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.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

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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?

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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?

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.

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.

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 $.