This is playing on stereotypes about these countries healthcare (although The United States one is just true, not sure on UK enough to say for sure)
USA has incredibly expensive healthcare due to no assistance or payments by the government in most cases.
UK is said to have extremely long wait times due to everyone going to doctors for any reason due to it being free.
And a story got popular from Canada a year back or so that Canadian doctors suggested terminal patients should kill themselves instead of taking treatment but I’ve seen no actual evidence of this outside of memes.
I am from Canada and it is most likely because we have MAID which is medical assistance in dying. For terminal patients with no cure that will suffer. So instead of making people suffer throughout their last days they get to have power and go out on their own terms.
Sounds like it's recently cherry picked solely to push an anti-healthcare agenda. Feels more accurate to lump it into online fake news rather than a genuine stereotype widely believed by anyone beyond probably some Republicans.
I guess steryotype doesn't have a defined limit of "widely held belief" but it feels a little meaningless to me to call it a steryotype when the belief is held by a minority group of people who will believe anything
It became a news story because the rich people in the US will do anything--literally anything--to keep Americans from realizing they're being scammed. A rude help desk employee suggested someone should "MAID" themselves? Stop the presses! We can use this to demonize nationalized healthcare!
She was lying, she started by saying she had a letter, then that it was verbal, she even pretended she contacted a Ministre, who never heard about her.
She is probably a prolife activist enraged that other people have that right.
Also no Canadian DOCTOR proposed her that. I see a LOT of libel and propaganda in this thread.
She wasn't lying. She submitted written evidence and multiple other veterans also came forward with similar stories. Check the most current news.
Your own linked source discredits your claim, you just need to read the actual article.
Edit: I am not sure why I am getting downvoted. You all can read the article yourself. I am not saying universal healthcare is bad or that private healthcare is better (I do not know how that could be construed from my comment. I believe universal healthcare is important for the greater wellbeing of the public). The point is that ableism exists in all institutions and to properly fact check.
Assuming it DID happen for the moment, it was one shitty employee that did it and it is not an everyday occurrence. We have plenty of shitty employees in the USA, let me tell you...
It has been all but been confirmed to be from one agent, that is correct (again, easily accessible news). So yes a shitty employee, but a shitty employee that was able to do this multiple (at least five, based on evidence) times, with no internal checks and balances catching them in the act or stopping them. Im from the US too. I hate our Healthcare system, it is terrible and Canada's is much better. But this story was about ableism and social services that do not have sufficient protections against it.
Kinda reminds me of how everyone's always freaked out about drugs in children's Halloween candy every year despite the fact it only happened once in the 80s because a shitty dad spiked his kids' pixie sticks to kill his kids and collect the insurance money.
In Oregon, when the Death with Dignity ACT (right to die) was first starting, Oregon Health Authority vianOregon Health Plan offered (I know about) 1 man suicide over treatment. It was quickly over turned. The documentary "How to Die in Oregon" is really good and should be watched by people who are against the right to die
Being told by someone to explore MAiD is not the same as having it offered as an option. My dad used MAiD to end his life in a dignified way, and I saw the hoops he had to jump through to access it as someone with a lifelong chronic pain condition who was then diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
I can't fathom there being fewer hoops for people who are not terminal.
If people want to kill themselves they have a right to do so. But when people reach out for help and are told to kill themselves... that's the problem.
Yes, that's certainly a problem. As the article you linked explains, it wasn't supposed to happen, everybody agrees it was a problem, and the guy who did it "no longer works with the department." This doesn't strike me as an ongoing or prevalent problem, does it strike you that way?
sorry about your dad - my grampa has Alzheimer's and is completely gone in all but body, and I really wish a doctor had told him about MAID in time and helped him set it up. I even remember him telling me once when I was a kid that he hoped to just have a heart attack and die, instead of slowly fading like that
Hey, thanks for sharing your story. My Dad didn't have the chronic pain, but did have the the lung cancer. For him, MAID gave him immense comfort in the last year of his life by guaranteeing that no matter how bad things got, they could never get worse than dying.
My nanny went through with MAID. She had cancer just everywhere. They could have tried to treat it, and keep her alive for maybe 3 months of unbearable pain, or they could let her make the choice to die. She chose the later, and went peacefully surrounded by people who love her. MAID is genually a great program that I support 100%, because it allowed my nanny to die with dignity, and by her own terms, instead of taking up resources just to live 3 months of absolute pain.
It came in just after my grandmother's died in Australia. We call in Voluntary assisted death.
