[pigsty]

> In countries with state controlled healthcare, service is rationed.

Americans really love eating up this meme. I can get scans any time in Japan and I never wait. If doctors think it’s an emergency, they’ll do whatever scan is necessary then and there. If not, they’ll pull out a calendar and ask me to pick any day that’s convenient for me.

Meanwhile my friends in the US are waiting months for basic shit. My dad visited me in Japan in December and had to visit a dentist for emergency care and was offered to do surgery on the spot. He decided to delay it until he returned to the US. The earliest available appointment in his area is next month.

It’s insanity seeing Americans parrot this stuff. It’s North Korea-level propaganda. Hell, it’s worse. North Koreans have no access to the outside world so you can’t blame them. Americans just actively turn away anything in favor of “well a guy who knows a guy said he saw a guy on tv who heard about a guy who once heard a story about a guy from a guy in another country said those people wait a long time for health care!”

But the strangest thing is countless Americans, including myself, will pop into any thread to talk about how they have endless bad experiences with health care in the US (I’ve been forced to wait forever and then still charged out the ass because my health insurance was randomly rejected), while most bad experiences with other countries is seventh hand info. Americans complaining about health care in countries they’ve never been to far outnumbers people with first hand info—usually the ones with firsthand info are saying “it’s pretty good out there”

[dagw]

Americans really love eating up this meme.

As someone who lives in Sweden I can assure you that the 'meme' is 100% true here. There is no way you are getting an MRI unless it's literally life and death, without either waiting 4-6 month or having private health insurance.

[kwhitefoot]

As someone who lives in Norway (permanent resident) I'm quite surprised that Sweden is so bad. A couple of years ago I visited my GP complaining of a small hard swelling on my foot. he said it's probably just a ganglion and that he could fix it if it didn't improve by itself but that he would like an MRI scan first to check exactly what it looked like. It was obviously not even slightly urgent but I still got the scan with a month. In Norway such scans are normally performed at a specialist company (Unilabs in this case) even though it is all paid for by the health national service (except for about 150 NOK egenandel, that's about 15 USD copay)

https://unilabs.no/

[Auracle]

I'm in the US and have had multiple MRI scans happen either the same day as an appointment or the next. Compared to that, even a month seems pretty long.

[kwhitefoot]

It wasn't urgent, I wasn't in pain, there was no rush. If it is sufficiently urgent it's possible to get an MRI within minutes of arriving at a major hospital.

[Auracle]

It was the same for me. It was a "there's technically a small chance it might be a tumor of some kind, so we'll check just to make sure" type of deal.

[vidarh]

Consider that Americans tax payers pay about $5k/year on average for Medicare and Medicaid that most of them don't (yet) qualify for before they even starting to pay those private insurances. People in most other countries can pay a lot privately before getting close to what the average American tax payer pays for healthcare.

The point is that it's an option that is available. Most people in Europe just has a base level health coverage that means most of us don't feel it's justified to take up additional cover.

[dagw]

Yea, don't get me wrong. At the end of the day there is no way I would want to trade the Swedish system for the US system, no matter how flawed I find the Swedish system.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Consider that your experience is not everyone’s experience in America. My American wife was able to get emergency dental care within two hours at a dentist who she’d never seen before.

My Canadian uncle had to wait months for cancer specialists.

[lostlogin]

> Consider that your experience is not everyone’s experience in America

They we should use averages. Compare costs, or life expectancy, or some other measure.

[xyzzyz]

Life expectancy in US has more to do with very bad lifestyles of Americans, mostly obesity and drug abuse, than with quality of healthcare, which in fact is superior. We are great at keeping alive very unhealthy people. As a food for thought, consider that Japanese-Americans have higher life expectancy than Japanese in Japan.

[lostlogin]

> Life expectancy in US has more to do with very bad lifestyles of Americans, mostly obesity and drug abuse, than with quality of healthcare

Obesity, diet and drug abuse are healthcare problems. Dying is a healthcare problem, and that’s why I suggest using average lifespan as a crude measure of population health. Population health is something a unified healthcare system should be tackling, with obesity and addiction help and care.

US healthcare might be superior for some, but population health is poor relative to the cost paid. The expense is spectacular when compared to other countries.

[xyzzyz]

My point is that the reason the American population health is bad not deficiencies in what people typically understand as healthcare system (that is, hospitals, clinics and doctors). If prices tomorrow went down by 90%, and healthcare availability skyrocketed, we’d still have population that’s unhealthily obese and addicted to drugs. At the same time, countries that are much poorer, and have much worse access to healthcare, often have much superior population-level health.

Not all health problems are healthcare problems.

[sva_]

Good for japanese folks. Here in Germany you wait months to see a specialist if it isn't an emergency, and it's getting worse.

[morsch]

Totally depends. Mostly on where you are in Germany, and to a degree whether you're willing to call a few different doctors. An acquaintance with a shoulder injury got an appointment with an orthopedic specialist within a week, who recommended an MRI. The second hospital she called just happened to have a free MRI slot the next morning.

Personally, I never had to have an MRI, but when I needed to see a specialist for acute back pain, I got an appointment (and a fix) within 24h. I have never in my life waited months for an appointment with any specialist.

This is all on public health insurance (and without any additional charge, ie. the MRI was "free"). Relatives tell me it's much more difficult in other places in Germany; I sometimes wonder if they should just get an appointment here, Germany isn't that big.