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Comment by ipad23 | Hacker News Reader

Many of these articles exaggerate the price of healthcare in the US. I'm an independent contractor and pay for my own health insurance. My wife and I together cost less that 500/month (universal care would take way more in taxes) Checkups are covered, prescriptions are mostly free or very inexpensive, and if I do have an emergency, I don't need to wait 6 months to get treated, like in the UK or Canada. I also get some of the best doctors in the world.

A good test of a country's quality of healthcare is where people that don't have to worry about money go to get treated....that's currently the US.

It has problems, but sacrificing quality for nationalization is not the solution.

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This post must be missing a sarcasm tag... the average cost of healthcare in the USA is HUGE and far higher than most other developed countries. As for quality, you are severely underestimating the clinical care provided in countries even as "underdeveloped" as India (I quote it because I'm sure you might have that opinion of the country in question).

If you have any kind of moderate condition in the USA you are likely screwed. Of course our system protects against catastrophic incidents and helps with basic checkups but everything in between is not covered by most plans.

> Many of these articles exaggerate the price of healthcare in the US. I'm an independent contractor and pay for my own health insurance. My wife and I together cost less that 500/month

Do you think $500 a month is cheap? That's insane - that's about a quarter of my entire income tax in the UK.

> It has problems, but sacrificing quality for nationalization is not the solution.

But both life expectancy is lower and infant mortality is higher in the US than in the UK.

What quality do you think you'd be sacrificing? I'm getting better life expectancy and infant mortality than you are, and I'm paying a lot less than you are.

The distortion from what you say and reality is at comical levels, you might as well be saying the earth is flat. The reality is that the country with the best healthcare quality in the world: Denmark, pays $3,512 per each citizen per year on average for a significantly better health care.

Source: https://www.denverpost.com/2009/09/03/health-care-in-denmark...

That's some blatant misinformation. In Canada you don't wait for treatment. If you need treatment, you will be treated. Stop spreading some garbage myth.

I don't know where you live in Canada, but that's not entirely true. There are long waits for some procedures (far longer than medically indicated) and a significant number of people cannot access primary care because of the shortage of GPs (especially in rural areas). I would still, 100%, rather live in Canada than the US but your comment (intentionally or not) completely glosses over the waiting lists for some medical specialties.

People in the US see short lines and think "wow I can use our system whenever I want" instead of "wow our system is so expensive that it's usage is much lower than capacity".

Yeah, is clear him and thousands of others like him around the internet have a very clear agenda posting about how they believe the US health care system is great, that going bankrupt for healthcare services (or dying because they couldn't afford meds[0]) is just an acceptable and normal part of American society.

[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alex-smith-died-couldnt-af...

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