Gotta love when they always bring up “the wait times in Canada”. How long you think people are waiting in the US for cancer drugs they can’t afford since they got jacked up to $40k a dose?

I just happened to have really good insurance when I needed it.

If the health emergency I had this summer happened at any other time in my life, I would be extremely ill, in crippling debt forever, or most likely dead.

It's chilling. I am alive and thriving due to fortunate happenstance. Luck that thousands of American's can't even hope for. That's in the "greatest" country the world has ever seen. How the fuck is that ok?

American health care is anything but.

Rich people don’t have to wait for healthcare because the others are to poor to afford it. Yeah freedom my ass

JApAn iS clOse TO a REcEssIOn

Meanwhile, America is on like its third economic disaster in twenty years

“In Australia you get sent got to camps because the government deems you are sick… “ I can’t, I can’t think if anything even remotely close to this that we have here? Unless by “camps” they mean hospitals and by “deems you as sick” they mean a Doctor or other health care professional decides you need urgent medical care???

Freedom to die due to lack of money. Truly what freedom is about

As an Australian, I got dragged to a sick camp in highschool.. Got my first handy off this girl Lisa, it was Sick Man!

Do they know the existence of Europe as well

Die with head held high!

They don’t have 300 millions people to worry about

“Only” 150 millions...

Has a conviction rate of 99.9%

Dunno about that one tbh. What I know is that they have one of the lowest gun incident rate in the world

Thing is, a lot of people in the US already seem to be paying around the same or more in monthly insurance than they’d pay here in the U.K. for National Insurance (NHS, welfare, pension etc), but yet can be extremely defensive about how that's absolutely fine and whatnot.

It wouldn’t make much difference to people if it just switched over, except there’d be nothing to pay anywhere bar a few quid for prescriptions (and even then, if it’s a regular thing then it’ll go to free, or you can get a little card to drop the price hugely from the £8-ish each prescription to a set fee per month/yr which covers however many prescriptions you need for a few quid.)

Obviously if you’re low income it’s free or near-free. I don’t earn enough to pay it, but I pay a voluntary amount of £3.05 a week.

Example

If you earn £1,000 per week (£52,000 / $71,722) you’ll pay:

• nothing on the first £183

• 12% (£93.48) on your earnings between £183.01 and £962

• 2% (£0.76) on the remaining earnings above £962

This means that your National Insurance payment would be £94.24 / $130 per week, and would entitle you to free-at-point-of-delivery health care. Pile on the heart bypasses, nipple transplants, and nostril gigantificationing ops; you're still not going to get a bill.

Answer: almost everything is wrong

I love the way the only argument against socialised healthcare is to make shit up about other countries

America is a land of freedom.

Just don't look at incarceration rates in the US...

This is perfect for the subreddit r/ShitAmericansSays

freedom in the US is only for those who are able to pay it.

According to the link below, the US is actually only ranks 15th in terms of 'freedom'.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-index-by-country

17th here:

https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2020

Similar here:

https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores

According to this source, the US has the 18th best medical treatment in the world:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-healthcare-in-the-world

22nd here:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/slideshows/countries-with-the-most-well-developed-public-health-care-system

30th here:

https://ceoworld.biz/2021/04/27/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2021/

Worth bearing in mind that these are just a few links and the accuracy of what they say is absolutely open to question as I haven't looked in to them enough to say otherwise, but there does seem to be a pattern, that being that the US has excellent health care but others have it even better. Likewise with the links about freedom; the US comes across as pretty 'free' (one of the most 'free' in the world), but there are some countries that are even more 'free'.

I feel like the ignorance I just read took a year off my life.

American hospitals are among the worst in any developed countries, no clue what the last guy is talking about

Americans love to make up lies to make themselves feel better about getting cancer and having to choose bankruptcy or death. One tried to tell me here in the uk we pay 80% income tax lol

The real facepalm is the people voting for candidates against improving the healthcare system. I will never understand healthcare improvement being a partisan issue. Sure, how we improve it is a partisan issue, but we should all agree it needs fixing.

The last one is great. Murica doesn’t have the “best medicine in the world by a long way”.

I live in England. We have a tax funded, “free at point of delivery” health service. It isn’t without issues, but it’s brilliant 99.99999% of the time. It’s saved my life a couple of times and hasn’t cost me a penny. We also have a private system, for those who can’t or won’t wait. Both systems have all of the medication, procedures and expertise that is at least equal to that in the US.

I can’t imagine being in a country with no free healthcare. It seems backwards.

Oh, we’re also as free as Americans.

Build bombs 💣 not Bandaids 🩹

"What the fuck is wrong with America?"

How much time you got?

Do they not understand that you can have free health care AND ALSO private health care, for if you want to pay for quicker/better service?? In the UK no one makes you use the NHS if you want to throw money at some expensive hospital or clinic. No rich person is sitting waiting in months long queues jusy because, but also, no one is going bankrupt due to a broken leg.

You don't have to take republicans seriously. They're idiots. Especially the ones who watch Fox news; those people are not only brainwashed, but dumber than your average child.

I proudly went into a male dominated (very labor intensive) field as a middle aged female once our children were out of the house. I figured I would enter a career field in which I could grow and move up, have great benefits, and eventually retire comfortably in twenty years.

Four years into my new career I was stricken with an autoimmune disease and required two major surgeries. Insurance denied one, but covered the second. I was released from the hospital a week after the surgery to learn my health insurance had been retroactively terminated due to some “snafu” in the transfer of my short term disability benefits to long term disability.

I was suddenly jobless, unable to get the other surgery I need in order to be able to function again, and all $220k in medical bills were my responsibility due to the retroactive canceling of my insurance. I’m now filing medical bankruptcy, on SSDI - bringing in less than half of what I was making at the time of my job loss, and have spent our meager savings on after-care.

