9 hours to be seen? I thought only Canada was fucked up. I think all the countries with "free" healthcare end up with having absurd waiting times. I had some issue with harmones and the family physician referred me to endocrinologist. I called his office and guess what? There was a 6 month waiting period. They gave me an appointment 6 months away. Luckily I was traveling to Mexico in a couple weeks. I saw an endocrinologist there (no appointment, just walk in). He told me if i had waited 6 months, it would have taken a drastic irreparable toll on my health.
US healthcare is absolutely horrible. Both outrageously expensive and utterly lacking in availability. This is why average longevity in US is declining while it is growing in other developed countries.
> Both outrageously expensive and utterly lacking in availability.
US healthcare is easy to access. I've used it at every economic tier and it has never been difficult to get access to proper care. It is obnoxiously expensive.
> This is why average longevity in US is declining while it is growing in other developed countries.
It's growing in most, not all of course. Britain as one example is seeing something between stagnation and decline in its life expectancy, despite their vaunted NHS. And for seven decades it has lagged increasingly behind its peers, being ahead of only the US in its peer group. Universal healthcare will only take you so far.
"Life expectancy in the UK has grown at a slower rate than comparable countries over the past seven decades, according to researchers, who say this is the result of widening inequality.
"The UK lags behind all other countries in the group of G7 advanced economies except the US, according to a new analysis of global life expectancy rankings published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
"While life expectancy has increased in absolute terms, similar countries have experienced larger increases, they wrote. In the 1950s, the UK had one of the longest life expectancies in the world, ranking seventh globally behind countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden, but in 2021 the UK was ranked 29th." [0]
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"A new analysis of global rankings of life expectancy over seven decades shows the UK has done worse than all G7 countries except the USA." [1]
The NHS has been driven to the point of bankruptcy over the last 13 years with austerity and underfunding. In the UK if you can afford it, you go private for most common procedures. Most people can’t so are stuck with long waiting times and worse outcomes.
Life expectancy in the US has been declining due to other factors like substance abuse (fentanyl poisoning), obesity, violence, and vehicle crashes. The healthcare system can have only a limited impact on those.
The idea that Australian healthcare is "free" is rather ridiculous. We have Medicare Levy of 2%, Medicare Levy Surcharge of up to 1.5% (both calculated on your income _before_ income tax), plus according to my latest tax receipt about 20% of the income tax goes towards healthcare as well.
On top of that (and in conjunction with Medical Levy Surcharge) the government pushes everyone to have private health insurance, and it makes a huge difference in terms of wait times for "elective" hospital procedures (i.e. anything that won't kill you very soon).
All in all, last year I paid some AUD16k getting no medical services at all.
Paying all that you're still out of pocket for anything serious, as specialists (anesthetists, urologists, gynos, you name it) are typically charging way above Medicare standard fees and private insurance doesn't cover that completely.
The US's Medicare levy is 2.9% and 30% of the total Federal budget[1] is spent on healthcare (that doesn't include state and local spending). The US spends more taxpayer money per capita than Australia and gets much, much less to show for it.
[1] Sorry: 30% of Federal outlays are spent on healthcare, only some of that is part of the "budget"
It does. Dentistry is excluded from Medicare entirely, and with many "elective" procedures (i.e. ligament repairs, endometriosis removal, tonsillectomy) you might have to wait it pain for months until you're seen, unless you have private insurance and are willing to pay the "gap".
That doesn't mean to say that it's as bad as in the US, but it does exist.
I'd also go out on a limb and say that there are more poor people in the USA than in Australia per capita, which might factor into how many people can't afford healthcare.
Yeah, you have to wait for months in the US, too. I have no idea how this talking point got started but whoever came up with it clearly hasn't dealt with healthcare in the US. Months-long waits for non-emergency appointments have been the norm for decades.
9 hours to be seen? I thought only Canada was fucked up.
Pretty sure there are a LOT of hospitals in the US where that's an expected or short time in the ER waiting room, and once you're taken in (into a room and charges accruing) you may well wait a another hour or more before being seen by a doctor.
Note that all of these places should prioritize you if you come in with heart attack or stroke symptoms.
That makes sense. Emergency room triage happens really quickly in my experience (even if you walk in, usually less than 10 minutes). If it's clear your life is in serious danger, then even faster! Once they know your condition isn't life threatening, you get to wait until they have some free time to see you, however long that is.
Problem is most hospitals are setup to be overloaded aka "every day is a bad day" - god forbid you have some staff sitting around twiddling their thumbs! Better to just have just enough staff that the place doesn't fail.
In the US I’ve had to wait just as long, I had a broken arm and was required to wait like 8+ hours to even get x-rays. The absurd wait times for health care are not any better with private health care. I’d say they are substantially worse because you wait just as long AND have an unknowable bill every time you go to the doctor. I routinely am quoted prices, pay them upfront, and then sent a bill for more after (all but one dentist I’ve seen has done this sometimes doubling the costs).
TLDR; The US system isn’t “free” and it is still shit.