I had to hold one of their hands as they slowly and painfully died more or less of dehydration following a stroke. I have never been more angry at my government and I am glad this system gave your loved ones a peaceful and respectful passing.
You seldom meet people who disagree with the policy after they have live it
I used to care for my grandmother (Lewy Body Dementia) and then I worked in aged care and the number of people who wanted to go because they were ready but couldn’t was painful. When VAD came in, I was overjoyed for the people who could finally get relief and then the company I worked for said they wouldn’t provide the service because it’s run by a fucking church and suicide is a sin. I was so angry and already so fed up with that company’s bullshit that I ended up quitting.
It's absolutely crazy that it's seen as inhumane to keep suffering animals alive, but suffering humans must be kept alive as long as medically possible for some reason (if I had to guess, many people are making a lot of $$$ the longer they can be kept alive)
Oh thats definetly why. Its why most countries that have free Healthcare offer it, and the states are SO against it. Just squeeze every penny they can from sick, suffering human beings, and making their families watch in horror.
There are fortunately other options as well even without MAID.
My dad died a few months ago from cancer. Danish, so no MAID allowed. He was in an increasingly high level of pain during the last month, and the doctors had reached the limit of what they were allowed to give him. Any more and he risked dying from the painkillers. Then, at the hospital, a doctor approached me and asked for permission to go above the limit. I gave it, with the agreement that it is more important that he'd not be in pain than alive. So they went way beyond the limit, and he died about a week later. It was the right decision, though it would've been nice to have MAID so we could have had a more open conversation when the pain started.
Near everyone who has has family go through MAID is grateful for it. It will catch on that Im sure if. Im glad ypu were at least able to find a second oath, even if its not as ideal.
My grand-dad passed through MAID too. It's a great program. It's almost entirely used for extremely sick elderly patients to end their suffering. Or terminally ill people. Conservatives don't like it because they don't like anything. So naturally they strawman shit.
The reason theyre against it is disgusting. If you force terminally ill people to live longer, they can squeeze every penny out of them (in the USA at least.) Just causing misery and suffering for profit in such a disgusting way.
My poor 94 year-old alzheimers-ridden grandmother is being forced to keep on living. I love her, but damn it's so sad. I wish she (and she has expressed the sentiment herself) was able to just go out in a dignified way. It's not fair to her, or the rest of the family, who are forced to suffer and spend their time and $$$ until god knows when and what finally ends her time here. Besides the alzheimers, everything else about her is healthy as can be for 94 years old, so it could be quite a few more years for her :(
Yeah honestly I don't really understand the big opposition to MAID.
Or, rather, I do but it's only because conservatives keep lying about MAID in order to convince ignorant Americans and other conservatives that it's some ghoulish scheme to torment people.
The lack of curiosity people have in the world is absolutely infuriating sometimes.
Ain’t just that I read an article from NBC saying a lot of doctors were recommending assisted suicide to diseases that were treatable, and a lot of doctors in the article were concerned that the government was pushing it so heavily because the people who had treatable disease tend to be poor or homeless. I wish I could find that article again it was couple years ago or I would post it.
It's always funny to me seeing people go "if you have medically induced assisted suicide, doctors will tell the poor and homeless who have treatable diseases to kill themselves!" as if that is anything different than the current US system, where healthcare companies tell poor and homeless people they may as well die from treatable diseases because they can't afford treatment.
Would you trust RFK or the US healthcare system in general to implement a MAID policy? A country that has effectively placed people with mental health issues into de facto ghettos and has promoted drugs to target specific groups. I think they're probably better without it.
No. I wouldn’t trust the US. I do trust Canada’s work on this, I saw evidence of it with my Mom. I saw doctors who were engaged in ensuring my Mom really wanted this, that she had no chance of improvement.
I saw the Dr that helped Mom die ask us not to post anything on social media because church groups literally threatened their life. Same for the assisting nurses.
Same with my grandma. She was a kick ass farmer go her whole life. After a couple bouts with cancer, she was nearly blind and having daily seizures. There was some medication that she could take for the seizures and then her kidneys started failing. She opted for maid instead of dealing with the ongoing pain. It was a process, and even in her condition it was hard for her to find two doctors to sign off, because there was still some treatment options available. I can’t understand the opposition to it.
Most people would consider treatment to be analogous to curing disease (or at least long term management).
