Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by alienjr 3418 days ago
Except for Switzerland, Western (not to speak about Eastern) Europe's universal healthcare means universal high taxes, universal low quality of treatment and universal access to waiting queues.
5 comments

You don't have to look further than Canada to know that isn't true. My taxes are not significantly different from yours and I don't have to pay for insanely high medical insurance on top of that. Quality of treatment is fine and wait times aren't significantly different (but vary according to need).

I don't know how anyone can with a straight face argue that the US healthcare system is efficient with regards to money, time, or outcome compared to most single payer systems.

Waiting times are public information in England. You can verify what they are for most things.

Currently wait times are too long. This is because i) Social care has been chronically underfunded for many years ii) The NHS has been chronically underfunded for many years.

Here's the wait times for IAPT (short form talking therapy for mild to moderate mental health problems -- usually CBT).

http://www.content.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB22842/IAPT-mo...

> 87.8% waited less than 6 weeks and

> 98.3% waited less than 18 weeks to enter treatment

That's too long, and considerable pressure is being put on trusts to reduce those times.

There's a wealth of data just about IAPT here: http://content.digital.nhs.uk/iaptreports

Do you have a source for your claim of "low quality of treatment"?
That doesn't match any of the research I've seen on the subject, and I've looked quite a bit. Granted it's a tricky thing to study.

Do you have any citations from (competent, peer reviewed) journals?

Been to hospitals in France and the Czech republic. They were pretty nice.