Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by vkou 19 days ago
Plenty of wait times in the US. Go to any clinic that accepts walk-ins in the afternoon, and you'll see a long line of sick, insured people waiting.

Getting a specialist in a major metro area will easily take 6-9 months. Family doctors? Anything to do with mental health? Good luck.

Oh, and if you think the situation is better in flyover country... It might be. You might have a world-class pediatric hospital in your zip code[1]. Or, more likely, you will have to drive 80 miles to a roach-motel-grade one. Turns out that poor people in real America don't have a lot of money, and it's not economical to provide them with any healthcare beyond leeching and bloodletting and four pills of Tylenol that will cost them $50.

Good luck getting an abortion, too.

---

[1] You'll still get fraudulent bills sent to you by vendors who claim to have performed non-existent services on you, while the hospital won't even be able to tell you if those vendors even work for the hospital. Ask me how I know. (After days of digging, it turns out that no, they don't.)

---

Look. It's entirely possible to in theory have a privatized system that works. Also, as Homer Simpson famously said, 'In theory, communism works.'

Unfortunately, we live in the real world, not a theoretical one.