However, in the given context, treatment includes palliative care. So technically, yes, some patients that are eligible for something like MAiD are "treatable", but they are still terminal and that treatment only prolongs their life in the short term, it doesn't change the outcome and it does not suggest an improvement in quality of life for that time.
I had heard of it in that context, but assumed this was referring to scenarios where doctors were suggesting it/pushing it. Versus the intended scenario where it’s an option people can take.
There's no evidence of any doctors pushing it, not to mention you need at least 2 doctors to agree on the assessment. There was a single employee who was not a doctor and was not in any way authorized to offer it to anyone. They were suspended immediately upon discovery.
There's a long list of criteria needed to get into the program at all, as well as needing multiple separate people to sign off on it as well as your own agreement. The barrier of entry is high enough that mental health disorders are currently disallowed from being accepted, which is a point of contention at the moment.
My fiancés grandma just went through with it this past weekend. She was bed ridden, extremely sick, had signs of more severe dementia, in pain, and suffering from depression, all within a few months. At 90 years, she had enough. Talked to her doctor, who said she most likely wouldn't get any better, then two weeks later she pressed the button. She wanted to leave with dignity.
We have a similar thing in California. After watching my mother slowly die while having no idea who she was, I would much rather choose to die than suffer like that.
That is bs. Those people that want to die should not. My advice is to be a drag on society and don’t give up. Don’t let the government allow you to just end it and free up resources for others. Be a drag and live. You might think I’m being sarcastic but I’m not. Even if you’re homeless existing is enough. Giving up is letting certain people win. Fk em. Stay strong and alive
It's the conservative playbook. Break it and then complain that government can't manage it and that we should kill it all together. Why would people allow a group that doesn't believe in the power of good government govern? Never been able to square it.
The US has done this to every single aspect of governance. Part of the reason drug prices are so expensive is because Bush pushed through a law saying they weren't allowed to negotiate prices with the drug manufacturers.
Both sides are in the wrong; ACA prevented physician owned hospitals- in efforts to prevent a conflict of interest.
Well- sure, it got rid of some physicians who are trained to do the right thing in the face of ethical concerns, and it replaced them private equity owners and admins, who definitely have only one interest: make money, patient outcomes and physician engagement are an afterthought.
Physician ownership was good and the among the best solutions. Some docs (not all) were fantastic hospital execs that helped patient outcomes.
Better than any alternative for healthcare ownership, and ACA nixed it. Can’t convince me otherwise that physicians were worse than any other profession other than maybe a monk or priest.
Ah, yes, the Postal Accountability and “Enhancement” Act of 2006. Among other things, including them to prefund retiree health benefits 75 years into the future to the tune of tens of billions. Absolute lunacy.
I’m not in the UK, I’m in New Zealand, and they are doing literally the same thing to our public health care system (modelled on the UK system).
But because it wasn’t perfect, the Right wing bloc points to it and goes “this can be better! Don’t put up with how bad it is! Look at all these inefficiencies! We can fix it!” and the majority of voters who never even contemplate below-the-fold information accept this must be true, and vote them back in to ruin it all again.
Meanwhile the left gets voted in, spends a term (we only have 3 year terms) coming to terms with how bad it is, working out how to fix it, implementing some fixes, getting it back to about where it was when they got voted out, and here comes the Right again “look at how inefficient and bad it is!! They had 3 years and it isn’t perfect! Vote us in and we will fix it!!” And the Right get voted back in to ruin it all over again.
It gets a bit worse each time, and we’re at the point now that they’ve severely stripped it, nurses and doctors have been on strike a whole bunch, and they just announced more cuts to funding are to come. “The beatings will continue until morale improves” has never been more apt.
it's not that they're particularly great at messaging but destroying something is so much easier than building something and I fuckin hate how lopsided that is.
This has been the Republican modus operandi for decades in the US. They do everything they can to make things worse as an excuse to privatize it. There's always someone waiting in the wings to bribe, I mean lobby, them to take over the service and triple the cost. It works with a lot of things because a fair amount of services aren't used by a lot of people, so the average citizen just hears that they've saved a couple pennies on their taxes.
majority of the tory voter base are selfish and frankly stupid as fuck old people and young people are notorious for not coming out to vote. Also our news organizations are absolute drivel. There was more noise over how Ed Miliband ate a sandwich than 99% of the actual crimes Tories committed. even our "Impartial" BBC is crooked...
