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Comment by reptilian | Hacker News Reader

Where healthcare is concerned, America is not what anyone considers "first world". Your healthcare system is more backward than most third world nations. I would rather leave the US than receive medical treatment there. I have never even considered trusting the US healthcare system. When I lived there I would rather fly home and get treated (in a third world country) than lose all my savings getting inadequate care in the US. I know people who have been through large and expensive treatment plans in the global south, who paid less for the complete treatment than Americans pay for the ambulance getting you to the hospital.

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I think its two systems masquerading as one - employed-and-insured and everyone else.

If you're the former, it works great. If you're the latter, it can be mediocre to BRUTAL. Medical debt is our #1 or 2 cause of bankruptcy iirc.

Regardless of which class you are, if you can access the care, our outcomes are the best in the world for most things.

> If you're the former, it works great.

I don't think that's true at all. "Insured" doesn't mean just one thing. There are many different kinds of insurance, levels of plans, etc. Most insurance companies will do their best to deny claims or push more responsibility onto the patient.

My insurance is very good, but I see a therapist weekly and my insurance only covers about 40% of the cost. I'm fortunate that ~$500/mo isn't a problem for me, but many people in the US would find that impossible.

A few months ago I went to the ER for what turned out to be gallstones, and was still on the hook for $200 of that visit. And I took a Lyft the the hospital; I don't want to think about what my out-of-pocket cost had been if I'd needed an ambulance.

Last summer I hurt my hand in a bicycle accident, and went to PT once a week for 6 weeks. I had to pay a $35 co-pay for each visit; that's $210 for a single injury.

And this is with fairly good insurance. Many, many insured Americans just have so-so insurance. From what I hear of most healthcare systems in countries that do this right, most (if not all) of this stuff would have been completely free.

> If you're the latter, it can be mediocre to BRUTAL

Yup, and in a way that's an even worse indictment, that really puts us in worse-than-third-world territory.

Your healthcare system is more backward than most third world nations. I would rather leave the US than receive medical treatment there.

And yet the wealthiest people in the world, who can have the best healthcare anywhere they want on the planet, even with private doctors, routinely choose to be treated in Rochester, Minnesota; Boston, Massachusetts; Houston, Texas; Baltimore, Maryland; and Los Angeles, California.

The U.S. is by no means perfect, but there's a reason that there are entire medical facilities in the U.S. that cater exclusively to people from other countries. Just listen to local radio in Palm Springs and you'll hear commercials along the lines of "Tired of waiting, or simply can't get the medical care you need in Canada? Come to our hospital!"

Meanwhile, if I wanted to have my recent surgery in Canada, I'd have to wait almost a year for a slot to open up. Here I waited all of two weeks. And the newspaper headlines in the UK are full of horror stories of patients dying in hospital hallways while doctors are on strike because everything is so great.

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