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Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

> And people keep trying to argue the US has a great healthcare system.

I’ve never heard anyone argue this. The common argument is that it really sucks and that proposed changes suck as well. So the argument isn’t “don’t change because it’s great.” The argument is “It’s terrible and I’m worried that if you change it, it will get worse.”

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I've come across a number of HN commenters claiming US healthcare is better than the EU or UK. I'd argue it's pretty broken compared to both. The UK's NHS is far from perfect yet serves the majority of people well without bankrupting them. Countries of the EU will have varying quality of healthcare, yet I'd still trust them over the US due to my fear of the US's highly profit driven system (which can cost you more than money).

I suspect those claiming US healthcare is superior are able to pay quarter of a million without blinking - however they still run the risk of unnecessary surgery and aggressive prescription of addictive substances.

I think we can separate the administration of the care from the are itself. I believe the US has among the best care. I also believe our administration of said care is among the worst, if not the worst.

True, I wouldn't be surprised if the US was amongst the lead in quality of medical procedures - when that procedure is necessary... but beyond administration, there have been numerous instances of doctors being exposed for electing patients for unnecessary procedures driven by profits, and other procedures being recommended when scientific evidence suggest the procedure has no clear benefit - no matter the quality of surgery, it always comes at significant risk and cost to your body, it's not a magic wand; it's a traumatic intervention that requires your body to go through a lot of recovery with possible lasting effects. This can be true to a lesser extent for less severe medical interventions too.

So my point is, what use is excellent "care" if not only it's life endingly expensive, but it's also prescribed immorally to the point of actually causing harm!

One measurement for medical intervention is caesarean births versus natural births by mother’s age, which hugely jumped in the states in the 2000’s: https://www.statista.com/statistics/206438/us-cesarean-deliv... (although rates are highly influenced by consumer demand?). Chance of caesarean jumped in percent from ≈⅔age to ≈age (e.g. ≈20% for 20 year old). High variation between states, although some of that might be state demographics of mothers: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/cesarean_births/ce...

And a comparison against caesarean rates in OECD, which can be higher rate of caesarean per birth: https://www.statista.com/statistics/283123/cesarean-sections...

The people who make this claim will cite easier access to desired procedures, and higher quality treatment. They will then make the claim that care is rationed in other countries, and point at some anecdote about someone who had to wait a year for an MRI or wasn't allowed to get the optimal treatment.

These arguments are at best disingenuous

Every time the Single Payer option is this discussed, you hear people say how care in Canada and UK is broken, indicating that it's fine in US, which is not the case.

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