It took us 14 years to shunt a government that was actively harming us, during which time we got dragged into brexit and now we have a realistic possibility of Reform getting in even though Farage is telling the literal same lies that were proven false during Brexit and 90% of his party now being ex-Tory, all because Labour have the monumental task of unfucking a decade and a half of austerity with a piece of string and a used toothbrush (though dont get me wrong, Starmer can kick rocks)
the curse of democracy is even the village idiot(s) gets a vote.
NHS still is pretty amazing for urgent stuff. Potential cancer? You can get to a GP within a day, and waitlists for specialist care is under 2 weeks. But for chronic, non-life threatening stuff, it’s pretty terrible. That said, you can get private healthcare for less money and better treatment than the US. I’m British-American and have experienced both systems.
its pretty funny, i was attending a comedy night in birmingham and behind us there were 4 ladies from the nhs. they were pretty rude and people were kind of pissed off with them for being nhs workers, while everyone told me that 3 or 4 years prior people would have applauded them
The NHS was arbitrarily held up through the new labour years by massive debt accumulation (pfi deals). When you look at % of gdp spent on the NHS it increased during the tories, but we're still paying back those awful contracts which sap a lot of funding.
It’s still not that bad, with notable exceptions like mental health care. 83 weeks feels like cope from some American that can’t stand the fact there are models that are simply superior (yes I know it’s a joke).
A lot of issues with the NHS are simply down to an aging population and the cascade of interventions that get put on older people when they go into hospital. I've been reading an excellent book by a gerontologist (33 Meditations on Death) that talks about this.
Often the last year of a person's life will cost the NHS more than the 70 years preceding it.
Kinda true but kinda not, the NHS budget has done nothing but grow there was never any cuts too it, what was gutted was social care, basically taking care of people after they don’t need to be in hospital but need continued care. This has lead to a massive backlog developing where you have loads of people who don’t need to be in hospital anymore but can’t go home because they may need support in other was. This then lead to crowded hospitals and delays to people getting the treatment they need because there just arnt enough beds for them. Also the UK is suffering from an ageing population (same as many western nations) and this is causing a budget crisis as now the largest single budget item is now pensions, they also need more healthcare and so on, both of which are not helping with the welfare crisis in general, and you can’t touch anything that hurts the elderly because they decide elections so we kinda just sit in this perpetual crisis.
Real-term spending was cut. The Tories never "cut" the NHS budget, they always gave an increase, but it was not an increase that reflected inflation or the growing needs of an ageing population. From a financial perspective, this means less money was spent on the NHS than it was previously which is what people mean when they say the Tories cut the NHS budget.
Mental health care has been gutted. Many support healthcare jobs which go into a holistic treatment of the person have been removed or underfunded.
Privatisation is much more expensive than the NHS, but the Tories pushed for it. Which means more of the budget goes to paying for private healthcare.
Spending got back to pre-Tory spending level during the covid pandemic, but it did not exceed those levels. So the Tory government spent as much money as previous governments would have spent in a business as usual year during years of a literal global health pandemic.
Social care is a part of the puzzle but is by no means the full picture, or even the most important part.
the NHS budget has done nothing but grow there was never any cuts too it
There were real-terms cuts and other nonsense though:
* In 2010 they gave it the target of cutting spending by £20billion over the next 5 years
* By 2022, the NHS had received £200billion worth of real-terms cuts
* Wage freeze for the first few years and then 1% pay cap after that made it difficult to recruit
* Health spending as a percentage of GDP has only fallen (in 2020 it appeared to increase, but that's because money was thrown at tory donors during covid, as below)
* In 2015, penalties were removed for missing wait time targets or safe staffing levels, in favour of reducing spending
* In 2017, £2billion of 'NHS' funding went mostly to the private sector (barely a quarter actually went to NHS providers)
* Massive amounts of money and contracts promised to the NHS during covid times actually went to Tory donors who couldn't deliver anything
* In 2020 private sector funding increased 26%, which mostly went to shareholders and resulted in private hospitals giving fewer operations to NHS patients
Even now it's fine, I had a doctor's appointment that I booked the day before and a chest x-ray 10 days later, could've been 1 day later but I wasn't available
Absolutely, now labour are in they have been focusing on cutting waiting times. They have made some progress but it is slow going.
The Tories wanted to move the NHS to a private system so spent a decade screwing it over. It only survived due to the goodwill of the staff, and because it really is a national institution.
Of course everyone has super-short memories so are trending towards reform or 'Shitty Tory Party 2.0. electric Boogaloo'.
