I’d like to know other non-US citizen’s opinions on your health care system are when you read a story like this. I know there are worse places in the world to receive health care, and better. What runs through your heads when you have a medical emergency?
A little background on my question:
My son was having trouble breathing after having a cold for a couple of days and we needed to stop and take the time to see if our insurance would be accepted at the closest emergency room so we didn’t end up with a huge bill (like 2000$-5000$). This was a pretty involved ~10 minute process of logging into our insurance carrier, and unsuccessfully finding the answer there. Then calling the hospital and having them tell us to look it up by scrolling through some links using the local search tool on their website. This gave me some serious pause, what if it was a real emergency, like the kind where you have no time to call and see if the closest hospital takes your insurance.
I can just explain the mindset, and then you can draw your conclusions: When people get sick, they evaluate whether it is bad/concerning enough as to be worth the hassle of making time to go to the doctor. If during work hours, in most office work spaces, you simply say “I’m going to the doctor. I’m back in a couple of hours”, and you go.
Now the situation is getting increasingly worse every year, because the public health system is underfunded, and every year more so, so that private alternatives look much better… So that rich people and/or private health interests, can use their wealth to “argue” (paid propaganda, e.g funding political opposition) that the public healthcare is not adequate, and should be further defunded… Doctors literally chose between sticking to morals/principles or having non-insane working hours and a higher pay. So, we’re headed in the same direction, for sure. The US just serves as the example of: take that path to its conclusion, and that’s how fucked up it can get. Hopefully, when our public health service simply collapses within the next 10 years, we manage to draw the correct conclusions as to why that happened, and not double down on the same stupidity (just look at UK for inspiration). I’m sure think tanks are aware of this, and can suggest how to sow the seeds for a political zeitgeist where we go full retard.
But, people still selfishly vote for their own interests, or dumb enough to be convinced regardless. Humans sucks. Fingers crossed.
The most frustrating part of getting older and wiser, is clearly understanding the correct solutions and approaches. Perhaps not the answer to everything, but at least identifying what makes the problems worse. Then, observing that those in charge have private interests at heart, and that the new generation is too malleable to know any better.