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by nradov
525 days ago
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Pretty much all developed countries do fairly well on rapid access to emergency care. The queues are more of an issue with elective care. Socialized healthcare systems generally impose artificial supply limits to hold down costs, which is why we often see affluent Canadians come to the USA as medical tourists to skip the queue for certain procedures like MRI scans. While socialized systems might be better overall, there are certain drawbacks. Outside of certain screenings, there is no proven benefit to yearly physical exams for healthy adults. It's a waste of resources and doesn't improve patient outcomes. Some people seem to want those annual exams, but they aren't justified on an evidence-based medicine basis. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/a-checkup-for-the-checku... https://www.healthcare.gov/coverage/preventive-care-benefits... |
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I was talking to a taxi driver in SF a few years ago. He said he was in a car accident once, and his car rolled and flipped upside down. The police & an ambulance showed up. Even though he seemed mostly ok they still wanted take him to hospital. But he couldn't afford the ambulance or the hospital - without health insurance, it would have bankrupted him. So he told them all to get lost.
In telling the story, he got kind of angry about it - I think he was mad how pushy the police and ambulance people were about the whole thing.
Thats vaguely horrifying to me. A man who was just in a car accident should never be put in a situation like this. If you're wealthy in america, yeah - you get top notch medical treatment. But I'm not sure I'd call that a successful system for emergency care.