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Comment by Shenglong | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to debate this very much, but I felt I should share my opinion/experience:

I'm in Canada. My dad waited 4 months to be contacted, in order to book an appointment for a knee surgery that he drastically needs. After those four months, I flipped and asked a friend for a favor.

I also thought I had an ear problem. I waited 6 months before someone called me to book an appointment to get it checked out.

When I went to the emergency room with a 41 degree (C) fever, I waited 4 hours before someone gave me acetaminophen and told me to wait longer.

Yes, with universal health care, I'm able to gain access to all of this. Yet, how effective is it? I'm sure everyone has a different experience, but there are many people who have had similar experiences to me.

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For what it's worth, as an American:

As a senior in college under my parent's military health insurance plan, I had to wait three months to get knee reconstruction surgery.

As a working adult under my company's private health insurance plan, I had a severe ear problem - the earliest I could get an appointment was a month, at which point the doctor thought it might be a tumor, but the earliest I could get an MRI was another two months later (luckily someone who had a midnight appointment canceled a couple of weeks later. I got a phone call at 10pm telling me that if I could get to the hospital by midnight they would fit me in, and they did. Thankfully the MRI was negative).

I've been to the emergency room several times for myself and others. The minimum wait was 3 hours, the maximum was closer to 8.

In several of healthcare experiences, I've been directly billed for services that should have been covered by the healthcare provider, leading to a couple of months of fighting with the hospital and the provider (complete with account turned over to collections, etc).

IOW, your experience with universal health care service seems similar to mine under privately sponsored programs, only you didn't have to worry about having to pay for the services.

I have a relatively good PPO plan through my US employer. I pay out $300 a month in insurance fees, and in addition I presume my employer pays out a couple times that. But, it still takes me a couple of months to get in for a doctor's visit and $30 for a 7 minute visit. You're not alone. Sure, I always have the $75 hospital option, but the hospitals largely are specialized for ER trauma.

The economics of health care is all backwards. It's an economics problem.

Why are you going to your family doctor's office for a quick visit? Whenever I need something simple - check for strep throat, ear ache, potential broken bone - I find a nearby clinic, and they usually see me within a few hours.

In Dallas it was even easier - CareNow had a web check-in form, so they'd call you 30 minutes before your time and you show up and usually wait no more than 10 minutes before a doctor pokes and prods you.

My own experience as an American in London was euphoric. After abandoning a flight home do to illness, I checked into a hotel and asked the concierge to recommend a medical center. What a surprise when she said she would call a doctor to my room. Even better, the doctor provided me with medication on the spot. Still better, I wasn't charged.

What hotel was it? I expect the hotel was covering the cost of an 'on-call' doctor

I don't remember, but it was close to Heathrow, so you may have a point.

I am unsure of how your healthcare system works. Is it possible to pay for more timely service from a private hospital or private doctor?

If it is possible but not feasible because of cost, then an American, speaking practically, experiences the same thing. Not enough money to pay for medical service. However there is an important difference.

An American must pay something out of pocket. The financial burden may lead to bankruptcy and ultimately no medical care at all. I've noticed that you did not raise concerns about bankruptcy but instead your concern was over slow medical service.

You cannot pay to "jump the queue" in Canada if the health care procedure is covered by public health insurance which includes most things you'd expect a doctor to do or prescribe.

You can only pay to jump the queue by leaving the country, such as going to the United States or India for medical treatment.

It's different in new Zealand. If you don't like the waiting list you can have private insuanace or pay yourself for a private hospital. We did this when my wife had a melanoma. Waiting list was 3 months (non urgent) so we went private. It cost $4000 (operating room, surgeon, nurses etc).

Here is how to get medical treatment in Canada, you move to a major city with a teaching hospital, for instance, Vancouver/UBC.

Look at the various medical boards and find out who is on those boards, when you get referred to a specialist insist on finding someone either on the board or connected to the board. Get those people to put you on the list, and constantly complain to them, they will get you moved up.

My personal experience is with my friend who wanted a nose job because his nose had been broken a few times, he happened to get a connected doctor and had a nose job within a week, his doctor relayed the aforementioned. My other experience is with heart surgery, my mother-in-law was having heart complications, in the suburbs they sent her home with nitro, and told her to come back in a week for some test. She lives in a retirement community so they have poor resources and lots of people needing those resources, especially for heart failure. She was still having pains so I insisted we take her to VGH, at VGH they took it very seriously, we got there about 11 PM and by 4 AM on a Saturday they had done a triple bypass with a surgeon who needed to be called in.

Morale of the story, in Canada you need to be near well funded hospitals with out a lot of old people around, or have connections. If you have a lot of people drawing on a limited resource you'll have to wait a long time in line.

That has nothing to do with Universal Healthcare, and has everything to do with the fact that there are not enough doctors. Which is unrelated to Universal Healthcare -- just look at a country like Austria, which has very good social insurance, and absolutely tons of doctors.

Here, the education to become a doctor is free, and there are lots of (free) childcare services available to average people. So a person need only have enough money to survive, and need not pay for school or babysitting above the age of about 3, and graduate a medical doctor without debt.

That is how my mother-in-law, who grew up rather poor, became a neurologist after she had her unplanned baby (my husband).

Beyond that we (North American) have rules betters suited for an abundance of medial personnel, rather than a shortage: You need a regular doctor visit to renew benign drugs like Ventolin or Insulin, we have nurses cleaning up vomit instead of janitors, and licensed dental hygienists are not allowed to clean teeth unless they have a dentist on site [1]. Which would be fine, if we had doctor, nurse and dentists to spare, but they seem like comparatively easy things to fix if there's a shortage.

[1] http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/05/26/201125/legalize...

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