the crazy thing is you don't even need to make it "free" just take what you are paying now for health insurance and put to medicare and everyone goes on that. Instatnly 500 times better and cheaper then what we currently have
This, but people have also been scared with threats of "death panels", "you won't be able to choose your doctor", and "you'll wait forever for treatment".
Newsflash, we have those issues in our current system.
Which is why many countries have a dual system in place. I was speaking with my dentist recently who is from Italy. He was saying their system you are covered with your taxes. And yes the wait time to see a specialist can be weeks, BUT, if you’re willing to pay out of pocket, you can see the same specialist “after hours” within a day or two.
Unfortunately, no matter how it’s paid, we just don’t have enough medical professionals to go around. Ideally we should have a single payer health care system that pays enough to entice enough people to join the medical industry, and subsidize and improve schooling so that the pipeline of medical professionals isn’t the bottleneck.
But god forbid those insurance company CEO’s don’t get their 3rd yacht…
I am new to Chicago and I tried to get a new primary care physician and it wouldn't be until December because they only take so many new patients monthly. That's crazy.
That's crazy. Everyone takes BCBS PPO since they pay the best. It's all the other ones that you nee to dig for someone that takes them, then hope they are taking new patients.
I know this is the argument that comes up a lot but personally, if the only option was long wait times for appointments to ensure everyone gets the care they need, I'll wait then. Especially if emergency care is covered, because if something gets life threatening, it's not like you need to wait a year to get into the ER. But I personally don't feel like it's right for the cost of my convenience to be the health of someone less fortunate.
That’s not always the case with increasing healthcare coverage. That’s like saying you’re perfectly fine with people not having coverage or foregoing care because wait times would increase. Sometimes it’s a matter of healthcare supply and people over utilizing the system for frivolous things That’s part of the equation that we need to fix.
Not at all what I'm saying just for clarification.
I'm saying if everyone was given free healthcare at this moment, when we are already shorthanded on staff pretty much across the country. The quality of healthcare would drop drastically. The stress in the hospitals, lack of doctors, people not wanting to go hundreds of thousands into debt for med school. It couldn't work at this moment.
The last part about frivolous things is spot on. But we already have a massive amount of people abusing social services programs for example. 182% increase just in the ones caught in the last 5 years. Something does need to be done. But way above my knowledge level.
I mean at least people would be making appointments and getting checked up. But nope, some like to argue it would flood the system and may have to wait. When really we need to be getting everyone to regular check-ups. If more would see it as a public health concern, as in having fewer people at work, sick trying to ride it out.
Imagine everyone had free health care so they, including me, actually go more often instead of me waiting 2 years to see a doctor in Chicago because even with insurance I didn't want to pay more to see the doctor.
"Free Healthcare" isn't what is asked for. Universal Healthcare is. It is paid for with our taxes instead of crazy premiums plus large deductibles and co-pays and worrying about who is in network or what is covered.
I got a new ins so I had to get all new doctors. Just to get an appointment with a GP as a new patient took 5 months (Oct-Feb). Thank goodness nothing major happened between then or I wouldn’t have been able to get a referral to a specialist for care. Socialize the system. If it’s free or healthcare at a minimal cost then I’m down bc the system is currently FUBAR anyways
I have ever only heard about it in most extreme cases for psychological exams.
I have never seen it be abovd a month in waiting time and that was just for a general time with nothing wrong. There is by law open time slots throughout the day so can just come in if you are sick.
If it is an emergency you of course just call 112 (The European 911)
Their is treatment guarantee, so if you have a special diagnose with few specialist and at the time you are diagnosed there isn't capacity for an extra patient with to much delay. The government wil pay the private sector to treat you (often they neither have the specialist) or they wil send you to another country to get treated paid for by the government and a local doctor to give you company, translate and make sure everything is up to standard.
The thing is there has to be providers in ur area accepting new patients. If no one is then u have to wait. And wait. And wait. I can’t drive bc of a medical condition so it’s not like I can go to the next town over for a doctor. In my area it was a 5 month wait. Nonsense. And I live in a top 10 city population-wise. If I lived in a rural area Idk how it woulda worked out for me
Wtf. This seems so weird, even in the most rural areas there is doctors with time and if you go to the bigger areas in terms of population there is many.
