anyone else strongly consider leaving due to garbage US healthcare?

[Anonymous]

And yet everyone wants an MRI - one PP wants to rush to surgery without even trying a non- surgical option. The clinical Practice guidelines for most surgeries that are orthopedic and nature is always to try non-surgical options first. That is based on the best available evidence. No one wants to work to be healthy- most people are overweight, have terrible nutrition and don’t exercise.

Healthcare is becoming more like schools and the safety net for all things that are wrong in the community. It is not necessarily a bad thing but it costs $.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And yet everyone wants an MRI - one PP wants to rush to surgery without even trying a non- surgical option. The clinical Practice guidelines for most surgeries that are orthopedic and nature is always to try non-surgical options first. That is based on the best available evidence. No one wants to work to be healthy- most people are overweight, have terrible nutrition and don’t exercise.

Healthcare is becoming more like schools and the safety net for all things that are wrong in the community. It is not necessarily a bad thing but it costs $.

I am the PP with the hip issue. My point was not to go straight to surgery, but rather the wait time to get to that point. Every step in that process was at least a month wait. For those who think we have healthcare on demand, I beg to differ. Once my MRI came back as a really bad problem, why did I have to wait a couple weeks to go to the doctor for him to tell me that it was bad and needed surgery? Why did it take me 6 weeks of waiting to have it done? Again, I could barely walk the entire time this was happening.

Other countries complain they have terrible waits, but I’d argue that the waiting time in the US is ridiculously long for a country that supposedly has amazing healthcare. If I have to wait, then at least make me not pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of doing so.

[Anonymous]

Lotta health care lobbyists in the DMV posting in this thread trying to convince you the US doesn't have trash healthcare.

They're not fooling anyone.

[Anonymous]

Healthcare should not be tied to employment. It stunts entrepreneurship and is prohibitively expensive for most people. We are self-employed and pay for our own health insurance. It’s almost $2000 per month for a family of four with a high deductible. Even after the deductible is met costs are not paid 100%. Yes, this is garbage healthcare.

[Anonymous]

Hilarious. I have Tricare, and usually pay out of pocket for private care. You people wanting government healthcare are INSANE.

[Anonymous]

Good idea! What country whiter than the USA are you looking to move to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Healthcare should not be tied to employment. It stunts entrepreneurship and is prohibitively expensive for most people. We are self-employed and pay for our own health insurance. It’s almost $2000 per month for a family of four with a high deductible. Even after the deductible is met costs are not paid 100%. Yes, this is garbage healthcare.

Ugh the costs are awful, but we do get high quality care for it (in my family.) I’m not sure what can be done about the premiums. They just keep going up.

We pay $1650 for myself and two children for a no-deductible plan. It’s great care, but wow that’s a lot of money every month!

[Anonymous]

US health system is great till you have to use it.

Doctors are over worked and do not spend any time with their patients. They miss a lot of stuff and it is very hard to get an appointment. It takes 6-8 weeks to get an appointment unless you are seeing someone new to the practice. There is no follow up.

Insurance companies deny everything they can. They hope you do not continue to seek reimbursement after the first denial. They make it very hard to talk to anyone at the company. It’s all about making money which means charging as much as they can and not covering anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
We are French, and considering returning to France when we're older. We can afford US healthcare, but if we want a great nursing home... I don't know. More research is probably needed on our part. Also there's the family and cultural aspect of it - we might want to be closer to our roots then.

I'd like to warn you, however, that in some instances the standard of care in the USA is better than elsewhere, even in developed countries of Europe and Asia. My husband is a doctor, and we've seen how the US has very slowly and gradually outstripped major European countries in certain protocols and exams. Not all the time, not for everything. But it's something to think about. A wealthy person in the US will usually have better medical care than anywhere else.

Please don't be fooled by broken bones incidents in various countries. X-rays, resettings and casts are some of the most basic and easy medical acts - you can get them the world over, and the quality will be pretty much the same. But there are thousands of blood and other tests, and thousands of new or costly-to-manufacture medications, that are only easily available in the US! Many conditions will therefore not be treated the same elsewhere. For example, I'm on Synthroid, brand name of thyroid hormones for a very common hypothyroid condition. France does not sell Synthroid. The European continent mostly has the generic levothyroxine, which works fine - except I prefer and do better on Synthroid, as it's more accurately dosed.

It's a lot more complex than you might think.

