[quasse]

> For your example about single payer, with that scheme costs will likely be much lower but on the flip side, we also would not get immediate access to care (that is you can't attend a doctors appt within 72 hrs of scheduling)

I am curious, why is this accepted as a "given" of single payer health care? I know it's a a problem in Canada and Britain, but those systems seem to be victims of something between neglect and outright political sabotage.

As a side note, my partner is currently about half way through a two month wait to see her GP in the good old US of A (on United Health Care). I would love to only have to wait a few days.

[HDThoreaun]

Incentives matter. If theres no downside to using a service people will use the service more. Single payer removes much of the downside to using medical care so people will look for medical care where they wouldnt before. To solve this single payer systems need ways to stop people from receiving care they dont need, and heuristics are imperfect so that will stop some people who actually do need care too.

[DangitBobby]

We can use a designed system of allocation instead of defaulting to the class system.

[kaikai]

Right? It took me a year and a half to find a GP accepting new patients and get my first appointment. I’m in the US. Getting pre approvals and appealing denials has delayed my care multiple times in other situations.

[AngryData]

What he said is true, if you have a lot of money, which is the part people always seem to miss. But people get sucked into the propaganda because they personally haven't had to deal with it, or themselves or their family have the money to bypass such problems. Every time someone complains, people with money will dispute it because they themselves have not had or seen that experience and deny there is a problem at all because they personally don't have that problem.

And HN itself is full of people doing way better financially than the average American with better insurance than the majority of people, so even here many people will have a much better impression of and access to the US healthcare system than the average person in the US actually does.