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Comment by david927 | Hacker News Reader

I'm convinced that healthcare is an impossible problem to solve.

You need to travel more. The German system, for example, is very old, very simple and works very well.

I like the healthcare situation in Germany but normally you would have to wait months for a surgery, if it's not very critical. An appointment with a specialist can also mean waiting weeks or months.

That's not that uncommon in the US either though. My mother had an issue that required seeing a dermatologist, and just getting in to see a dermatologist was initially going to take about 6 months. After calling for a month, she was eventually able to get her wait down to 2.

I don't know where this idea comes from. I'm American but my experience with healthcare in European countries where I've lived (England, France, Czech Republic and Switzerland) is unparalleled. I had my gall bladder removed (non-critical) in France; the wait was two weeks and everything about the experience was impeccable.

Weeks is not bad... Months is. And as you said, it's for non-critical stuff.

A mixed system - government-managed for important things, with extra healthcare you can pay on top, like the one we have here in Uruguay, seems to work best.

As far as I can tell, we have the best healthcare for anything but special/rare cases which would be best served by a top specialist from the US or Germany. For the remaining 99% of cases it beats any system I know of.

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