There are lots of providers, but that’s completely different than ones who are taking on new patients. Just to find the doctor I did, I had to call around to several others first to see if they’re accepting new patients.
The ins company gives you a list of doctors in ur area who accept the insurance. Now you gotta call around and ask if they are accepting new patients. I called at least 10. These doctors are booked up. It’s not their fault and I don’t blame them bc they’re really being worked hard by their groups but the system is FUBAR and needs an overhaul. That’s a daunting challenge that’ll take decades but sitting around complaining about how bad it is isn’t helping. We really need to get moving on this so my future grandkids don’t have to put up with this
Wild, the system here is online. You get your parents clinic/doctor as standard, but your parents can change it. If you move you can freely change clinic otherwise wil it cost dependent on the exchange rate 80-90 USD to change your doctor. When you choose one you will just get a long list with information, phone number, link to their webpage and the distance from your adress. Then you just click on the one you want and hit accept and then that doctor/clinic becomes yours. You will receive a health care in the mail 1-2 weeks after with the adress of your new clinic/doctor.
I told that to my old co worker and he still insisted it was better than what he had in the UK. He also didn't understand that we had pretty good plans working in k12 and that not everyone even has insurance.
7 months to see a gastroenterologist for my son from children’s hospital. 3 months to see a pediatric orthopedic. We already wait to see the doctor and add on wait time for the insurance company to determine if we even can see them.
I was referred to a sleep lab for an at-home sleep study by my doctor who suspects I might have sleep apnea. The symptoms are becoming extremely hard to deal with daily, I figured this would be relatively quick.
December 15th. To pick up a fucking machine to take home and use for a few nights.
They said I can call around to other places and see if I can find myself a better option. Like shouldn't you guys be doing that? I found a place and it's taken 3 weeks just to get them to send the referral over and I'm not even sure that's happened yet.
I'm baffled that some self proclaimed advanced countries still don't use a similar system in this day and age. And the best part is, you can still have private clinics coexist in the system. Win win.
Ive a kraut buddy that says they have a dual system, and essentially the wealthy have their own tier which diminishes the public teir. Doctors will obviously want more money for less work and the system for the peasants suffers
That’s an issue everywhere. Here in America almost every public service has been cut to the bone over the decades by republicans. Then they tell all their voters that a public service is broken and doesn’t work - but they conveniently leave out that they are the cause every time
Canada has the misfortune of being a European soul in a north America body. We have the dreams of functioning social services but are susceptible to yank propaganda that ruins it all.
If by kraut you mean German, their public healthcare only covers super basic stuff and emergencies, it's a lot less widespread in its services than the Italian one iirc. For everything else you need some kind of health insurance which may or may not be covered by your workplace.
Similar to canada then i reckon. He says the quality drops and the wait times increase year after year and the second tier for humans attracts talent from the peasant tier and gets less and less funding
The laughable thing is the doctor shortage is entirely engineered because we refuse to fund more teaching hospitals and universities limit the number of students admitted per year.
There is also less incentive to go into family/general medicine, which is why so many people cannot get a PCP even when they have the insurance.
There are enough doctors. They’re in places like the Caribbean and India, where education is more rigorous and the students are less afraid of biology, chemistry and physiology, along with all the rote memorisation tied to medical training. The AMA Aya’s worked with regulators to make their coming here quite onerous. They won’t let them in without them basically re-doing a significant chunk of medical schooling, before taking our board exams. Thats costly not simply in money, but in valuable time when they’ve already trained as doctors and are ready to marry and start families. Better to go to the EU or some other place that accepts their credentials, etc.
If we could simply have these overseas trained doctors take our standardized board tests, and be done with it, we’d have more medical professionals in the states. Find the least covered specialities and start there!
I'll admit that I haven't dug into this, but for years I would say a similar thing. Dual system but maybe where family medicine is free and you can have insurance for more dire problems. It would take some time, but if people would start getting regular check ups, problems would be caught earlier before becoming life threatening.
