We've been down that route. They really are NOT providing good care. I have a cousin that is a physician in Canada. He has repeatedly confirmed that as a patient, you simply CANNOT walk in to a clinic and be seen for most common conditions. Wait lists are the norm, care is RATIONED out. YOU are literally denying that reality. It's the same in the UK. Months ago we had this discussion, and I posted the wait times and higher death rates from various (common) diseases in the UK and their socialized system. Plain facts, and yet you conveniently forget it. Fewer emergency surgeries, more deaths in British hospitals vs U.S. "When patients in England or the U.S. have abdominal emergencies like appendicitis or a ruptured aneurysm, half as many in England get surgery and many more die, a new study suggests. Deaths in the hospital were significantly higher in England for all seven types of abdominal emergencies analyzed in the study, suggesting that some of these deaths might be attributable to not having received surgery to correct the problem, researchers write in Annals of Surgery." "Patients in England, for example, were 4.25 times as likely as those in the U.S. to receive noncorrective care for ruptured aortic aneurysm and 8.53 times as likely with appendicitis." The US system is FAR from perfect, but everyone thinking "make it free for everyone" has zero concept of how that would turn out (mass physician retirements, shortages of critical medicine, delayed surgeries, etc.). It's the whole "keep your doctor" pitch we heard for Obamacare, and we know how THAT turned out (the vast majority could NOT keep their doctor - for the record).
I'm honestly curious. Why would you want to live the US? Especially since you can't get good healthcare here. Living here could literally kill you. I wouldn't stay if I thought that.
HA HA HA. They don't even have any citations for sources on that "article" (more a blog post). It quotes other "news articles". No scientific studies of any kind cited.
California's vaccination campaign started off quite slow but the pace has picked up considerably: Bloomberg - Are you a robot? Mr. Uujjj's elderly family members finally got their first shots, in Alameda and Los Angeles Counties. Yay!
This is not an anonymous website (Newsweek), but they might not agree with you: Best Specialized Hospitals in the World, Heart Disease: 1 Cleveland Clinic Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute Cleveland, OH United States 2 Mayo Clinic - Rochester Department of Cardiovascular Medicine Rochester, MN United States 3 Brigham And Women's Hospital Heart & Vascular Center Boston, MA United States 4 Massachusetts General Hospital Corrigan Minehan Heart Center Boston, MA United States 5 The Mount Sinai Hospital Mount Sinai Heart New York, NY United States 6 The Johns Hopkins Hospital Heart and Vascular Institute Baltimore, MD United States 7 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Smidt Heart Institute Los Angeles, CA United States 8 New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell NewYork-Presbyterian Heart New York, NY United States 9 Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg Krehl Klinik (Innere Medizin III) Heidelberg Germany 10 Royal Brompton Hospital Royal Brompton Hospital London United Kingdom 11 Hospital Universitario La Paz Cardiología Madrid Spain 12 Hôpital Universitaire Pitié Salpêtrière Département de Cardiologie Paris France 13 National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Suita Japan 14 NYU Langone Hospitals Cardiology and Heart Surgery New York, NY United States 15 Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania - Penn Presbyterian Primary Cardiology Philadelphia, PA United States 16 Helios Kliniken Herzzentrum Leipzig Leipzig Germany 17 University of Michigan Hospitals - Michigan Medicine Frankel Cardiovascular Center Ann Arbor, MI United States 18 Universitätsspital Zürich Universitäres Herzzentrum Zürich Zurich Switzerland 19 Herz- und Diabeteszentrum NRW Klinik für Allgemeine und Interventionelle Kardiologie Bad Oeynhausen Germany 20 Duke University Hospital Division of Cardiology Durham, NC United States Best Specialized Hospitals in the World, Cancer: 1 MD Anderson Cancer Center MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston, TX United States 2 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center New York, NY United States 3 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Boston, MA United States 4 Mayo Clinic - Rochester Department of Oncology Rochester, MN United States 5 Institut Gustave Roussy Institut Gustave Roussy Villejuif France 6 Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center Berlin Germany 7 Asan Medical Center Asan Cancer Institute Seoul South Korea 8 The Johns Hopkins Hospital The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center Baltimore, MD United States 9 Samsung Medical Center Samsung Comprehensive Cancer Center Seoul South Korea 10 The Princess Margaret Cancer Centre The Princess Margaret Cancer Centre Toronto Canada 11 IEO - Istituto Europeo di Oncologia IEO - Istituto Europeo di Oncologia Milan Italy 12 Seoul National University Hospital SNU Cancer Hospital Seoul South Korea 13 The Royal Marsden Hospital - London The Royal Marsden Hospital - London London United Kingdom 14 Hospital Universitario La Paz Department of Oncology Madrid Spain 15 Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori Milan Italy 16 National Cancer Center Hospital National Cancer Center Hospital Tokyo Japan 17 Cleveland Clinic Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center Cleveland, OH United States 18 The Catholic University Of Korea - Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital Department of Oncology Seoul South Korea 19 Universitätsklinikum Köln Innere Medizin I Cologne Germany 20 Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron Department of Oncology Barcelona Spain
The US vaccination program is actually going pretty well right now. We can't compare ourselves to tiny countries like the UAE and Israel. For that matter, California can't be compared to tiny states like North Dakota either. mRNA is a new technology, and the manufacturing capacity and supply chain for mRNA vaccines is basically new. Given that, the pace of vaccination is as quick as we should have reasonably expected.
