[busterarm]

Soviet bread lines were first come first serve too and I don't know any former Soviet state residents gushing about how great those times were. Those 3 MRI machines that I mentioned had to service 1/3 of the population of Canada at the time -- about 10 million people.

Saying "oh that's just first come first serve" is totally missing the fact that the service level can be woefully inadequate.

What's really crazy is that I live in a small city of about 100k people and there are about a dozen hospitals that I can choose from, first-class trauma centers, multiple renowned research centers (affiliated with three different universities). None of that is counting all of the urgent care and other facilities in the area. I have an order of magnitude more options for treatment than I did when living in New York City...

The only way I could open myself up to more/better care options would be to move to Texas.

[oezi]

Well the US spends 17% of GDP on health care and Canada only spends 12% while life expectancy in the US is at least 2 years less.

You get superb care for the rich and mediocre care for the average guy and very little for the rest.

[tptacek]

Life expectancy is, perhaps counterintuitively, not highly connected to health care. The major factors contributing to the gap between US and Canadian life expectancy are car accidents, homicides, and cardiovascular disease, and CVD differs wildly depending where you are in the country; there are states that lead the G7 in CVD outcomes, and others (like Mississippi and Alabama) that look like developing-world countries.

None of this is to defend the US system in particular, which wildly overspends on the outcomes it achieves. But generally, when it comes to managing chronic and acute health conditions, those outcomes are very good.

[tensor]

Except that comprehensive studies, in contrast to anecdotes, show that people in countries with public health care in fact DO get good treatment generally. So while maybe in rare circumstances you could have to wait too long, the vast majority of the time your life is not put at risk by a little wait.

[contagiousflow]

If only there was a way to change and influence the use of public funds...