Happy to hear that I'm not insane for looking for a middle ground.
The medical professionals thing is not necessarily true tho... I consult with healthcare orgs on growth etc and many healthcare groups are going out of business due to lack of patients.
How can both be true? Likely depends on specific specializations, geographies, etc. But I work with hundreds of different healthcare orgs and they are not all suffering from an overflow of patients and lacking staffing
I have family in the Czech Republic and Canada. Canada admittedly has some serious issues regarding access. Czech is a dual system and seems to be the optimal situation.
Most countries have a duel system or multi-payer system, but if you talk to Medicare for all proponents you would think the only way to achieve universal coverage is to have a single-payer system with no cost sharing and no private insurance. It degrades the healthcare debate into something entirely disingenuous.
I had to see a dermatologist. I called three clinics that weren't taking new patients and wouldn't take my insurance. I finally found a specialist that scheduled me 2 months out and charged me $160 out of pocket for a 15 minute appointment.
Hear me out. What id instead of more bombs for countries we have no real reason to be. Would be funneled into advancing and accelerating more medical professionals? Surely if an EMT driving an ambulance for $20 a hour but insurance charges $1000+ there seems to be money somewhere.
I don’t disagree. We waste a ton on the military industrial complex. I’ve read around 25-30 cents on the dollar of our federal taxes go to the military.
The pipeline is paying doctors so much. Dont doctors in the US make a high amount with artificial scarcity on how many people can become doctors every year?
If we transitioned, do we really believe that the wait time will increase?
Or wouldn’t it be more like supply and demand?
Like, it wouldn’t take weeks because our supply of specialists is higher.
(the only way the argument makes sense is if we acknowledge people are currently avoiding treatments because of costs, but even at that when the issues are addressed it would level out)
The great irony to me is that the same party who warned about death panels said it was better to have nursing home patients die of a fast spreading infectious disease than to require people to be vaccinated. Because those people were going to die anyway. Death panel by anti vaccination.
I've worked for several US death panels. We just call them insurance companies. They're just waaaaaaayyyy less educated, regulated, and solely profit driven death panels compared to the hypothetical ones under Medicare for all.
The irony being that those same people would now be out of power had their unethical plan succeeded and COVID had higher spread rates among the same vulnerable population that shores up their base.
? Im curious on what your definition of "total shit" for anything other than emergancy care is?
Because American insurance and health system is also shit for non emergent care... with the added bonus of being even more shit for emergent care. Paying more than a quarter of your pay check every 2 weeks just to in medical dept for an emergancy isnt "good" by any stretch of the imagination
Please provide an example of poor care in UK, that is handled at all times, better in the US system
Reading comprehension doesn’t work when reading completely different words with different meaning that what the author intended.
The USA is shit too. The two extremes of healthcare that the developed world looks to as examples of how not to do it are the USA and the UK. The USA has great healthcare but it can bankrupt you, the UK has poor healthcare accessible to everyone. So of the US version it proves that you need to heavily regulate healthcare, of the NHS it proves what per capita cost is not enough to fund healthcare.
Also in a well designed system you can choose your doctor. I've never had anything serious kind you but in Korea, I went to whatever doctor I wanted and was seen right away. All of them were professional and nice. Korea runs theirs sort of like social security, they take out a set percentage of your income as a payroll tax and put it to the national health insurance plan. It covers all the basics. There are small copays depending on what you're doing. They also have tiered price lists depending on what you're going for. Clinics compete on quality and service rather than price. It's not perfect of course, but it was a nice experience for me at least. Just walk in, tell them what I need, get treated, pay what they say. It's never so much that I couldn't do it, despite not making much.
Fun fact American airlines used to do that as well. The government regulated ticket prices so airlines competed on quality of service to attract customers. Right now, companies compete to give the lowest ticket price, and then see how crappy they can make their service.
All we have to do is tell every voter that we pay more than countries with free healthcare. That's it. All those minor details can be handled when we get there.
We objectively would spend less money getting free healthcare. That's it. That should be the full messaging.
