[trhway]

>That's why wait times are so extreme in Canada, and doubled from ~1990 to 2015.

what are wait times for 30M uninsured in the US? Infinity? Or even for underinsured :

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/20...

"Half (51%) of underinsured adults reported problems with medical bills or debt and more than two of five (44%) reported not getting needed care because of cost. "

[adventured]

Who said the US system was better? You're attempting to stand up a strawman counter.

I said socialized medicine requires heavy rationing of care. The comment I replied to was implying that somehow the selection of and or limitation of care is wrong (eg under the US health insurance system): all socialized systems depend on that exact approach, aka rationing. They limit access, they restrict types of therapies based on age or expected outcomes due to cost, they extend wait times dramatically based on what they decide is more or less important, and so on. Socialized medicine would collapse instantly without such aggressive rationing.

And nowhere in the above paragraph did I say the current US system is superior to alternatives in the developed world.

[logfromblammo]

The US is better, and it's worse.

Poster anecdote describes vet who has more leg prostheses than he is able to use. Article anecdote describes cost-cutting to the point that prostheses which adequately replace the function of hands for a quadruple amputee are considered a luxury. Compassion is a cost; cut it.

That makes a pretty wide range of outcomes. We even have a dolphin that has a state-of-the-art tail fluke prosthetic. I doubt it had insurance. If it did, I doubt it would pay out without a 3 tuna deductible, a 40 sardine co-pay, and a 15 sailfish lifetime maximum.

Do these insurance companies think we're paying just for our own sakes? Do they think we should breathe a sign of relief for not having to pay that $260k in increased premiums? Every one of us that's not a sociopath can empathize with the woman who got shot twice in the chest and as a result woke up one day not even able to pick her nose by herself. That could have been me! I, for one, love picking my nose by myself. And I am super pissed that the sole reasonable outcome to this story was achieved only through the wish-granting generosity of a passing fairy godparent.

Good for that guy in private life, but his day job is actually making more difficult several of the more reasonable paths to that outcome. What about all the people who will never get a fairy wish?

Nobody is ever going to take $260k worth of pity on people like me. I really need all this to be a matter of enforceable contracts or laws, rather than what charity may grow in the human heart. Any safety net based on that sort of goodwill simply has me-sized holes in it everywhere.

[trhway]

you must be kidding. You brought up the socialized medicine as a strawman counter in your first comment in this thread.

[adventured]

I didn't do that in any manner. I brought up the fact that socialized medicine depends on restrictive filtering systems - rationing - to strictly control for costs. It can't function otherwise.

The argument in favor of socialized medicine isn't that it enables any care you need at any time you need it. It's that it's supposed to be a morally superior distribution of resources.