I can't go into much detail, but I know a lot of people with medical problems who aren't being seen by doctors in the US. Time and again I see people who have what I know to be fairly routinely urgent medical concerns that do get told by the ER that they have to wait for a specialist... 6+ months out. I'm sorry, but an infection doesn't wait 6+ months for you to put them on some basic antibiotics that a PA or I think even some nurse practitioners can prescribe in certain jurisdictions.
I remember when I was in the military (circa 2008), I had a colleague who told me his mother died on the sidewalk outside an ER because they couldn't afford any insurance and the hospital refused to see her. I didn't believe it, I though that it couldn't possibly be a thing in the US. But I keep seeing parallel issues time and again, but now it's for basic things and not because of insurance, but providers and networks are so fucked up that people must be dying from these things.
I know someone who worked in billing and claims for medical insurance too. They share horror stories about double leg amputees being denied a wheelchair...
Hope I don't get an infected cut or something, even with my decent insurance who the hell knows at this point!
Well, there goes my father's reasoning against the universal healthcare that he wants. He keeps talking to all these retired Tory civil servants in anglophone countries and they always complain about the wait times. I keep saying to him: " We have the same wait times and we have to give them way more up front."
also the "awful absurd socialist wait times" are either for very specific treatments or wildly exagerated. i've haven't needed medical stuff since pre-covid, but i've never had to wait more than a few days to see an NHS doctor. i've heard family complain about 'wait times' for routine benign shit and it turns out they mean like, a few weeks.
dentists on the other hand? it is more or less an impossibility to see a public dentist this decade
i've been promised that keir starmer will sort it all out
For him, his anecdotal experience came from being treated for his colon cancer a decade ago. He was able to assemble the treatment rather quickly and travel to a good out of state hospital on his old insurance plan.
Another thing is that he really resents needing specialists as he gets older because of all the diagnostics they have to run every so often. He doesn't exactly have a lot of free time from his schedule and he gets irked by the way an upper middle class doctor can just casually suggest something that he still has to pay for out his meager janitor wages. That and the fact they can't really offer him any solution for the painful neuropathy that the chemo gave him.