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Comment by GavinMcG | Hacker News Reader

Do you have more info to support the "usually of very questionable quality" claim?

Edit: corrected "low" to "questionable".

Sorry, I only have my personal experience and that of my family and friends. And I didn't say "low".

Usually it's highly bureaucratic - you have to "climb a ladder" of doctors. First your GP, then a specialist, then, maybe a hospital. You wait a lot (sometimes weeks and months, because you are not "emergency"). And sometimes you encounter outright incompetence and have to go to a private doctor/hospital to have your problems properly attended to.

That summarizes my experiences with the healthcare systems of 4 different EU countries.

What countries? My experiences are excellent in Netherlands & Spain public healthcare. I hear people complain about NHS a lot but never used it so no idea.

Bulgaria, Spain, Denmark, Finland

Do you speak Spanish well? It makes a massive difference... Maybe that goes for the other countries too?

The NHS is very highly regarded in the UK as one of their greatest accomplishment. Brits are proud of their healthcare :)

Well :) I work a lot in the UK and live close to many Brits and they (middle to high class people) whine a lot about the NHS. It being slow and crappy. Like said; no idea if that is true or not.

I'm legitimately surprised to hear that. I haven't had any particularly remarkable experiences with the NHS myself, but I've never heard a british person complain about it - only ever heard praise.

It is definitely true for Poland. As for UK, I had a flatmate with intense head/chest pain wait for 4 hours for an ambulance because he was diagnosed over the phone as not being an urgent case (which was probaby right, as he did not die in the meantime) and that was the wait time for non-dying people.

This is still qualified as an "emergency".

Sorry for the misquote!

The use of "questionable" in that way is a bit idiomatic, I think, as a polite way to say something is bad.

I am not a native speaker and I translated literally from my native language where "questionable" would mean "not guaranteed to be good", but not necessarily bad.

My experience of the NHS in the UK is exactly the same. I've heard of some people gaming the system a little by using private insurance to supplement their healthcare. Then they can get a referral to see a NHS specialist from a private doctor, so no waiting to see a GP who might not give you the referral you want anyway.

Not to say that there aren't also significant problems with US healthcare.

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