[stordoff]

If you need emergency care, you don't have to wait (UK). My grandfather had a fall recently where he hit his head, and had a brain CT within two hours (he fell about 1am; he was admitted, assessed, treated, and discharged by 6am). A family member had an urgent referral for a mammogram last Thursday, and was assessed and given the results today.

Routine GPs appointments can generally be gotten within a week, and emergency[1] appointments (where we wait until the GP is done at the end of the surgery, and are then seen) if the triage nurse determines you need to be seen sooner can be gotten on the day. You also have the option of speaking to your local pharmacist, many of whom can prescribe medication for certain conditions if appropriate, or otherwise point you at suitable over-the-counter primary care.

A number of places also have walk-in centres for minor ailments where you don't need an appointment, and they generally have long opening hours (8am-10pm, 365 days a year for my local one). Urgent dental care is also available 24/7 in many places.

You may have to wait longer for non-emergency / non-priority / time-insensitive treatments - my routine MRIs have a lead time of about 8 weeks, and a specialist referral can be something in the region of 6-12 weeks (sometimes longer) - but I think that's a fair trade off. You do of course also have the option of paying for private care as well if you don't want to wait (often NHS doctors / semi-retired doctors working evenings in my limited experience).

[1] bit of a misnomer really - urgent but not critical is more accurate

[gambiting]

If you have a condition now you will be seen the same day even if it's not an emergency. I had a high fever for a couple of weeks and finally decided to see a GP - got an appointment in 2 hours of the call to the surgery, GP told me to go to the ambulatory care department at the nearest hospital(nothing to do with emergency care there) and I was admitted and seen pretty much within an hour of arriving. Spent several days over the next month in and out of the hospital, had some treatments done = no bill was ever produced.

Also when my wife had to get an MRI done going private wasn't that much quicker than NHS - you still had to wait a couple weeks through her private health insurance at work.

[gamblor956]

My wait for a routine MRI is about 2 hours....

My wait for a specialist referral is 2-3 days and any delay is usually on my end.

There are just some things the US healthcare system accidentally does much better than Europe.

[gambiting]

So you want to tell me that from the point when you ring your healtcare provider saying "I want to get an MRI done", to you lying down on the table being scanned the time is around 2 hours?