I've had a similar experience. In my home country, treatment is often left in the hands of GPs who don't have enough experience with complex conditions. If there are specialists, there aren't many of them, and you may not have the power to switch to a better one if unhappy with a particular specialist. You might wait months and months to get an appointment allocated to you. My mother would go into specialist appointments and often times find a new doctor or students who were only learning about her complex condition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain where EDs in the US have no wait times? I work in a hospital and we have sometimes ppl waiting two days to be seen. How is that different than Europe?

This must be joke?

I waited two days at University of Maryland in Baltimore because the number of heroin users who were OD'ing came before me....and I was having a stroke! I didn't have the common symptoms so wasn't triaged correctly but still, it happens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. I got a job with excellent health insurance. I can basically go anywhere and just pay a $30-40 copay.

But if for some reason you couldn't work or you lost that job, then what? Aren't you angry that we're held hostage to employers because of health care?

I'd figure it out. Husband's job, or use COBRA coverage until I got another job with excellent health benefits. Health insurance is part of a job package. I don't understand why people blindly accept jobs at places that offer crappy insurance, or who buy cheap insurance that doesn't cover much. There's literally probably hundreds of thousands of jobs in the DC area with incredibly cheap, excellent insurance benefits.

[Anonymous]

Spend a day in a Canadian hospital. Especially in maritime Canada - shit health care, long waits, and the hospital is more like 1980 when you walk in. Horrible waits for specialists. Socialized medicine is not what we want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go ahead and move to Canada, or Europe....enjoy your months-long wait to see your doctor for a max of 15 mins.

If an American moves to these countries - do they even qualify for national health care as a non-citizen?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op where are you thinking of going?

Singapore, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Germany, UK.....hell, it don't matter if you even have insurance. You can afford to pay out of pocket abroad because it is nowhere near as stupidly expensive as the US.

Have you looked at Canada's wait times? Plus, contrary to popular belief everything is not covered. Yes, you can go to the doctor or hospital and not get a horrendous bill. But you wait to get in, and a lot of peripheral care is not covered unless you have decent private insurance. There's a reason Canadians are willing to go to the U.S. for some things. I know a 20 year old woman who is having multiple seizures per week. She has an 8 - 10 week wait for an MRI. Your sleep study would not be covered, and you would wait.

People love to say this. Do you know people experiencing these so-called long wait times other than your Boomer friends who will complain about anything?

Fact: People over 55 love to complain about how everything is wrong with the world today. My parents love to complain about their health care in Canada. Like how they had to wait 8 months for each of my (obese) father's knee replacements. But the truth was that he lives in Florida for half the year, and still travels for work, so that was literally the only time it worked for his travel schedule. But they are boomers so they complained to everyone who would listen about how long the wait was. Had he just taken the first available appointment, it would have been no more than 3 months wait.

Fast forward a few years and dad finally takes his shortness of breath seriously and gets the doctor to do all the heart tests. Three weeks to an angiogram, and then 3.5 weeks from then until quadruple bypass surgery. He was in the moderate risk pool; had he been higher risk he would have been in surgery within the week.

In short, in my experience the only people complaining about wait times in Canada are old people who complain about anything; just like the maga old people in the US who want government to get out of their medicare.

Well, the 20 year old with seizures.

I'm Canadian. I live the wait times, and I'm not a boomer.

8 months for an MRI to rule out MS, before Covid.
A year plus to see a physiatrist because I need new leg braces. Growing kids wait just as long so they go months without braces they can wear, undoing any progress made.
My ds (31) can't even get in to a psychologist even after we offered to pay for it.
Kids needing speech therapy are currently waiting 12 - 18 months.
There are currently no family doctors taking new patients where I live.
Over a year's wait for rotator cuff surgery, the 38 year old waiting can't work.
My best friend waited 6 months to see an audiologist when her hearing aid wasn't working properly. She's deaf.


That's off the top of my head.

Yes... Canadian health care is crap!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yet my family in the UK slams the NHS. Says the care is awful and the waits are long for anything. Not sure if that is preferable to me.

Have you told them how the US system works, and how much it costs? I'm sure they would prefer their system.

My spouse is a Brit, and we have these conversations with their family all the time. Yep, they gripe about their system, but say ours is worse.

I just paid over $3000 for my DC's hospital bills for a fracture. In the UK, the care would mostly be free of charge.