Comment by SilverElfin a day ago
It’s not better elsewhere. Healthcare is fundamentally expensive. You can choose between cost, availability of specialists or new treatments, and speed of being seen. The bureaucracy and vague denials under some government healthcare programs make United, Aetna, etc look good.
It's at least better in not making the system a confusing mess of coverage tiers, copays, deductibles, in-network staff in out-network facilities, and all the other jargon used to complicate it to the point where many people don't know if they are covered or not.
Nowhere is absolutely perfect but it's much easier to navigate, and many developed countries have very good care for emergencies and/or life-threatening ailments. It might suck to investigate something chronic but non-life threatening, it won't stress you if you think you are having a stroke and need to call an ambulance.
That’s what frustrates me a lot. The system is not only super expensive but also incredibly complex an unpredictable with tons of very costly traps. Basically it combines the worst aspects of the different approaches.
Pardon the internet lingo, but this is cope. Americans pay way more for their healthcare than citizens of countries with universal healthcare, like France, and their life expectancy is still lower. So clearly, it is better elsewhere. Don't fall into helplessness, the situation can be improved, it will "just" require actual political will to do so, that you unfortunately can't find anywhere among the Right or "moderate" democrats.
That isn't really true. The US just happens to train really few physicians and therefore has really few physicians per capita.
In Sweden it's about 2x higher. Of course, they're still experts, so it's somewhat expensive, but not like in the US.