One thing that's surprised me about the US is the general slowness of most things. In India, you can get MRIs and CT Scans same day. Or you could the last time I was there. And it didn't cost very much in comparison.<p>My doctors have all been good (attested to by my parents who are surgeons themselves) but the healthcare system is wonky.<p>One thing I didn't expect is that the Indian system where you just drag your health records around paper copy yourself is superior to US EMR systems - which doctors seem to always have trouble with.<p>But now I have some friends in medicine and I always have them pull my records and keep a copy myself. It's usually a fax but it's better that way. Clearly electronic interop isn't working most of the time.
Lately I can’t even get a doctor - both the specialist and primary care doctors are booked months in advance. And I have one of the best insurance coverages currently available. Remember how we laughed at Canadians and Brits waiting for months to see their free/cheap doctors? Well we’re at a point where we have to wait _and_ pay through the nose. And then they can’t really do anything or fuck you up even worse.
The UK performs better (third place) than, for example, Germany (second last place). The UK's healthcare system is often heavily criticized as being on the brink of collapse - any explanation for this?
I find it hard to trust a report that puts Canada above Germany in any healthcare related ranking. In terms of access, quality, and coverage, there's absolutely no comparison.
What does the ranking look like if you compare percentiles?<p>Naively I would assume as a non-American that if you're in the top 20% by income in the US you end up much better off than the top 20% income Brit, for example.<p>Or is it just actually worse for everyone? It feels intuitively obvious that the average will be worse because, well, the average person is skint and the US is less socialist.
The US likes to pretend free markets are our principle, but we have completely destroyed every notion of a free two-sided market on healthcare. That's the simple explanation for our outcome.
Quality of care is shit. Doctors barely care about their patients. It’s all a racket. Most areas seem to have a local monopoly that takes over the local hospitals. Obamacare has done nothing to really change anything meaningfully.
So Australia the #1 has the best outcome but is second to last in access to care?<p>Sounds like a lottery. If you win a place it's good otherwise not.
It's unfair to judge the EU piecewise but then judge the US as a whole. Either let us compare apples to apples by judging the whole EU against the US or let us judge individual European member states against individual US states.
Yeah that's the funny part: in the US you should pay thousands of dollars for the basic exam / ambulance ride and many people don't have coverage while in entirety of europe is basically free, but the US gov is still paying 50% more in GDP than the other
Because we are paying for the rest of the world. Allow prescription drug imports from abroad. Pharma companies will be forced to charge more in the rest of the world and less in US. Allow insurance plans based on medical tourism for expensive procedures. Some countries will say no, but a lot of countries will say yes for profit. Once you have a choice of a hip replacement in Mexico or India, hospitals in these countries will compete for safety, cost, pleasant aftercare. Let's stop being the suckers.