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Comment by LegitShady | Hacker News Reader

Many countries have far worse standards of care than the US.

I live in Canada, and waited more than a year for a specialist. It took me 2 years to find a family doctor with decent reviews who was accepting patients . I needed an MRI once and the wait was measured in months. I waited four months for just a cortisone shot, before the pandemic.

I'm not claiming one system is better than another. Certainly if you're wealthy and have good benefits in the US, the standard of care is much much higher.

On the flipside, if you need cancer care in Canada you're probably not going to need to declare bankruptcy.

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> Many countries have far worse standards of care than the US.

I'll need a citation for that.

When a country has 29 million people without health insurance [1], and medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy, I think it's safe to say the average standard of care is way, way lower than Canada, Australia, Germany, etc. where literally every person gets care.

[1] https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-facts-about-th...

It really depends on what you mean by "standard of care".

Yes, there are a lot of people without coverage in the USA, and there are a lot of people in deep medical debt.

However, when it comes to the actual quality of the healthcare facilities, the USA does have some of the best in the world (CHOP, UPenn, Mayo Clinic, etc.). The fact that it's extremely expensive/overpriced is a different issue.

It’s just distributed weirdly and almost designed to be difficult to navigate.

If you’re poor and in a blue state you get free healthcare comparable to the rest of the developed world. But go over the 30k/year threshold and you’re getting a high-deductible plan and a random number generator for a hospital billing department. Then once you get a job at FAANG and you get great healthcare.

It depends how you look at standards of care. Despite medical coverage gaps the US still has the highest or among the highest 5 year survival rates for most forms of cancer.

I think you have to actively ignore the last three sentences that I wrote to think this is a reasonable reply.

your reply to this comment is too many deep - I can't reply.

My reply is a sample size of one because I actively don't speak for other people, on purpose. That isn't a flaw in my argument, that's intentional. If there was one delay in a health procedure it wouldn't be of note. But there are lots of delays, and my doctor needs 2-3 months notice for an appointment, and only wants to discuss one thing per appointment so he can maintain the # of appointments he needs to do throughout a day by not making any one to long, and get paid again for another consult, and he's a good doctor (for real).

But again, you have to actively ignore the last 3 sentences of the post you replied to, for this to be a reasonable and in good faith response to what I wrote. I have no interest in engaging with people who don't read what I write, while telling me what I have to think.

I live in Canada.... (and Australia)

Your reply is anecdotal with a sample size of one.

You need to look at how healthcare works for everyone in a society. It's not OK when the mega rich have it great, the middle class OK and literally 30 million people have nothing.

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