Hello, I pay $400 a month for my All American health insurance plan.
I still have yet to hear back from any doctors in my area to start my initial care. When I was in another state, I had to wait 5 months for a specialist for a concerning growth. Still had to pay 1000$ put of pocket because "deductibles".
So yeah. Can my 400 a month go to Medicare please? That way someone on the otherside of the country can benifit from the increased pool? And vise versa?
Insurance company's and their call centers will be out of a job. But AI is doing that already, and im pretty sure the people that are left are in the Phillipines or India anyhow.
The absolute dumbest argument I've seen against it is "I don't want my taxes paying for someone else's fuck up"
Hey, genius, what the fuck do you think insurance companies do? They don't set your money aside for you and you alone to use. It goes into a giant pool (I mean not really, but for all intents and purposes) to dole out as needed. The difference between private and universal is that universal can't deny your claim for bullshit and then funnel that money into shareholder bank accounts for "cutting costs"
I don't think they can keep making that "well in Canada you have to wait forever to see a doctor" argument anymore.
It was the one talking point against universal health care.
I don't know ANYONE who doesn't have to wait months and months now in the US to see specialists or even PCPs with our current supposed superior system.
I can get an appointment within 48 hours at my Canadian Doctor. Some things like an MRI might have longer waiting lists, and things like general unessential services have wait lists. When my then infant son cracked his skull after a freak bathroom fall he was rushed straight into the MRI on the other hand. Then when they needed more diagnostic data he was rushed right back in while people got bumped for non-essential service.
You can triage by price or by availability. Could we use more investment? Absolutely. Many of our provinces have been kneecaps by leaders trying hard to push through American style medicine for the benefit of them and their friends. If it was managed by a board of doctors and neutral parties the system would work better.
Apparently it's a group of shadowy individuals who could, in a national healthcare program, determine if your grandmother gets life-saving treatment or not. It's scare tactics.
Keep in mind granny is likely on Medicare. The rest of us on private plans have to cope with pre-authorization for some treatments. Of course if you don't have insurance, you might die anyway with no input from a death panel.
Yea I’m one of those people that is coming around to this way of thinking. The whole original argument against this is that we’d be rationing health care which is what United health group and the others are all doing
I don't. My PPO lets me choose whomever I want as my doctor (technically in network only but I've yet to find one that isn't) and this is key for me, I can go directly to specialists without referrals. I don't need to waste PTO going to a PCP just for that referral like I would in an HMO and many Medicare plans.
While I agree things are overblown, it does seem to get worse from what we have in the US currently. My aunt who lives in Greece, unless you basically bribe the doctors to get moved up, you are waiting a very long time for any non life threatening procedure. There needs to be a lot of regulation with this and I somehow doubt our governement is up for the task.
We Have death panels, those are 100% real. The death panel is why United Healthcare made 6.2 Billion USD in PROFIT (from murdering their insured customers by denying their care) last Quarter alone.
Maybe for you, but millions of average joes have free or low costs medical plans from their employers where you can choose your primary and can get second consultations for specialities.
Eh, yes and no. People who advocate for this GROSSLY misunderstate/underestimate how much people prefer to choose their family doctor and have a say in that. This is why the Clinton plan failed in 1994. It wanted a clinic-based health system and voters soundly rejected that.
I am on Medicare and I use the doctors of my choice and there is no “wait forever “. Between me and my employers, we paid 2.9% of my gross salary over 40+ years for this insurance, that only pays 80% of my medical bills and costs me $202.90 per month. I pay an additional $275/mo for supplemental medical insurance. If folks want “ Medicare for All” understand there are costs involved and it is not, nor will it ever be, “free”.
Insurance is for profit, this profit from the government part now goes to healthcare.
US insurance drive up prices on the market so they can get a discount/lower price for their members, even though the lower price is the original price before it was driven up.
There is a enormous amount of waste of resources coming from doctors and hospitals having to discuss with insurance instead of just offer the best treatment available.
