91–100 of 239 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And why was it "an unachievable pipe dream"? As I remember it, the Democrats had control of both houses of Congress, as well as the White House, for about 2 years. They could have passed anything they wanted.
Joe Lieberman sabotaged the public option.
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. My doctors have all been good (attested to by my parents who are surgeons themselves) but the healthcare system is wonky. One thing I didn't expect is that the Indian system where you just drag your heal…
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So how do you get complex necessary medical care effectively in the United States?
What does the ranking look like if you compare percentiles? 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. 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.
Also: an unironic 1%-er income in France is like literally the bottom of the barrel Bay Area salary. If you're at or above the median America is great, outside of some very high cost of living cities.
Or are you just talking specific tech jobs.
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.
Not that I'm trying to make you feel worse about it: In the UK we pay less per capita in taxes toward healthcare than you do in the US (or at least did last I added up the numbers - Medicare and Medicaid alone added up to a higher per capita cost than the NHS), and if we do want private health insurance, which here is basically "queue skip insurance", it costs a fraction of in the US because they only need to provide…
I'd much rather make 3x as much in the US and still get free healthcare through my employer, with shorter waiting lists and better treatment outcomes than the NHS.
And we also have "skip the line" services here as well.
My family have worked as doctors both in the UK (NHS and private), and the US, and they vastly prefer the US system from an outcomes and efficiency perspective.
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Commonwealth Fund studies like the one in the article tend to be quite biased and pushing a very specific agenda.
But in reality, we have far better mortality rates (1) for serious diseases: 48% better outcomes for cancer, as an example.
When people with serious problems want treatment, they come to our system if they can afford it, because we actually do have better outcomes regardless of what these highly biased studies say.
1: https://www.politico.eu/article/cancer-europe-america-compar...
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Edit: People calling my argument a "strawman" should really try living in both systems for a year with a chronic, serious health condition.
They will very quickly find that the US system is far better than the NHS. We get seen more quickly, our doctors can afford to actually spend time on us, more effort goes into root-causing a problem, we have more treatment options, etc.
It's easy to theorycraft online and look at the "on paper" metrics from highly biased studies and come to the wrong conclusions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, Bavaria is famously the Texas of Germany…
Does the Bavarian power grid also routinely go down because they don't invest in it and at the same time also refuse to add interconnects with other regions?
More that the stereotypes people have of Germany/USA are really of Bavaria/Texas (beef, guns, lederhosen), more (small c) conservative, and there are occasional mumbles and grumbles of independence but they don't have any substance to them.
At least, that's what it seems. My grasp of German means there's a game of telephone between reality and my understanding of Bavaria, and I've never even been to Texas so I'm judging them by what people say online.
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. My doctors have all been good (attested to by my parents who are surgeons themselves) but the healthcare system is wonky. One thing I didn't expect is that the Indian system where you just drag your heal…
In Estonia all of our records (incl. Health) are digitized and online in a central system that both doctors and you can access. It works wonders. Every doctor I go to can see my entire medical history with a press of a button, and I don't have to deal with any of that. Likewise when they prescribe new things, I can see my prescriptions right there, and so forth. We're a 100% online nation now, and clearly when done w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The general slowness extends to simple things like x-rays and blood tests too. This is not just US but whole of the west seems to have the exact same attitude. Most of Asia has same day or next day medical tests. In India you can order something like UberEats where in a technician comes home collects your blood samples and the results are emailed within the next 24 hours or so. Medicine seems to be commoditzed in the…
I had some pain in my lungs and they gave me an xray in about 30 minutes here in Spain to confirm that i had pneumonia. I waited 45 min to see the doctor in the emergency room and then another 10min waiting for the doc to check the xrays.
But for the majority, it isn't great. You go with pain in stomach and it happens to be cancer, you die waiting. I personally have seen so many of these and it's heartbreaking.
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. My doctors have all been good (attested to by my parents who are surgeons themselves) but the healthcare system is wonky. One thing I didn't expect is that the Indian system where you just drag your heal…
The general slowness extends to simple things like x-rays and blood tests too. This is not just US but whole of the west seems to have the exact same attitude. Most of Asia has same day or next day medical tests. In India you can order something like UberEats where in a technician comes home collects your blood samples and the results are emailed within the next 24 hours or so. Medicine seems to be commoditzed in the…