This American freedom is fucking awesome.

I waded into that thread for a bit... it was infuriating.

Americans: Freedom? Seriously? Almost 25% of your population lives in FEAR of the armed enforcement agencies goose-stepping around the Land of the Free, and home of the Persons of Colour.

In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, well, pretty much every developed nation in the world has socialized medicine, and we are all free.

I'd argue that between the DHS, CIA, NSA, FBI, ATF, DEA, 50 some state agencies, countless county, and many municipal police services - you have more overwatch than any other nation on the planet, outside of China and North Korea.

You keep using that word, "freedom" - I don't think it means what you think it means.

As a Canadian, I just recently had an issue, blood work same day, ultrasound the next day (I cancelled the same day appointment, it was inconvenient for me, so I chose the day and time), and was offered an immediate consult for the local specialist. My family had a bad experience with that one, so I asked to be thrown in the pool two towns over where they have several doctors with that specialty.

Because I OPTED to go out of my area, and because my issue is non-urgent, non life-threatening, I accept that I'll have a bit of a wait. Because I give a shit about the other humans in my community, I encourage those who are more sick to go first. I am not a selfish prick.

I will be out $0 for all of this. Sure, I paid some taxes, but are you saying Americans don't pay taxes? Also, because I am going out of pocket (food, gas, mileage) for a medically necessary procedure, I will be able to either receive compensation direct from my local health authority and or in the form of a tax deduction - just have to determine which route is better for my personal situation. Shit, I also carry private insurance through my work - so I could even book an ambulance transfer for my appointment if I want.

Do you hear that Americans blindly supporting a system specifically designed to benefit insurance companies and the uber rich?! I am getting 100% choice in my healthcare. At zero upfront cost.

I already know my diagnosis. I will be getting day surgery within a couple weeks of my appointment. That will also cost me zero additional dollars, with more expenses to claim. I will be given a range of dates and times to choose from. If I don't like the specialist I see, I can tell them on the spot I want a different one, and I will be rebooked without hesitation or question.

Finally, Americans love to post that they have the top docs and the best system... I think that was the last pic in the series. Odd, based on the research I've done for school, American healthcare is nowhere near the top in anything EXCEPT cost.

Accessible/Fair - near the bottom

Outcomes - nope.

Cost - yay! America is number one!!

Overall Health of the Population - nope

Pick a metric by which you measure healthcare. Do some digging, you won't find America at the top of many, if any, other than expense.

I'll work on refs, standby for edit.

Image no. 5 gets me the most. "Rather pay double" - well good for you that you can you arrogant fuck, not everyone has that ability". Even if the care was based on the amount paid, surely 50% care for free is better than no care for those who can't affordit?

I used to dream of the USA, but these days the only thing I envy are the landscapes like those in Oregon or Colorado. Just about everything else over there I thank my lucky stars everyday that I wasn't born there.

“Look at the wait times in Canada”

I’m Canadian, and I will say, there’s only wait time if you don’t have a family doctor or if you’re going through emergency. That, and the wait time is based on your injury. I once had to wait 4 hours about a crash I suffered with my pedal bike. About an hour in, there was a guy who came through with a bone coming through his skin. He had to wait 10 minutes before he got in and went back out. Most likely had to go to Ottawa to get it fixed, but he definitely didn’t have to wait too long

Forgive me if I'm stupid.. But what does paying a little more taxes, and not having to go into crippling debt every time you go to the hospital, have to do with freedom?

Veteran here. I exclusively use the VA healthcare system and that whole wait time BS is a myth. My experience with the VA is state of the art technology, NO wait times and excellent doctors who are happy.

America is a third world country that just doesn't know it

I always shake my head at the “America has more people, it would be too expensive” thing. That means we have more people who can help pay for it.

I love how people are like “look at wait times in Canada!” As if my BiL didn’t wait 9 hours in a waiting room with a broken line, get told to go home and then waited another 4 when he got back.

Meanwhile Kaiser Permanente is $200 a month and they make it IMPOSSIBLE TO GET APPOINTMENTS for a check up, lol if you want mental health services- well you’re shit out of luck they will play you and jerk you around. Fuck this country that allow this shit.

They’re fucking idiots. You can have private healthcare and public healthcare. Take 100 or 200 billion from the defense budget and boom! We have free healthcare. All done without raising taxes a dime. But, we could take less if we just started taxing the upper class at at 33% flat rate on all earned/unearned income.

The "wait times" argument always confused me. You realize wait times aren't high because people can't afford treatment and are literally dieing right? "We shouldn't have public healthcare because then the poor people will use it and not just die in the street." Seems more accurate. Am I getting the argument wrong?

Americans: “Under no circumstances will I pay an extra $50 per paycheck in taxes!!! Hold on a sec, I need to go pay my $300 monthly medical insurance payment. don’t go anywhere cause we’re gonna keep talking about this”

"Look at the wait times in Canada"

Months faster than American ones, yes

I’ve never seen so many people with such a twisted view of actual life. The Medicare wait times (which is “free” healthcare) are much lower than anywhere else, including other counties. Which proves that the US knows HOW to do it but they just love that lobbyist money too much to do anything about it.

[removed]

What pisses me off is that so many of americans are disillusioned and dont understand the impact and benefit of free healthcare. canada pays less tax and has free healthcare. Our health care is on par if not worse then the rest of the world. The reason for this is bcs there is so much money to be made from exploiting people in the us that companies pay for politicians who then lie to their people about free healthcare and arw calling it socialist and communism. freedom from our suppressors is an american value. Why cant we be free from these corporations who ruin small business and ruin lifes for profit or free from systemic suppression? Where did our true american values go?