Quote:
Originally Posted by Pedestrian
This gets political but since the Moderator in Chief introduced the issue, the main shortcoming of the US healthcare system is access. Something like 90% of people have insurance and for them it's excellent and if they have good health insurance it's about the best in the world.
But for those without insurance it's very problematic. And the hodge-podge of payment systems generally is insane. Also, the really good care is pretty much concentrated in urban areas. Plenty of people in rural areas, especially in the West, live miles, even hundreds of miles, from fairly mediocre care.
So if you can access the system and someone else (government or insurer) is paying most of the bills, it's hard to beat . . . anywhere.
As someone who is retired military and on Medicare, I haven't paid a dime for healthcare in years and I've had a couple of major operations and spent several weeks in the hospital during that time. Also, I regularly see a specialist at UCSF which usually ranks in the top 5 or 10 hospitals in America which means among the best in the world (there's a reason the world's super-wealthy often come here for care).
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Thanks. I’m aware of the dynamics but was simplifying for the sake of brevity.
But yes, as I have explained countless times to Brits, American healthcare is better than British healthcare for 90% of the population, and catastrophically bad for that small minority.
Fixing the latter issue is a better approach however than switching to a system more like the UK’s, where everyone has access to the same mediocre medical care (and really, because of limited resources and rationing, only the elderly have access to anything, whereas younger people are just told to rest and drink lots of water unless they have cancer).