It’s easy to have shorter wait times when nobody can afford to go there in the first place.
Absolutely not shorter wait times.
As a Canadian, yeah, our wait times are rancid and they often get glossed over because of how bad America’s healthcare is in comparison. Don’t get me started on how Canadians will excuse any issue with the country because “at least we’re not as bad as America” and shit like that.
But damn it, I’d still take our busted healthcare system over virtually NO healthcare system. Fuck paying to live. Oh wait, that’s just capitalism.
Americans enjoy the shortest wait times when they go the ER to find out they have stage 4 colon cancer.
From diagnosis to the grave is on average only a few months! 🇺🇸
And while they’re there they let the adrenaline surge of the realization they just got fed feet first into the meat grinder of American healthcare by using the ER as primary care make them punch a nurse in the face. I say this as someone who’s made a career out of talking them out of that.
it depends on which hospital, which insurance, or provider you are using, it varies widely. it can be 1 week to months. also the faster wait time, is likely the more expensive one too.
The wait time is a complete myth made up by the US. It can take months in the US to get an appointment with a PCP - if you don’t get shunted to an NP or something instead. Then more weeks for any specialized tests like an MRI. Which you have to pay a good chunk for even with insurance. Then weeks for whatever’s next, or followup visits.
If it’s an emergency, like any country, you can go to an ER/ED and be seen at a time based on severity of need. Difference is other countries will charge little to nothing, but in the US you will be charged quite a bit. Even more if your insurers decide you’re “out of network” or some such, or if they don’t outright deny your claims anyway.
But for non-emergency tests other than basic things like blood tests that don’t appear to require prompt intervention? Yeah. Weeks to months in most places.
Just bullshit made up by Big Med and Big Pharma regurgitated by politicians on their payroll to keep your $$$ flowing into the pockets of multi-million- and billionaires.
A lot of American’s believe in that myth because they just don’t go doctors at all. They have no reference to compare wait times to.
Is a week a long wait time? A year? American’s don’t fucking know.
Yep. It takes 3 months to get an appointment for a regular physical. I don’t know what my schedule is next month, much less 3 months from now. I have to arrange an entire month around ensuring I get that one day off.
Guess how many yearly physicals I get.
im currently trying to arrange my work schedule so i can make appts because i had a sudden flare up of a skin condition, its pretty severe atopic dermatitis. but was denied any hours changed(changing so i can have time to see appointments) by a nosey employer, also dont really want to give him the reason why i want to change hours. as i am making too much right now for state subsidized healthcare(just slightly enough over the income limit) you have to report income and you get removed, and its not stable enough employment to get decent insurance.
i 2 types of people that can afford insurance that dont go to doctors if they have symptoms of something. 1 is they already are paying for it, but they are paying alot per month, so they avoid going to the doctor until thier symptoms get severe, because they assume thier preniums are going to increase if they “go to one for any reason”.
2nd is the ones that are uninsured,think they can get insurance right away and see a doctor immediately if they suddenly get very chronically ill or severe symptoms.
it also convoluted, it depends if they have in house testing, or 3rd party, or you have to go to another university for more testing. most of the time, blood testing are in house, unless your doctor is pretty private practice, then that can take a while. alot of private insurance is already being subsidized anyways, its just companies act as a MIDDLEMAN charging for the exchange in services.
I don’t use healthcare at all because of all the stories I’ve heard about people getting slapped with medical bills for 1000s of dollars that their insurance decided wasn’t covered after all. Not dealing with that shit unless I think I’m dying. Realistically though I’ll probably try to sleep whatever ends up killing me off and that will be that.
I went to an ER for some potential heart issues. They treated me on site in a few hours, but didn’t really diagnose anything - I had to go to my primary care doctor for that.
I had to wait 2 months to see him. Then I had to go get labs elsewhere a month later, and wait 2 more months to see my doctor for the results.
I w3nt to the hospital for a suspected heart issue, and didn’t get my lab results back for 5 months. Turns out it was stress, and things have improved with anxiety meds, but if I’d actually had a heart issue I would have died.
I live in Texas and have “great insurance.”
Oh - and they just dropped coverage for my doctor.