U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2019 | Commonwealth Fund How does the quality of the U.S. healthcare system compare to other countries? - Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker
That's nice, but how much does it cost to get treated at the hospitals in the states versus abroad? It's like you've never gotten a hospital bill...
I asked my doctor's office about this possibility, and got this reply: Based on the above, I am not going to pursue it.
That was not the case for the 25+ years I lived in Canada. Perhaps it has changed. As far as I can recall, the wait lists were for uncommon aliments.
Comparison of the healthcare systems in Canada and the United States - Wikipedia "As reported by the Health Council of Canada, a 2010 Commonwealth survey found that 39% of Canadians waited 2 hours or more in the emergency room, versus 31% in the U.S.; 43% waited 4 weeks or more to see a specialist, versus 10% in the U.S." "In the U.S., patients on Medicaid, the low-income government programs, can wait up to a maximum of 12 weeks to see specialists (12 weeks less than the average wait time in Canada)." Citations are there in Wiki.
It cost me about $2000 / month per employee average. So if the Government took it over, they would tax me $24,000 per employee plus "10% for the Big Guy". And I'd most likely get inferior care since 'pick your doctor' normally stops with social medicine systems. Money does not fly out a monkey's arse. Money is labor. You surrender some of your life in exchange for money. So if you make $100k a year, and somebody takes $100k from you, they took some of your life.
This took <60 seconds. England: "You also can't choose when and what services to use in cases where speed of access to diagnosis and treatment is particularly important, such as: emergency services Rapid Access Chest Pain Clinics, where you must be seen within the 2-week maximum waiting time cancer services, where you must be seen within the 2-week maximum waiting time maternity services mental health services"
Wait wait wait. A mom cannot pick her OB/GYN? My wife would have gone on a shooting spree if she was assigned a random OB.
This discussion is way off topic, but here in PA it was impossible for Medicaid patients to see even primary providers let alone specialists. If you have private insurance there is usually a wait but you will eventually be seen. The scumbag moneygrubbers and misogynist primary care and other local cardiologists would send all their Medicaid or self-pay patients to my wife because she isn't an asshole and would take anyone. Though she stopped accepting those from practices that refused to send any insured patients to her. And some of those doctors weren't rightwingers, just money obsessed so it isn't political ideology. It is all about money. Almost all non-insured/Medicaid patients used the ER for most care or went out of county to get care. Most doctors only cared about getting paid here. Things changed when most practices were bought out by the hospital systems that came to the county when our then only hospital here was on the brink of folding. Also every Canadian I know (all two of them) loves their health care plan and wouldn't change it. They accept waits as the cost of covering everyone. That is the case in Germany as well. In Canada the payer is all government (actually the Provinces in Canada), in Germany it is a hybrid of government and emloyer but the providers are mostly private. No one goes bankrupt from not being able to pay medical bills. Maybe in large cities there may be a "healthcare Market", but in most of America it is a monopoly. Anyway it is irrelevant as the healthcare system in the US is nearing collapse. Without huge government direct payments or a direct takeover many hospitals will just close. It is already happening in rural areas with hospitals closing. COVID almost closed our local hospitals in May when they had gone 7 weeks with no elective procedures. Talk about a wait list. And COVID isn't the end of pandemics. I was on a Healthcare panel for my then Congressman a couple years ago along with insurers, union reps, area medical providers, all the hospital chains and even a Libertarian physician. The Congressman a Democrat was against Universal Healthcare and we were told upfront that wasn't an option. We were charged with coming up with suggested changes to the ACA to make it work better and be more affordable. Everyone but the Libertarian acknowledged that the only solution to bringing costs and quality of care under control was Universal healthcare. Even the health system that also was a major health insurer was ok with it as long as they could be capitized based on volume of patient care. Even the Libertarian was supportive of most of our other recommendations which included many ways to rein in pharmaceutical costs, especially patents and even a public option for the ACA exchange. I was shocked that the union reps were willing to give up their Union negotiated insurance plans which they said were becoming unsustainable. You need to get out of your bubble.
Coincidentally, I also have a cousin that is a doctor in Canada. I haven't probed him much on how things go up north, but I do recall him saying something like this to me long ago: "For basic needs, healthcare is easier and way more affordable in Canada... But if you have some exotic illness and need some specialized equipment you better get a load of cash and head down to USA..." He also said some of the more skilled specialist doctors move to the states because they can make a lot more money... OK, let's bring this (sort of) back on topic to COVID: Amid Pandemic, FDA Seizes Cheaper Drugs From Canada Trump Approves Final Plan to Import Drugs From Canada ‘for a Fraction of the Price’ Canada Blocks Export Of Medications In Short Supply In Response To Trump Plan