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Comment by lazyasciiart | Hacker News Reader

Wow. Cataract surgery? Australia provides cataract surgery free under socialised healthcare. The big concern is that some patients wait up to 2 1/2 years after diagnosis for the surgery, and that indigenous Australians lack access to medical care for even diagnostics. But to just say, we know what's wrong, and how to fix it, and have available doctors nearby, but nah the kid just gets to grow up blind? What the fuck.

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Well for poor people in the US, there is Medicaid. For old people there is Medicare.

Most people have health insurance in the US (92.5% of Californians have health insurance, for example).

Things are not as bad in the US as people often claim.

8% of Californians not having health insurance is an absolute unmitigated travesty, and we should be ashamed to call it “not bad”

You know Medicaid doesn’t cover all poor people right? You do get that we are talking about a concrete instance of a child in the US who spent most of their life unable to get cataract surgery because they couldn’t pay for it?

>and that indigenous Australians lack access to medical care for even diagnostics.

If it is anything like the situation in New Zealand, there is no lack of access but a lack of uptake. You cannot infer from lower rates of uptake that there is a lack of access.

It is lack of access. Unlike New Zealand, Australia is very big. Many Australian indigenous people live very remotely where there are no medical facilities at all.

That's America for you.

And like half the rest of the world.

Did you even watch the video in question? It was very much not based entirely in the US.

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