Wasn’t there a report that every year 25k people die waiting for treatment
I’d like one order of Norweigian Citizenship pls.
My American healthcare:
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Its so much more expensive under Trump. It went from $250/month for my family, to now $1100/month.
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My kid hurt themselves and we were in the urgent care waiting area for 2 hours. Then a professional looked him over, said they’ll be fine, and gave us some expensive pain killer pills.
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I have to schedule my appointments 4-6 months in advance.
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I had to get a referral for some health services and after two weeks, they finally had a slot to actually start scheduling the appointment. Then they asked about my insurance and told me that they are out-of-network, and recommended another practice. I now have to wait another few more weeks, just to hopefully be seen.
My favorite from this past summer, was when I waited over 2 months for an appointment and the day before the appointment the office called me and said they’d been bought out and didn’t take my insurance anymore. I had to find another place and wait another 2 months for that appointment.
I just waited a month for an appointment at a new doctor, nothing special. Had to spend an entire afternoon calling around to find her, even given my insurance’s list of providers. And since we’re on Obamacare, I don’t know if I have insurance anymore, haven’t been brave enough to open the latest letters.
A couple years ago I’d called a doctor’s office to set up an appointment because I hadn’t seen a doctor for ten years prior to this. The soonest they could fit me in was 8 months out.
In that time span of waiting for that appt, I was laid off from my job and had to call and cancel it because I had no insurance anymore. It was the most defeated I’d felt in a long time.
Ive been getting my anxiety meds from this online medical clinic for a few years. Didn’t need insurance just paid a monthly fee and I could talk to health professionals for whatever health issue I was having. A few months ago I was notified they were bought by an insurance company so now they can only serve customers with that insurance. So just fuck everyone that used the service before no more meds for them !!
i was under state subsidized healthcare, i waited four months for a specialist, a charge nurse just hung up because “she was waiting for someone else” and when i got to appt wait several more hours, and was forgotten in a waiting room for hours.
Except for the prices, that sounds pretty similar to how it works in Germany right now …
Except we don’t have healthcare networks. Either a practice takes any insurance or it takes none. That’s a huge advantage over the American system.
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I get the message. But this is incorrect. You don’t have shorter wait times in the US.
In Canada some wait times, for non-emergency procedures and in high traffic areas are publicized, usually by the forces who would benefit from privatization.
I can quickly counter those anecdotes with anecdotes of my own: I have never waited long for medical care because I live in a low traffic area and I don’t seek low priority medical care.
What you actually have in the US is a greater opportunity for shorter wait times as the result of paying a premium…but you also have longer wait times and people foregoing care entirely that they would receive in Canada.
Yeah I was gonna say, have the people repeating this actually used American healthcare? We have terrible wait times in addition to our other horrible issues.
Like…you can find sweet spots where US care is faster than Canadian care when you compare apples to apples…ie if you’re wealthier and your region doesn’t have poor people to care for. It should be obvious why that’s the case and how erosionary it is for our rich to lobby to pull their tax dollars out of our system so they can seek non-emergency care down there or in our increasing amount of private clinics.
When our media criticizes Canadian health care…it’s almost a single procedure criticism: hip replacements. But when they compare Canada to the US…they don’t mention that a giant chunk of Americans just don’t get hip replacements because they’re ineligible or they can’t afford them, so they’re not even counting those people in the queues. Up here a homeless junkie is on the same wait list as a billionaire (in theory…but not in practice because a homeless junkie isn’t very likely to be diagnosed).
Might depend where you live. Here in Quebec, I know someone who could either get his cancer cured in 2+ years here (which would have been too late, but technically free or almost free), or instantly in the US but for 200k, so he raised money and got it cured in the US.
Could be that this isn’t the same in other parts of Canada, but at least in Quebec, this kind of story is very common. At a smaller scale, one would pay to go to the private sector here instead.
It absolutely depends on where you are…I allowed for that in my reply. I’m talking about the national average…including all people…not just rich ones.
I’m skeptical that in Quebec that you die of “cancer” before receiving treatment (without evidence)…because I’m familiar with the care here in Ontario, and that’s generally not the case. My guess is you’re talking about a specific type of more rare cancer treatment that’s not covered by your province.
