70 year old Mother: “Now I can travel to see my grandkids on all the holidays!”
Daughter: “My husband and I make pretty good money, but buying healthcare on the private market is so expensive that we can’t save anything for retirement. I thought we’d make too much to save anything under Bernie’s plan, so I was shocked when he showed me that we’d save $2,000 a year AND get better coverage!”
Or just replicate that Miller Lite commercial with two bikini models arguing “Great taste! Less filling!”
Except it’s “Better coverage! Less expensive!!!”
Then Bernie breaks up the fight, “Ladies, ladies, it’s better coverage AND it’s less expensive. Now who wants to grab a cold one and feel the Bern?”
It’s repugnantly sexist, which means every cable news network will air it repeatedly to try to sink him… But instead they’ll just be telling everyone it’s great coverage and less expensive.
This is the case in a lot of countries in Europe as well. You might find yourself waiting a few months for a specialist in NHS if your problem doesn’t cause a decrease in quality-of-life and is not life-threatening. That’s why private insurers still exist there.
The CR is supposed to be like that but I’ve gone to specialists without recommendations in the past and have been accepted. Recently did that to see an ENT.
Hrm ok, my apologies for not understanding that. I’m currently in living in the US and my experience has been that I can usually get in to see specialists really quickly (often within a few days) but perhaps that was just a fortunate combination of being in NYC/having decent insurance/whatever specialists I needed.
I mean pointing out for probably 60%+ of the USA getting a colonoscopy has an infinity wait period because that subset can’t afford it is probably an effective way to combat the terrible and disingenuous wait period arguments.
That’s a good one too. Just a commercial of people trying to book appointments going through a hassle, long waits, referrals, etc, then flash forward and show Bernie as POTUS and things working so much better.
Since you are referencing a procedure I mentioned, I just want to understand: Are you taking from my posts that I am trying to make an argument against change to the US system? Or was this comment not directed at anything I said?