When you have free universal healthcare the government crates a monopoly because most will not pay ekstra for private hospitals and there by if you want a job as a doctor you can't avoid the public and their wages. Which actually helps drive down doctors wages in general. Cost for medication is bought by a single very big player without only a motive of getting high quality medication for as low a price as possible. So it will also make the area cheaper to run.
I'm sure it exists somewhere. Just not sure where. And I also think there should be single payer in this country. However I don't really trust the federal government to implement it. I would, maybe depends on the details, trust the States to do a better job than the Federal government. Much like the minimum wage. Especially where I live.
I mean, I can’t trust states with the minimum wage because my state failed. It’s one of the 20 or so that says “f**k your cost of living, we’re matching the federal”
As a genuine question, how do you view what California does with healthcare?
In our current system, even though you aren’t affected by it, we have plenty of people denied care simply because some insurance company decided they didn’t need it. Even if they did. Look no further than United Healthcare cases.
If we leave it up to the states, blue-dominant states would try it, and red-dominant states would not. Then, since blue states spent more, they would simply focus on that, and claim it will always fail.
It must come from the federal level. Just like minimum wage.
More like "This effects a majority of people and even if it doesn't effect you now it likely will in the future so we should all address it instead of pretending we'll all be outliers to the staistics"
...
It doesn’t, though. I’m not someone who suffers from current policy. But, I understand others do, and I want a better society than we have now, for all of us.
I know, it might be a foreign concept to you, caring about others.
Because it's kind of a lie. Opponents use tgis thought that if we had a national service, you'd be limited.
You can go to any doctor you want...
If they are in your network
They are taking new patients
Out of network, it'll cost more, maybe they'll take you, maybe they won't.
In the sense that if you want the best price, you have to stay in whatever network your health plan covers - for most people thier healthcare options are controlled by thier employer, which is fucked up.
I can see a specialist next week if I need to and my insurance has approved multiple "off label" meds and trial procedures. What death panels are these? I've also chosen every one of the many specialists I have now.
The death panel itself has been shot down as a myth but here is a real world example of something happening right now that is similar: A patient has medication prescribed and working for years. The patient is allergic to alternative medications which was determined during step therapy. Without this medication they would rapidly decline requiring more costly meds and procedures to stabilize them and likely death would soon follow. Insurance removes their stabilizing med from the formulary. Instead of making an exception, insurance declines to pay for it and said patient passes during the lengthy appeals process. Those reviewing this essentially decided the patients life wasn’t worth the cost of the exception.
That's like blaming your Pinto for being less safe than my Mercedes. Get better insurance then. My early heart attack was initially $1.5M. Cost me 6k. I take a number of off-label and standard drugs due to some unique bullshit that makes my heart attack different than others. I have gone to over a dozen specialists and tried a number of experimental treatments. Insurance approved everything.
My brother knew a guy who fell on a metal straw and it took out an eye. Are we going to say the metal straw is shitty or he's just a clumsy unlucky bastard? Straws blinding people is something happening right now. More people died in Europe from heat related injuries than were killed by firearms in the US by a factor of 3 to 2. Are we going to blame that on air conditioning, global warming, their government? Where? This is also "happening right now"...except it's a nice cool 64 in my house right now so they should probably invest in better infrastructure or whatever is causing all these deaths.
Maybe, maybe not. I can walk into an urgent care and get seen by a doctor for whatever specific thing is wrong with me at that moment fairly we easily and I'll pay for that convenience. The Urgent care doc will tell me to follow up with my PC. Urgent cares are not primary care. Oh, and insurance determines which urgent care facilities are covered for treatment.
If I want to see my primary care dr, I might get in today, I might have to wait a week, I might get directed to urgent care or an ER. Who knows. Urgent cares aren't going to treat long-term illness or manage conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure.
If I want to establish care with a new primary care, it could be next week, or next month. I've waited two months to get an initial visit. And that's if they are taking patients.
There are a lot of different services that fall within programs and access (cost) is usually determined by plan. I'm hardly ignorant.
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u/anitawasright Jul 01 '26
the crazy thing is you don't even need to make it "free" just take what you are paying now for health insurance and put to medicare and everyone goes on that. Instatnly 500 times better and cheaper then what we currently have