[GreenPlastic]

This is what scares me about the push for universal health care in the US. For the majority of the hacker news crowd with employer sponsored care, they'll see a regression to the mean and poorer overall care. I do think there needs to be an option for the poor, but not at the expense of world class care with no wait times.

This is all anecdotal, but here is my experience with the Canadian system:

1. Uncle died of cancer and waited 8 months for chemo and never got it.

2. Almost no family doctors are taking new patients in Vancouver. You can't see a specialist directly unless referred by a family doctor.

3. When mother in law needed a breast scan, we called like 10 different hospitals to ask if they had a breast MRI machine because the wait times were so long and we only found 1 machine.

4. She was also mis-diagnosed with asthma for 3 years because they didn't have the diagnostic tools. We sent her to an allergist in the US and it turned out it was allergies. We've taken to seeing doctors in the US to get referrals to specialists in Canada.

5. Wouldn't let a friend see an OB until 23 weeks and she was bleeding. Friend didn't think it was a thing and we were appalled.

6. Grandfather was mistreated for a low platelet count.

7. No private rooms - if you're deathly ill you're in a hospital bed next to others who are deathly ill.

[interlocutor]

Why can't we have a combination? Basic free healthcare for those who can't afford to pay for it, and premium care for those who can afford private insurance.

[grey-area]

Almost every market in the world has this - if you want and can afford private healthcare, or your employer pays for it, no-one is going to stop you using it. Medicaid alone is more expensive and less effective than the public healthcare systems in other countries and still doesn't provide universal coverage.

[GreenPlastic]

It'd be great if there was both but it's not allowed in Canada so the net effect is you get less tail outcomes, both positive and negative. For folks in the US with insurance, it's a big drop in the standard of care and for folks without, it's a big improvement.

One other thing that's not often mentioned is the best doctors tend to move. When my grandfather was super sick, he was next to a man who's 3 sons were there looking after him. They were all doctors and came to the US to practice because Canadian salaries were so low (they too were ranting about how bad the care there was).

[n4r9]

That's what the UK has. In fact the free healthcare is better than basic. It's generally very good quality, to the extent that many people don't buy private even if they can afford it.

[snikeris]

Medicaid?