Even in countries with universal healthcare, people regularly can't afford treatment because expensive treatments aren't included.
We paid for TV and parking(and we could have gotten free taxis to the hospital/doctors appointments but she didn't want to ride with a stranger...)
Are you talking about 3rd world countries?
Any specific you think about?
Btw the "free" tier system is a joke in Germany. Waiting months for an appointment is the norm for anything more serious than a cough, unless you're privately insured which all the rich people and interestingly civil servants are. Tells you a lot when those working for the government don't use the public insurance themselves.
People may be surprised to hear that someone with a medium income (by EU standards) can get better healthcare in Africa than in a place like Germany. Or at least for now, the ANC is working hard on destroying the private healthcare sector in SA.
The teeth problem I'm aware of and find it quite unfair indeed.
Nonetheless cancer doesn't make you poor in comparison to the USA.
Still something which has to be fixed in Germany.
But you still have the option to go private if you want.
As for the US I'm not an expert but my gut feeling is that people compare apples to oranges just like with most of these international comparisons. Cost of living is much higher in the US first of all. Things are simply more expensive in general and American salaries are a lot higher for anyone moderately educated. No one I know who's moved to the US has any problems with insurance, they can simply afford it.
Now if you compare a government sponsored system in Germany with private insurance in the US, of course the former will be cheaper (be careful though, some of the real cost is hidden). But like mentioned you also get completely different treatment. Cost in the US could likely be cut by making the service worse. If you want to pay even less, have you looked at the Chinese system? Germans are massively overpaying in comparison to the PRC and it's ruining the middle class. /s Gotta sinophy your healthcare with 10 Yuan TCM pills for cancer treatments. Because cheap is apparently the goal when it comes to healthcare.
Btw, here's the kicker if you want to discuss price: With the top notch treatment you get in private South African clinics, people still pay less for their private insurance over there than the government mandated low quality one in Germany. I know because I've used both.
The critisism is coming from USA to.
>The critisism is coming from USA to.
Dumb people exist in the US too - color me surprised. It's not about defending the US healthcare system, I'm sure there are enough issues worth criticizing. However almost every time one sees such reports it turns out the people were simply under-insured or outright uninsured if you actually bother to look at the details and not just the headline. So in Germany you have similar high bills, people are simply ignorant of this because the true cost is socialized and the tax payer pays for it. Have you never wondered how a fully privately insured person living a comparable lifestlye at the end of the month still has more disposable income in the US compared to Germany?
The bills are smaller. USA is paying a high price for their health system. This one is statistically shown.
They aren't outright denied, just backlogged for years. Need a hip replacement in the UK, and you're a smoker? Good luck trying to get it within a year.
Because it turns out that healthcare is a service, and just making it "free" doesn't magically make it immune to scarcity.
It was the worst time of my life. I had to pay a private psychiatrist to treat her. A very good one - we plotted together a plan to partake on her fantasy and administer a risperidone injection which was super effective. She is fine now and visits said doctor once in a year only.
Sure you can go to a general clinic but the doctor will forward you to the proper specialist queue which might take months or even years.
In the UK there is a department called NICE which uses health economics to understand how to best utilize the funding for the national health service to best improve health outcomes (generally measured by increasing QALY or Quality-Adjusted Life Years, but there are multiple measures in reality). This means that if there is a £500k treatment that could save the lives of a 70 year old, but there is a £1m treatment that could save the life of a 20 year old, and there is only budget for one, it would go to the £1m treatment because it has the biggest impact on QALY.
So the treatments that don't get approval are usually those that have a poor return. Note that it's usually the whole treatment that gets approved / denied rather than particular patient (or it is approved for a particular subset of people).
The other issue is capacity - so for instance, if there is only a limited capacity to perform MRI scans, then triage is required.
The free market should decide. If you created enough shareholder value then you'll have enough to pay for their treatment like God intended.
A few countries forbid this, including Canada.
From a country that had it, it usually means: ugly hospitals, sad faces, long queues for treatments (I mean wait time for "free" treatment can be well over a year).
There is no free lunch.
On the other hand, I usually can get my kid to doctor same day, while using private healthcare provider (paid by my employer) it is almost impossible, 2-3 days wait.
On yet another hand, to get registered to my local doctor I need to use phone and start calling when they open up (8am) - sometimes I can't get to registration. The private healthcare has a normal website where I can look up registrations - so it is less time consuming (and automateable to some degree).
Private hospitals are rare here, and most of real work is done by public ones. Because the hospitals don't have enough money, they e.g. don't provide separate meals for people that need them (e.g. you had a digestive tract operation), so it is up for the family.
Good thing recently is that if your kid needs to go to hospital, there might beds for parent to stay with the kid (I'm not sure if that is that common in all hospitals)
I think universal healthcare is a social must and we need to fix it instead of talking it down.
Primary care is provided by private doctors and hospitals, so it is almost like a business. Doctors offices have websites, and get reviews from general public. You choose where you go to. All health insurances cover almost all of them. The doctor's offices are "competing" to provide a good service - being clean, solving problems correctly, not charging too much etc.
The government spends what ever money it allocates for healthcare on Public hospitals that focus on expensive medical equipment(labs, diagnostic machines etc), and treating chronically ill patients.
In an ideal world, you go to private doctors to figure out what is wrong, and then use the public facility if you can wait, and get the surgery/medicine/treatment for free. Often times, the private doctor refers you to a public doctor with a specific note that says this person needs this particular surgery using this particular medical device.
However, this systems leaves a big hole in catering to the poor who cannot afford to go to a private doctor for primary care owing to costs. No system is perfect. I think this model has the most potential for better healthcare.
AFAIR there was such proposition in France some time ago, I don't know how they solved that.
There are problems with puclic healthcare that needs solving, but I would much rather focus on thoose problems than pumping insurace companies with money so private hospitals can charge 10x-100x the price of a treatmant (compared to Europe for example).