"public healthcare"

[Ukhata]

i dunno from where you are shubla. but im from the Netherlands. whenever i get any form of serious toothache. i can go tommorow or sameday if its real bad. my healthcare policy states that my own risk is max 800 or so euros per year. so once im past those all the rest is completely 100% free if it falls within my insurance policy. which dental does. extra work like crowns, root canals and such dont fal within my dental insurance, but i can insure extra for up to 2000 euros a year for that. which i do. making me pay a MAX per yer no matter of how many health prolblem i get is 800 for my own risk, 2400 per year on health insurance policy , and my dental plan which is 400 a year in policy. so thats 3600 a year that i pay as a max price. everything else is completely free. xrays, MRI, cancer meds, root canals no matter what. public healthcare may not be perfect or cheap. but it 10000 times better than murica or other countries without it.

[Kitamie]

I'm from Australia. Our system here is called Medicare. TBH I can't complain about it at all. I have 4 children and any time any of us or my husband has needed treatment or answers we have had no problem in getting it. We don't have private health insurance or anything like that. To see our private doctor is $70 AUD but we get half of that put back into our bank immediately through Medicare. Dentistry also comes under this. In emergency situations, the wait time at the hospitals has been minimal as it triaged as in order of importance. I guess there are people who have had to wait hours and hours if they go to the hospital because they have a headcold or something, but in the case of emergencies, I can't complain. I had cancer treatment 11 years ago and was charged nothing for 6 hours of surgery, nothing for radiation therapy and nothing for chemotherapy which was 7 weeks running so I really think our healthcare system is doing ok.

[Potjeh]

When I had a toothache, I either called the public hospital and got an appointment the next day where I paid like 5€ for appointment, or if it hurt too much to wait I'd just go to a private dentist and walk in, no appointment necessary, for about 15€ per session. The main difference is that the private dentists tend to have better equipment. For regular doctor, pretty much every time I needed one I got to see one the same day (GP, not specialist, you need to be sent to a specialist by a GP), the most I've sat in a waiting room was like 3-4 hours. Only been to ER once and I was received immediately. And I live in a shithole country. Step up your game, first world.

[MagicManICT]

I guess that if you really get hurt in Finland, so badly that you have to go to hospital. It costs like nothing and you will probably get treated.
But if you arent like, close to death, its difficult to get any treatment or even diagnosis.

Well, back when I *did* have health insurance, I can tell you that it was still difficult to get treated or a proper diagnosis here, and it hasn't gotten any better over the years. I had a relative play doctor ping-pong for almost a year with a back issue.

What screws up health care costs in the US is the private health insurance companies. They were a great concept at first, but they've gotten greedy and the "negotiation power" has gone to the heads of the hospitals and insurers. There's a really good spot about it on Adam Conover's show "Adam Ruins Everything." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeDOQpfaUc8 (Not the full episode. I believe it is available on some streaming services that carry TruTV.)

And I live in a shithole country. Step up your game, first world.

Right? What else do all these rich white folk have to do with all that cash laying around? Sheesh!

You know your country has bad health care when a 3rd world country under heavy sanctions from nearly everyone but Switzerland and Communist bloc allies has better health care than you do. (Cuba circa 1980s-90s compared to USA...)

[ricky]

Private Health Insurance in America is broken. Insurance has always sounded good on paper. everyone pays in, money gets pulled out when someone needs reimbursement. What started out as a great idea though has turned into a mandatory fee in most cases. Your car needs to be insured to drive, HOAs (probably, I don't have to deal with these) mandate home insurance, and health insurance has been split into dental and vision so even if you do have health insurance good luck getting glasses. in every form insurance has become a racket. I would personally like to see all forms of insurance be federally (or at least state) ran, or under local governments. private insurance conglomerates have become beyond expensive and push in every possible way to defraud their clients and renege on promises made.

Health insurance is especially heinous. All doctors and nurses and medical professionals want to do is help people, but with private health insurance lording over every hospital in the country, a large part of their job has become administrative duties. Doctors want to do right by their client and keep them healthy, but nowadays they will have to check with both the patient's insurer and the hospital's insurer to see if their treatment will be covered. Often times treatment will be the cheapest, least effective method, leading to inordinately high revisits because their original problem could never be addressed with the watered down treatments put in place. All of this while charging out the ass to the patient.

