[archie2]

Different systems have different problems. In Canada, some people die due to wait times for treatable conditions, or are forced to wait so long that their condition worsens to be beyond repair and they are permanently debilitated. Over 50k people leave Canada per year to get their healthcare in the United States instead.

[rosser]

The trope that wait times are materially worse in single-payer systems is precisely that: a trope. You do not have to dig hard to find examples of wait-times measured in months to get diagnostic procedures scheduled, and where I live — the San Francisco Bay Area — the wait time for an initial consultation with, e.g., a dermatologist has been about the same, for as long as I've lived here. I know doctors who work in hospitals who've had to wait months for a breast cancer scan.

A thing that sucks in both systems can not legitimately be used to argue against only one of them.

[archie2]

That's because California is a terribly run state, and one third of your population is on Medi-Cal. You literally have the same problems as Canada.

[FireBeyond]

Here's me in Washington where I had a severely injured wrist after a car accident, was advised to get PT immediately...

... and had no PT within the county with a <10 week wait time.

I guess we're close to Canada though, so maybe it's contagious?

[archie2]

People wait 6 months or more in Canada.

[rosser]

O...kay?

So, how about all of the not-California parts of the US that have the same kinds of problems (which is, last I checked, more or less "all of them")?

Because, the thing is, only one of my examples was, you know, from California.

[viraptor]

That has to be weighed against both the wait times in the US and the amount of people who do not even try to go to the doctor to check out potential treatable conditions. Sure, the wait may (haven't verified) be longer, but I've never heard "can't afford to go to the doctor to check it out" / "don't call an ambulance, I don't have an insurance" from people outside of the US.

So sure, the amount of patients is pretty much guaranteed to be higher once they can afford the care. If you optimise only for wait times, then the obvious solution is to have no doctors and 0 wait time.

[archie2]

Ambulance rides are not socialized in Canada, and people skip going to the doctor for all sorts of reason. Stubborness is not an exclusively American trait.

[arcticbull]

Yes they are they’re just not free, it’s capped to discourage unnecessary use.

[ineedasername]

Maybe if you have really great insurance in the US wait times aren't that bad, but the vast majority do not have great insurance, and wait times can still be many months to get in to see a specialist. Generally speaking critical care in Canada is not something you have to wait for. Cancer treatment and surgery, it's when you need it. Wait times for some things may be longer: Hip replacement big the issue isn't acute, for example.

Whether or no wait time varies greatly, the overall quality of care can be assessed in terms of patient outcomes life expectancy which are generally very similar while spending significantly less money. In fact many countries with socialized healthcare actually surpass the US on some factors like infant mortality, in part because the US has a higher poverty rate and those in poverty have less access to healthcare.

[DanBC]

> In Canada, some people die due to wait times for treatable conditions

Do you think this doesn't happen in the US?

If you're about to say "but in the US we can pay for healthcare", well that's true everywhere. Anyone with enough money can pay for healthcare.

[archie2]

In Canada, conditions covered by the socialized plans are illegal to be treated by private practice. More than 50k people leave Canada every year to get treatment in the US to either avoid wait times or the government refuses to pay for the procedures.

[DanBC]

> More than 50k people leave Canada every year to get treatment

Yes, like I said, anybody who can afford it can travel to get healthcare elsewhere.

Travelling from US to UK and paying 150% of the English tariff price for health care turns out to often be cheaper than getting care in the US, even if you include the travel costs.

[arcticbull]

[citation needed]

[archie2]

The information is readily available - you could have taken 5 seconds and searched for it yourself instead of leaving a sarcastic unconstructive comment.

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wa...

[Forbo]

The site you link to mentions nothing about deaths nor about people going to the United States for treatment, including in the linked PDFs. Perhaps you could have tried to address the claims made instead of leaving a sarcastic unconstructive comment.

[DanBC]

Don't forget that the US's rapid access to all the healthcare the patient wants leads to huge amounts of harm in the form of over-testing, over-diagnosis, and over-treatment.

[archie2]

Are you actually arguing that people wanting too much healthcare is a bad thing?

[DanBC]

Yes. It's not just me, it's doctors too.

Take 1000 men over 50 and give them PSA screening for prostate cancer for about 11 years.

Take 1000 different men over 50 and don't give them PSA screening for prostate cancer for about 11 years.

For the group without screening about 7 die from prostate cancer. But for the group who do have screening we see the same number of deaths. The screening hasn't prevented deaths from prostate cancer.

The group without screening didn't have any false alarms and didn't have any needless biopsies. 160 men in the group with screening had false alarms and unnecessary biopsies. 20 men in the screening group had treatment (which can include incontinence and impotence) for non-progressive prostate cancer.

https://www.harding-center.mpg.de/en/fact-boxes/early-detect...

Over-testing leads to over-diagnosis which leads to over treatment, and harm is caused at each step.

Margaret McCartney or Gerd Giggerenzer talk about this.

[arcticbull]

It absolutely can be. The reason you don’t get colonoscopies until you’re in you’re 40s isn’t because they’re not fun. It’s because the risk of a false positive times the negative consequences thereof outweighs the benefit of you finding something early. People are wierd gooey lumps of random stuff. Scan anyone and you’ll find something out of place. The vast majority is irrelevant until some break even point where it’s not. Hence the recommendations and guidelines.

[anigbrowl]

Just like you could have picked a credible source instead of a libertarian think tank. You are surely aware that the burden of proof for an assertion is on the proponent, not the disputant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Institute