Comment by bmandale 2 days ago
So to summarize: a. you're paying that for health insurance, not for the birth of the child. If you, your wife, your children had any other diseases then those would be covered as well. This is a significant benefit. b. all the systems that subsidize health care for those less well off don't apply because you're wealthy. So you are bearing the full cost of extremely high quality health insurance in a western country.
As someone who has lived in several countries, I do not believe every developed nation achieves better healthcare outcomes than the United States. Many European countries, as well as Canada, offer some form of universal coverage with free general treatment but waiting times for appointments and procedures can vary widely. That said, I still think universal healthcare is preferable, as these systems tend to prioritize urgent cases effectively and ensure that emergency treatment is fully covered for free.
I think, it's only the Asian countries who have got cheap, easy, and effective healthcare where you can not only get appointments quickly but you can get treatment for cheap too but their emergency services are not always as streamlined as those in more developed systems. There is no clear overall winner. Some places excel in certain aspects. Others perform better in different areas.
When I went to Canada, I talked to someone who said the Canadian government will subsidize trips to the US for certain treatments because it's not available at all in Canada or has insane waiting times. It's one data point, I know, but generally I think it's true that quality and availability of care in the US is much better.
I’m a Canadian and I’ve worked in health care.
This is only done for very specialized treatments where the province (they run the health care delivery) doesn’t have the treatment and/or the American resource is closer than a Canadian treatment location.
For example Nova Scotia will send some complex paediatric cases to Boston. They could send them to Toronto, but Boston is closer. Same with Manitoba but they use Minneapolis.
Canada is only 40m people and almost half that is in one province. The smaller provinces simply don’t have the population to justify having every possibly medical bell and whistle.
Point is when province sends Canadians for US treatment is isn’t actually about better quality as not all provinces have the same in house capacity and often the next largest city with such capacity is an American city.
Canada should just join the US. (Joke <- have to be explicit these days. )
> So you are bearing the full cost of extremely high quality health insurance in a western country.
Overinflated imaginary cost*
There is no way that a medical consultation of 15 minutes actually cost $32k. Examples like this are aplenty, but only from the US. My favourite one was an itemised bill for birth that included a $1k for skin contact with the newborn.
> extremely high quality health insurance in a western country
(Sigh...) Let's put some facts.
Infant mortality and under-five mortality rate (U5MR) are one of best simple indicators of the quality of healthcare. USA's mortality is x3 (!!!) of the countries on top. This puts USA around place 50 in the world, worse than Russia...
No. The original claim was "all the systems that subsidize health care for those less well off don't apply because you're wealthy. So you are bearing the full cost of extremely high quality health insurance in a western country.":
1. The quality is high.
2. The OP pays the full price.
1 is incorrect. The OP is paying a lot, but is getting the same subpar quality healthcare as everyone else. He differs with people without money in only one thing: the latter don't get the full access to the subpar health system. The system itself is the same and its general quality is well indicated by the core metric of the infant mortality.
The health system is subpar and there is absolutely no reason why such a system should cost that much.
How come other countries have better healthcare at lower real costs? Basically every developed nation has better healthcare outcomes than the US. All other nations have cheaper healthcare.
America is not special, we've just brainwashed our less-observant citizens into believing that solutions the entire rest of the world uses will never and can never work here. There's nothing special about our population or economy that would prevent accessible healthcare. The only thing standing in our way is healthcare companies who want their 6000% cut of every procedure and politicians who will do literally anything to give billionaires another dollar.