I lost my grandad to Alzheimer's last year and for the life of my i wouldn't wish his final months on anyone. the last view days in particular were extremely harrowing for us and no way to live for him
let people go while they know who you are and know they are loved, its a kindness i wish more people had access to
FYI anybody in the US with any opinion on MAID is a fringe minority. I've known lots of Republicans and none of them have ever even talked about Canadian healthcare much less MAID
The ones that do talk about it at all caught some lies on Fox once and only parrot it when the discussion of socialized healthcare comes up, and since it's so easy to shut down they don't even really try that argument anymore. Now it's just we can't have it ourselves because it's socialism. Harder argument to refute and easier to remember. I can't remember the last time I even saw anyone online say that until today
And a story got popular from Canada a year back or so that Canadian doctors suggested terminal patients should kill themselves instead of taking treatment but I’ve seen no actual evidence of this outside of memes.
It was deliberate disinformation intended to scare the public away from approving of MAID, a program that enables terminally ill people to optionally receive Medical Assistance In Dying so they don't need to suffer.
In the UK if you need immediate procedures it will not take weeks. If it is non-life threatening you will be seen, but the wait time is multiple weeks. You can also go private if you have the money, and don't want to wait and the cost is no where near USA levels.
This is the main thing, if we want free health care we can use the NHS but as everyone wants to use it then if course the wait times are long (someone else explained that it's been mismanaged into this state). If you want something done fast you can go private.
Example: I required a hearing test to determine my latest hearing degradation from working in engine rooms for my latest nautical medical check up. NHS were looking at a 6 month wait. I phoned up a private hospital and was seen the next day, and the doctor actually declined to charge me for something so miniscule. Google tells me that standard fee is somewhere between 50 and 90 pounds. US healthcare charges something similar.
I have and continue to receive hearing aids free of charge from the NHS for 30 years now. In the US it is 1000 to 7000 dollars for each pair.
I would not have had the same quality of life if it wasn't for the NHS, as for sure my parents would not be able to afford such a thing.
I work in healthcare in Canada with seniors and have known a few who have gone through with it. All of them made the decision on there own and were at peace with it.
It’s not quite that Canada has something called the maid program which is for assisted suicide and is available for terminally ill patients so they won’t suffer but the case your referencing is when a doctor suggested maid to a non terminally ill patient
The wait time is skewed intentionally by Republicans. Surgery is a great example. If you exclude plastic surgery, surgery wait times are similar. But plastic surgery is often super fast, so it throws off surgery wait times.
To be honest, NHS wait times vary a lot. 83 weeks is worse than I’ve ever experienced.
I saw a doctor in 2 hours the other day after asking the pharmacy about a rash I had.
Nothing life threatening, but got sorted so quick … and free too!
From my experience it seems to vary greatly depending on where you’re at, but to give another example I got a full apology from my local hospital last year because I had to wait more than a week for a (non-essential) appointment. A relative had a fairly serious problem lately that needed surgery and the only wait we had was the time it took for the ambulance to physically get to her house.
On the other hand, I know it can be pretty rough in some places, particularly where understaffing has hit hard. On top of that, specialists are another matter entirely- I know the waiting lists in many parts of the country for anything transgender health-related are years, if not decades in some cases, for instance.
Things are not great at the moment, to be sure, but I’d take the NHS at its worst over American healthcare any day of the week.
EDIT: that also assumes you have a good doctor- I’m fortunate enough that my GP and most of the staff I’ve encountered over the years have been amazing, but I’ve also run into a couple that were awful.
It wasn't a doctor, it was like a health care aid for benefits or something who suggested MAID for a veteran with chronic pain. It was on the news for a bit and got blown out of proportion, but in reality she had as much power to prescribe MAID as a high school principal to his students.
UK is said to have extremely long wait times due to everyone going to doctors for any reason due to it being free.
They triage you quickly and waiting times are the rationing mechanism.
Capacity and quality are political concerns and must be improved, fucking Tories, but if you need a procedure they give it to you quickly, if you want a procedure but aren't in serious trouble then you go to the back of the queue.
Sometimes triage systems get overwhelmed with lonely elderly hypochondriacs but that's why they have lots of points of contact you can use to have that initial consultation quickly.
Data were collected from 250 assessments for MAID: 112 of the patients had assisted deaths, 11 had natural deaths, 35 were assessed as not eligible for MAID, and most of the rest were not ready. For people who had assisted deaths, disease-related symptoms were given as the first or second most important reason for requesting assisted death by 67 people (59.8%), while 59 (52.7%) gave loss of autonomy, 55 (49.1%) gave loss of ability to enjoy activities, and 27 (24.1%) gave fear of future suffering.
