Anymore, the wait times in the US are just as atrocious while still costing orders of magnitude more. There’s some specialties we’ve needed where the doctor just told us “you can get on the list, but don’t hold your breath”.
Not to mention how health insurance companies can overrule doctors on medical issues and make final decisions on what procedures the patient can actually get.
I know someone whose kid became really irritable and started having aggressive episodes after a head injury. Insurance doesn’t think an MRI is medically relevant.
It makes me so mad when anglos try to gaslight the success of obamacare and how many millions of additional people are “covered” by it.
My boss told me today she had to wait 12 hours in the ER in the US the other day.
I left the ER after 8 hours of holding my finger together. Big gash real deep, ended up going to Walmart and buying super glue, butterfly bandages, and a stint. Was with my dad (I was 16) and he still touted this is best country on earth.
A two mile ambulance ride, consisting of a the ride and an IV, cost me over $7k once.
I recall reading how people in US now prefer taking uber to the hospital instead of calling an ambulance.
Yeah people will also check hospital websites and consult their social circles before picking a hospital to drive to, while in crisis. Because you also have to consider how ambulances will drive you to the nearest hospital regardless of whether it’s any good or if they’ll be able to treat you there. If they can’t, then you’ll be forced to take another ambulance ride to transfer to a hospital that can (and not for free ofc).
It makes sense to do this for liability reasons and for health reasons, but god damn ambulances should not cost money. All healthcare shouldn’t cost money…
It’s not just “can this hospital take care of you” but “is this hospital ‘in network’ for you”. If you’ve got full coverage but are unconscious and somebody takes you to the wrong place you might as well not have any insurance at all.
I’m insured through my job, and they have a $500 deductible for ambulance rides. I can uber to the hospital for 1/10th that price!
Imagine even remembering all the insurance shitshow lists when you are in pain and require help. Private healthcare is one of the most ghoulish things i can even imagine and i read multiple dystopian stories presenting much less worse things as total humanitarian disasters.
“I need stitches”
“OK!”
even if you have public healthcare on your country, the strategy as of late is pulling more and more money from these services so they become garbage and they have an easy excuse to sell us privatization.
at least thats what currently happening in my country.
i only heard of canada doing this in the news, what other countries do you know? i don’t doubt you i’m just curious (search results gimme lame paywalled articles or listicles…)
they are doing this since about 2016-ish in brazil.
as a brazilian, heres some nuance: the “”““great progressive left wing””“” (notice the big quotes) in power today was expected to undo it, but they literally made it worse as one of their first decisions.
things are expected to get much worse this year. thats because up until 2023 we had exceptions for covid and the transition away from a literal fascist who wanted to military coup our asses.
if you want to know more about it, its a policy they are calling “teto de gastos” or more recently “arcabouço fiscal”. maybe they expect the new complicated, aristocratic sounding name will discourage our purposefully uneducated population from discussing it.
edit - let me use that opportunity to say fuck lula, he looks progressive and his mouth says progressive things but his actual governing is no better than biden today despite his glorious past organizing his ML party at the time and actually based strikes.
Hearing Cancer cost payments as someone who lost someone close due to cancer makes me furious. Like I literally cannot handle hearing the prices because it’s such OBVIOUS FUCKING PROOF that the bourgeoisie cares more about Cash than Human Life! Normally that would sound like a hamfisted portrayal of a bad guy in a shitty book, but it’s real, it’s all around us, people who could give less than one tenth of a fuck if we live or die, as long as the checks come in, the life-saving medicine does. Even if it ISN’T life-saving and they pass away soon after, they still charge amounts that -as Parenti says- would make the Pharaohs blush
