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Comment by anonzzzies | Hacker News Reader

Where? Nonsense as far as I have seen (lived in 4 EU countries and still living in one). Hospital wise I never had to wait (i'm on public healthcare); MRI's, operations, scopes etc are always within a few weeks. I heard far far worse stories from countries without public healthcare and people with private health insurance , including the US. If you are a millionaire or richer, sure; paying cash is faster, but that's not a system and that works everywhere anyway.

We have a bunch of universities in the global top 100 and I have been to one of them which didn't cost me (or my parents) more than a few k euro.

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In London (both before and after Brexit), getting an appointment with the local GP was a pain and could involve waiting weeks. Also, you could only get appointments by calling at certain times of the day and normally all slots would be allocated within minutes of the phone lines opening.

Sure, you could always go to the emergency room at the hospital and wait hours to be seen, but I don’t think that counts.

Seems the NHS got a lot worse, but I never been there (UK hospital, been in the UK many times) so I don’t know. I know brits coming to the south of the eu are surprised how quick it is here (if you know what to do).

Yeah family visiting Romania had to visit a local hospital for an emergency, and was surprised how quick and efficient they were. I suspect a lot of it boils down to population density.

The UK pays less per capital PPP adjusted towards healthcare than most of Europe. The NHS has become atrociously underfunded. I'd still pick it over the US insurance mess any day, and they are amazing for how low amounts we pay for it, but it does badly need more funding.

Also UK and rely heavily now on private GP services that have grown since pandemic. Could be in person of video call based. Either way it's same or next day and I can get private specialist referral from them. We use NHS GP only for our kids where they seem to prioritise them.

I'm in the US and have to make an appointment with my GP 3 months in advance. If I don't call between 10am and noon or 2pm to 4pm, I can't make an appointment. The last time I went to the hospital, I waited 5 hours before I was seen. All they did was puncture a fingernail and wrap it up. That little maneuver cost me over $1000.

How about other GPs?

When I lived in the Bay Area, everyone wanted to go to USCF, which is understandable being a world-class medical system. So it wasn't that easy getting an appointment.

But for routine medical check-ups? I just went to another system and could get a same day appointment no problem. Hell, I even had 5-6 different slots I could pick from the same week.

> How about other GPs?

Depends on how good your insurance is. PPOs, sure - though most of the country does not have as many doctors per capita as SF. Typically an HMO will only let you have one primary care provider.

Do those kind of HMOs even exist anymore? Last time I had an option like that from work was 2009 or something. Everyone switched to offering PPOs and HDHPs.

Shocker, voting for the people who want all their life to privatize NHS would have that results. #leopardslovebrexit

Waiting a few weeks for a GP appointment is normal everywhere. And it was far better in London before Brexit. The significant factor actually being the defunding of NHS that has happened over the past decade.

My non-emergency care in London is still excellent. It was better ten years ago.

Yes I'd like to get an appointment within a few days but even with my excellent private insurance outside of the UK it's a few weeks wait. GPs aren't sitting around waiting for customers anywhere in the world.

I cant believe this actually happens.

Here in Mexico you can schedule a private GP for the next 3 pr 4 days if you want to pay.

If it's a very minor thing, you can go to most pharmacies and a most likely recent medical graduate will be giving free consultations same day, with at most 15 min wait. (The last time I went the doctor was a Venezuelan medic with great credentials).

Or if you REALLY want to spoil, go to doctoralia.com and schedule a specialist for maybe $60 usd , with reviews and available schedule (usually within a week).

In the UK we pay less in tax for healthcare than Americans pay.

Despite that we also pay far less towards private healthcare than Americans pay, even though private insurance is far cheaper here (because they rent spare capacity from the NHS and offer their services as "topups" plugging holes where people want more.

Also in London, and never call my GP, it's all in an app, and most appointments are video calls. I've had waits sometimes, but I've also been seen within 10 minutes.

In Spain healthcare is managed at regional level. My region is clearly ahead of the average in this regard (despite the amount of elderly people we have) and it's clearly not a breeze.

To the point that I use the private healthcare quite often.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for the public service, Hospitals are superb and it will allways be there in case of an emergency, but this is mostly a site of US readers and I think we're misleading here. Our public systems are not a walk in the park either.

I won't get bankrupt, that's for sure. But I have to pay pocket/insurance if I want to get something done quickly and I'm not like, dying or something.

This is not precisely a good approach for prevention care.

It's just a matter of time before those systems look more like the situation in the UK. Eventually they all have to face the same economic realities of costs rising much faster than the tax income. The UK is just faster at internalizing this, which is a good thing imo.

I think we need a much better understanding of why costs are rising so much (not just as a result of the pandemic, even before that) and what can be done to mitigate that.

Well, most of those public health care systems in EU countries are working at least since WW2. So I am not quite sure why now is the time they suddenly cannot work anymore, in principle. Sure, governments can ruin any public health care system. But eventually voters could notice (or at least one would hope that).

Germany got universal healthcare in the 1800's under Otto von Bismarck.

There's EU and there's EU. Poland has a terrible public health care system, but it's fairly decent if you can afford private. Austria on the other hand is nothing short of amazing.

>lived in 4 EU countries and still living in one ... MRI's, operations, scopes etc are always within a few weeks

Where?

UK for one from my experience.

Also GP appointments within a few hours - twice in the last fortnight

Everyone I know in the UK said they could only get GP appointments days in the future, never on such short notice.

I’ve lived in Austria and Germany and had the misfortune of needing medical care multiple times in both in the almost 20 years I’ve spent in them so far- I’ve never had to wait long or pay much (most of the time pay nothing). I got good care, even though many doctors and nurses seem to have not hears of the concept of bedside manners.

And where is that please?

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