I havent been to a doctor in 10 years. Only this year have I recieved health insurance under Obamacare, and I'm still nervous about going to the doctor due to any of a dozen possible outcomes. God forbid I do go and they say something is wrong because the plan I have will not come close to covering anything major.


Universal healthcare is good. It might feel like you're getting a bum deal if wait times become to long, but you really aren't. The major driver of this is the lack of specialists in any given field. America Ironically has the large number of specialists, but that's more about the culture here than anything else (doctors are often pushed into getting a specialist license, driving medical costs even further).

One Accident in America will bankrupt you, and anymore it's starting to feel like the system was designed that way.
Be thankful for subsidized healthcare, even if they could do better.

[MagicManICT]

Mortgage issuers require home insurance to guarantee the loan. You can avoid this if you have a means of covering a loan should disaster strike. HOAs (HomeOwner's Associations) mandate bylaws for living in a housing development--how high you can grow the grass, the type of grass, how many and what kinds of trees you can plant, what color you can paint your house, what color... oh, wait it's 2018, not 1950.

Yeah, they're a racket, too, but one some people are willing to put up with to live in a "nice neighborhood." (There's another "Adam Ruins Everything" episode on suburbs.) IMO, that kind of suburban living just makes you a target for burglary.

I havent been to a doctor in 10 years. Only this year have I recieved health insurance under Obamacare, and I'm still nervous about going to the doctor due to any of a dozen possible outcomes. God forbid I do go and they say something is wrong because the plan I have will not come close to covering anything major.

Go, find your issues. Better to treat problems like high cholesterol or blood pressure early before you have a heart attack or stroke. Diabetes is another. If you can catch a lot of these things early, you can often remedy them simply by changing your diet. Quite often, you feel better and have more energy because of it. Who knows. Maybe you're completely healthy and have nothing to worry about. Then you can quit worrying and go to that kegger your buddy is having.

[shubla]

I guess that I have to revert what I said in the OP. The public healthcare is actually pretty good when you really have something.
I had some symptoms for possibly more or less acute thing (not covid tho).
It's christmas eve night, so everything is like closed. First a call to completely free advisory number after only 15 minutes of waiting, where a nurse gives advices. They thought its best to do some checking to see if it's anything serious just to be safe, during christmas days normal health centers are not open so I may as well go to ER they said. They even offered to come get me with an ambulance, but modest man not wanting to waste money of the state I took a taxi instead (ambulance would have been free though). They take me in, do all kinds of tests, xray, blood etc. etc. and finally direct me to some specialized doctor. Turned out that its probably nothing serious and only some small (non covid) viral infection or such.

So basically, 1½hrs after doing the initial call to get in the callback queue, I was already in hospital, gone through triage and some tests with cool band in my hand. 1½ hrs after this they sent me home. And this all in christmas eve which is maybe biggest holiday in Finland, and quite late in the night too!

And what did it cost?

0€

I would imagine that in many countries in my situation you would either have to pay like 20 000$ or then just not to go to ER and hope that it's nothing serious.

Yeah taxes are quite high, but if this is what I and other citizens get in return, it's worth every last penny.

[jordancoles]

Yeah taxes are quite high, but if this is what I and other citizens get in return, it's worth every last penny.

Every Canadian also says this when the topic is healthcare

It can be slow sometimes specially when you need a specialist, but as long as you're persistent and advocate for yourself you'll get where you want to be eventually.

You're more likely to not get proper care due to low self-esteem rather than low income here. If you don't push for what you want, doctors here will brush you off pretty quickly to save money

[tripp]

Yeah taxes are quite high, but if this is what I and other citizens get in return, it's worth every last penny.

Every Canadian also says this when the topic is healthcare

It can be slow sometimes specially when you need a specialist, but as long as you're persistent and advocate for yourself you'll get where you want to be eventually.

You're more likely to not get proper care due to low self-esteem rather than low income here. If you don't push for what you want, doctors here will brush you off pretty quickly to save money

well what do you know, the toxic Canadian POS admits Canada has POS healthcare
I think we are done here

[Apocoreo]

I'll take slow healthcare when nonlethal over going bankrupt over a broken bone any day.