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Comment by diogenescynic | Hacker News Reader

>This is really common in health care.

I want to clarify it's only common is US healthcare. We're rally the only country in the world paying exorbitant prices AND getting low quality care. For instance, I once hit my head on a train while in France and had to get stitches. I was rushed to the emergency room in an ambulance, 2 nurses and a doctor immediately started helping clean the wound and stitching it up. I was in and out in 15-20 minutes, they gave me antibiotics, and they only charged me 50 EUR (which would have been free if I was a French citizen). I've had several similar experiences in the US that all took hours and hours in an ER and I was billed thousands.

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Can you really extrapolate those two experiences across every other country in the world?

I think for many countries it's more "they would if they could" and it's lack of resources that means that a lower standard of medical care is provided. But American healthcare is unique amongst 1st world countries.

Though tbf in the UK the NHS has been allowed to fester with overpaid middle management and corrupt supply chains designed to siphon money off wherever possible, it's something that the government needs to address very badly.

Because public healthcare _always_ works, it's when private businesses (supply chains, agencies, contractors, etc) get involved that things get expensive for the taxpayer.

I don't get why they gave you antibiotics though?

Open head wound from bumping it on public transit?

The evidence base for general usage of antibiotic prophylaxis in open “uncontaminated” wounds in otherwise healthy people ain’t great.

Depends on what kind of antibiotics they’re talking about, exact location/depth, their health status and what you’d call “uncontaminated” or not. Not really enough info to judge.

Sure, public transit isn’t “clean”, but it’s going to be cleaner than the average human/animal bite or fall into a manure pile.

Sure you’ll hear case reports from the people that didn’t get antibiotics and had a bad outcome, but antibiotics can cause bad outcomes too, from resistance, impaired wound healing from topicals and things like C Diff. Plus added time+cost.

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