But, I mean, yes…if you can afford to pay to skip the line…obviously you’re going to have better outcomes in the US system. I said that. But you have to count all the people that can’t afford it or forego care entirely…and in your anecdote you’re not doing that.
I’ll repeat that most people can not afford to skip the line.
Of course I agree a long wait time for treatment is better than no treatment at all. But the common concern here I hear from most people around me is that it’s generally much slower (at least in Quebec) than in other countries with such healthcare (eg. Scandinavian countries). How much of that is just a case of “the grass is greener on the other side”, I do not know.
I’ve been fortunate enough to not require healthcare so far, though I’m not sure how it will go when I need it. The population is getting older, and older people generally need more healthcare. That’s less health workers for more sick people and less workers paying for more healthcare.
Oh…the Canadian system is absolutely not funded as well as the Nordic countries, for example…and it’s getting worse as transfer payments continue to be cut, and as provinces don’t spend those payments on health.
The issue isn’t the aging population so much as what I said above: governments keep using healthcare to balance budgets because it’s such a big line item and it’s low hanging fruit they can use to show fiscal “success”. It would be easy to just fund our system…and that, in turn, would make our lives cheaper.
But fiscally “conservative” governments like to perpetuate the myth that our system has poor outcomes and paying out of pocket is preferable…so rich people can benefit from their wealth - health wise. It’s sad to watch it erode.
I’m a physician in the US and had to wait 11 months for a dermatology appointment at the same hospital system I work at and the insurance owned by the same hospital system covered $95 of the $430 bill. We do not have it better than Canada, at all.
People who say Canada has longer wait times ignore that the US doesn’t count the wait times poor or uninsured people have, or people that forgo care entirely. They compare well insured people in the US to the entire Canadian system.
The Canadian system definitely has its shortcomings, and is getting worse…ie if you live in an area with a concentration of poor or old people. But the reason it’s getting worse is because conservative government continue to force the profit motive on health systems as they cut funding and introduce private components.
I have very good health insurance from my company for my family…wait times are still months and months. When I needed a CT for what the wife and I thought was a damn brain tumor, was a 3 week wait…for a fucking possible brain tumor. My insurance is what is considered Cadillac health insurance. It’s stupid expensive.
Yet I have wait times longer than any single payer western healthcare.
Anyone who thinks that US healthcare is better than the “socialism” healthcare is a fucking idiot.
i have state subsidized healthcare, and the wait time is very long, obviously not insane like waiting 1+years. you guess it the majority of the patients that cant afford insurance are POCs, especially older ones. almost no white people.
yea one specialist i had to see with a state healthcare i had to wait 4 months, and wait a very long time in the waiting room, and then forgotten because they were too busy.
tbh that is underselling how terrible the American healthcare system is lol. die from waiting? more like die from being denied medically necessary procedures by a Prior Authorization team who has never met the patient they make these decisions for and has the authority to reject the demands and recommendations of physicians treating the patient. more like die from avoiding going to the ER because you don’t want to deal with even more debt, so you stay at home and “sleep it off.”
its also the fact that people with insurance will put off seeing a doctor until its severe enough or its too late.
Murica!
Us canucks are trying really hard to add dentalcare and pharmacare to our universal healthcare system.
Fuck insurance companies hurting people and bribing our government to make a quick buck.
Everyone deserves healthcare.
in the west coast, they have medi-cal also denti-cal, but the dental part is severely limited to private DDS that are willing to accept denti-cal. this isnt the same for all states, some might not have it or that you pratically have to be not working to apply for state healthcare.
Shorter wait times thing is bullshit. All hospitals do Triage - the worse you are the faster you are seen
Also if you are pregnant, the odds of you dying in the U.S. are double that of Canada (worse if you aren’t white)
If you’re a child, you are 34% more likely to die by the age of 5 in the U.S. than Canada.
mortality for women is very high for mothers, and even more so if you are african american woman, you are more likely to be ignored/balked at because of systemic racism.
Well yeah, emergency care is different. There are some countries that have long waits for specialists.
I’d encourage anyone interested to check OECD data. Weird how the US doesn’t rank first in anything….
I think the wait times thing is for stuff like specialist appointments - we’re definitely lacking some medical specialists in Canada
