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Comment by karakot | Hacker News Reader

I have some anecdotes

1. A friend of mine had severe back pains, all what he got from a family doctor was some painkillers and some stories that his back pain due to to weak muscles and he has to exercise more and wait a bit (3-6 months) before he can get some tests done. Anyways he moved to the US and week later made some tests to find that he has cancer in some serious stage. He started treatment but it was too late.

2. Another friend had spend 6 hours in ER with his eyelid cut in half (he got a branch into his eye while hiking).

3. I had some troubles with my daughter in Canada as well, don't want to go into details.

I eventually moved to the US and while healthcare here is outrageously and ridiculously expensive it is still years ahead of Canadian when you have a good insurance.

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1 and 2 both sound quite familiar in the US system too. Ineffective and dismissive treatment for back pain is a common complaint, and long ER waits for non-life-threatening conditions are normal.

Anecdotes don't really do anything for us besides give us pointless things to argue about. You need to look at statistics like life expectancy, quality of life, average wait times, unnecessary deaths, etc.

The fact that you have to qualify your final statement with "when you have good insurance" is the whole problem. Before the ACA, that was far from a given, and even if you had good insurance it was too easy to lose. If Republicans have their way, we'll be back in that situation again.

I don't get it when people bring up situations like your #2. I'm sure it really, really sucked to wait six hours in the ER with an injury like that, but is it worse than staying home and trying to treat it yourself because you can't afford to visit the ER? Is it worse than dying from a simple condition because you can't afford to see a doctor?

> average wait times

Your doctor in Canada refusing to give you a referral to a specialist makes comparing these numbers not terribly useful.

> I don't get it when people bring up situations like your #2. I'm sure it really, really sucked to wait six hours in the ER with an injury like that, but is it worse than staying home and trying to treat it yourself because you can't afford to visit the ER? Is it worse than dying from a simple condition because you can't afford to see a doctor?

A system that allowed consumers to inject additional money into the system would increase the budget and managed properly(!), allow more total health care services to be provided to everyone.

Of course, "this will never work, all doctors will just move to the private sector" will be the refrain. Under our current society and so-called legal system perhaps, but put me in charge, I will put mandatory guidelines and levels of service in place, and then when doctors knowingly break the rules because based on history they well know they can do it without punishment, put a few of them in prison for 10 years, and watch compliance magically improve.

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