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Comment by ponector | Hacker News Reader

In Poland I pay mandatory health insurance, it is 9% of my income. Instead they provide healthcare with queues up to few years for non life treating conditions.

Also common story is there could be up to 6 months between diagnosis of cancer and start of the treatment.

Would you like to pay such healthcare tax?

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Public healthcare can also suck balls indeed, but to compare the same things, I would rather pay for well-functioning public healthcare than for well-functioning private healthcare. The other insurer's incentives (max profit) are just less likely to be aligned with mine (good health) in the private system.

The Swiss fully private system seems reasonable, Netherlands also to a degree. They are pretty efficient. Private but heavily regulated seems like a good balance.

That has probably more to do with Poland being overall piss poor compared to the countries that always rank top on health care things (like Norway) rather than how you're paying for it.

Long queues are common for countries with public healthcare.

The big difference with private - you can choose how much do you pay and what you'll get. With public you get poor experience no matter how much you pay. And sum is not limited: more you earn more you pay :(

As someone who just tried to schedule an appointment with a new PCP and being told my first available appointment would be in August, I'm not at all sold on the idea that long queues are unique to public health care systems.

I'm not sure what kind of health insurance I could buy in the US that would give me short queues. Lower deductible, more ancillary services, sure, but what's the plan that says "no more than a week to schedule any kind of appointment you need"?

I pay a lot for premium healthcare in the US through my job and right now I've been in a queue for months just to see a doctor. So...it's not any different here, except we pay for it.

The US public spending on healthcare per capita is more than most countries' combined private and public spending. So they pay the tax and also pay insurance.

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