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Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

>Soon you’ll want Americans to know how good healthcare is in other countries

there is a difference between 'good healthcare' and 'available healthcare'.

the US has some of the highest quality healthcare in the world to those that it is made available to.

the worlds' most rich and famous come to the US for treatment -- and the poorest in the US are among the most plentiful medical tourists to Malaysia and Thailand.

It's hard for foreigners to understand, but these two qualities are not mutually exclusive.

The availability of healthcare is the favorite talking point of those with socialized medicine programs because.... the quality sucks.

How many hundreds of NHS horror-stories are produced a year?

Yes, it's great that they are given a card that says they have medical coverage. It's not so great to wait 6 years for a cancer treatment that is nigh useless by the time the scalpel touches the patient.

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> How many hundreds of NHS horror-stories are produced a year?

Less than the millions of horror stories produced by the lack of anything like the NHS in the US.

That number is not just hyperbole. There are on the order of a million homeless people on the US, and 50-70% of them cite medical debt as a major reason why. This is literally unimaginable in any European country.

> This is literally unimaginable in any European country

America (19.5/10k, of which 12 unsheltered) has fewer homeless per capita than, in increasing order of homelessness, Czechia (22), Austria (22), Sweden (26), Serbia (29), Canada (29), Germany (31), Latvia (35), Greece (37), Luxembourg (38), France (49, of which 4.5 unsheltered) and the UK (56, of which 0.9 unsheltered) [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ho...

Your source itself says the numbers are not directly comparable because of different measures of homelessness, and the US is widely reckoned to undercount: https://www.opportunitynowsv.org/blog/invisible-people-regio...

Nevertheless, medical debt is a significant driver of homelessness in the US, while it is not one in the EU.

Except its not 6 years for the vast majority of people?

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas...

~75% of people get diagnosed in <1 month of urgent referral and 90% of people that want treatment get started in <1 month.

>and the poorest in the US are among the most plentiful medical tourists to Malaysia and Thailand.

This is such an absurd statement. The poorest Americans can absolutely not afford travel to the other side of the world for treatment.

Aggregate health outcomes in the US are worse than every other country with UHC. Life expectancy is worse in the US than every other country with UHC. You cannot claim socialized medicine sucks when it produces better outcomes overall, and for every NHS horror story you throw down, I've got two American stories caused by poverty, HMOs, or culture war swings.

ETA: also, every country with UHC spends less on it as a portion of GDP than US public funding of non-universal health care.

> The availability of healthcare is the favorite talking point of those with socialized medicine programs because.... the quality sucks.

Well, this isn't universally true. But regardless, the quality of care in the US sucks just as much if you aren't financially well-off. When you can get it.

> How many hundreds of NHS horror-stories are produced a year?

And how many thousands of horror stories are produced by the US healthcare system every year?

Of course the NHS is not perfect.

The US is by way and away the richest country on earth, and ostensibly the best country on earth.

Surely they would aim higher and build a better system than the NHS, right?

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