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by jasonlotito
3065 days ago
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> The point is having a doctor available for everybody Not necessarily in a timely manner, which is important for things like Autism (and because of the belief in the system, can actually harm the person). Even if you can afford it, you don't necessarily get to see a doctor, even with years long wait times. And even if you see a doctor, the actual service they provide might be worthless (e.g. suggesting you put your child in an institution and forget about it). This is just my experience dealing with the Canadian healthcare system in Montreal. Moving to the US provided cheaper, faster, and superior results in every metric. |
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On a related note, since you mention autism: for all the faults of the healthcare system in the US, it's far and away the best at treating chronic mental health conditions. For various reasons, most European countries have a pretty bad approach at providing access to mental health care. This isn't just for specific conditions, but for a wide range of the most common mental health ailments (depression, anxiety, ADHD, ASD, etc.)
Just getting diagnosed is incredibly difficult, but even for people who've been disagnosed, getting approved for treatment is such a long and painful process that many people give up[0]. I know people who have literally turned down jobs that would require them to live in Europe for extended periods of time because they couldn't afford (in the metaphorical sense, not financial) to go without treatment for months before getting approved.
Mental health care in the US has a lot of problems, and I hope we fix them, but there's no comparison if you're looking at other countries.
[0] Don't forget that many of these conditions also affect a person's ability to make it through the months-long process in the first place, so telling them "you'll have to jump through a series of hoops for a year before you can get treated" is basically equivalent to refusing to treat them.