And yet people still move here for the "fucked" health care because it's cheaper, better, and available unlike other countries held in high regard, such as Canada. I am one such person who was lucky enough to be able to do that, and would never return to Canada after the abusive treatment handed out by the health care "professionals."
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/20...
Just to add some colour:
Quality: U.S. fares best on provision and receipt of preventive and patient-centered care. While there has been some improvement in recent years, lower scores on safe and coordinated care pull the overall U.S. quality score down
Access: Not surprisingly—given the absence of universal coverage—people in the U.S. go without needed health care because of cost
Efficiency: On indicators of efficiency, the U.S. ranks last among the 11 countries
Equity: The U.S. ranks a clear last on measures of equity.
Healthy lives: The U.S. ranks last overall with poor scores on all three indicators
Edit: Because you decided to edit your comment. Here are some other numbers for you.
-14 days vs 2+ years: US wait time vs Canada wait time to get help for my autistic son. We had help before we arrived in the US. We had no help for autism while up in Canada.
$0/yr vs. $36,000/yr: US cost vs Canada cost for autism therapy. The $36k Canadian cost was the soonest we could get it, which was still a wait time of more than a year after the appointment (which had an additional wait time).
Canada did have more doctors complaining that we were trying to do to much for our children though. It has that going for it.
The original posts point which you quoted is that the US health system is Fd and everyone knows it. The analysis presented here supports that. The US spends a lot more per capita on healthcare with worse outcomes and less people having access to healthcare. I’m very glad your move has has worked out for you.
(UK Medical Student)
I had an injury that resulted in a spinal fusion and other surgery at 25. Total out of pocket cost for about $250k of care and full recovery was about $500. That included second opinion visits to top doctors in Boston & NYC.
If you're on limited network Obamacare with high deductibles and HMO bullshit, good luck.
None of my comments assume private insurance unless otherwise stated.
I had to deal with it in 2010-11, and it's only gotten worse from people we talk to still dealing with it. Don't blindly think that just because you can get your broken arm fixed for cheap or no cost that it means health care is a solved problem in other countries. Coming to the US, it was 100% cheaper, available now, and better compared to anything Canada remotely offered, even looking at private services.
As for mental healthcare in particular: thanks for the insight, I know very little about how that works in other countries. Seems like an area with room for improvement just about everywhere, unfortunately. I'll definitely keep that kind of thing in mind when reading on related topics in the future.
Nobody is setting out to specifically copy the US system, because the US system is full of accidents of history like "employer-based health coverage". That's not a useful data point in general, though. The real point is that there indeed a lot of motion happening all around the world and it is not all in the direction of increasing central control, nor is it all in the direction of decreasing it.