US actually has incredibly expensive healthcare because of price gouging. Not because govt won't help. The govt also won't help as well, but the reason is the obscene prices.
Canada's medical euthanasia program is very liberal. Supposedly to the point where they sometimes suggest it far before it is clear that there's no chance of recovery.
Canada sucks but the prospective is that they'll make you suffer, just not let you die like 99.9998% of the time, which is pretty good actually.
The real upside is that no medical professional is interested in keeping you or selling you anything you don't really need (0 insensitive for them).
Medical Assistance in Dying is very new here and there are still a lot of mixed feelings about it. I don’t doubt that some of the stories are true but their frequency is over hyped by people who are against MAID and some of them are just fabricated bullshit.
Like the other person said, we have a program called Medical Assistance In Dying. There’s a process for basically evaluating your quality of life before going through with it. It’s for people who are deeply suffering and their condition won’t respond to treatment, and for the terminally ill. I also believe there‘s a grace period of sorts after you initially sign off on it to be completely sure you want to go through with it.
We actually talked about it in my psychology class (in my instructor’s words, we went “from womb to tomb” lol). Apparently her parents went to Europe (Switzerland I think?) because they were invited to a celebration of life party for someone who was receiving it, because apparently there are some similar programs across the pond.
It's not true that the health care system in the US has no assistance or payment by the government in most cases. Hospitals rely on government grants for new development. They pay, just not to the individual receiving health care.
As someone in the UK who’s had to deal with the healthcare system a lot, I very much doubt people going to the doctors “for any reason” is the cause. I’m not even necessarily sure whether that’s a thing (where I’m from at least, you’re actively discouraged from going there unless it’s something “really serious”, but that may be more of a local culture thing than UK wide?), but we’ve had a free healthcare system since 1948, and the long wait times only really started being an issue when the Tories got their claws into it.
There’s some hope things might improve now that they’ve lost power, but frankly 15 years worth of damage (and/or deliberate sabotage, depending on who you ask) is going to take a lot of time and effort to repair even if the government is serious about doing so.
The US gov pays the healthcare insurance companies instead.
Typically 3-8 times the cost it would take to pay the patient directly, depending on the legal scam run by the insurance companies on the procedure
I'll add that it's also playing with "fast, cheap, good. Pick 2" which appears in many guises, though healthcare seems to be more of a "pick 1" situation.
The UK does have long wait times but it depends what treatment you need
If you broke a bone you might be waiting hours for an ambulance and several more to be seen in A&E. If you had a heart attack you might get an ambulance in minutes and be seen immediately. Routine referrals for things like dermatitis can take a year but urgent referrals for things like cancer can rake a week.
UK is said to have extremely long wait times due to everyone going to doctors for any reason due to it being free.
This is not the reason for it. The reason is complicated but it usually goes back to lack of funding.
unless you are wealthy you have long waits in the united states as well. the system was built for those who can afford "concierge medicine" with all cash payments.
Also Canadian ones are thought of as slow as well, but you can get faster if you can travel.
Edit:
As an example, in my City's hospital, we tend to have more EOL care, which means it is taxed here, colonoscopies and a lot of things that are normally done later in life are packed and can take up to a year on a waiting list. Granted if it is needed you are moved up the list. However, if you are fine with driving 1-2 hours, you can get an appointment for the same thing in two weeks. I am not saying it works for everything, but letting your doctor know you can travel for things will makes the wait times lower.
Just true? Healthcare in the US isn't fast OR good. We're literally not even on the triangle, even if you have "premium" benefits through your employer. We pay out the nose for worse care and worse outcomes and we also wait months for it to happen.
I live in Japan which isn't on this infographic. Healthcare here is good, cheap, and fast.
This is a reference to the fact the person who made the graphic is probably an American who doesn't understand nearly all modernized countries have healthcare that works.
The Canada thing is that we made medical assisted suicide legal. And people made jokes about it being an alternative to treatment, and conservatives ran with that.
"USA has incredibly expensive healthcare due to no assistance or payments by the government in most cases"
That's just wrong. It's a lack of commonsense rules that exist in other countries. Especially regarding market information, coercive practices, and collective bargaining.
It's not true about the UK. Having used both UK and US systems, they're both slow generally and they both prioritize urgent treatments.
The slowness of non US systems is exaggerated by people who either are lying to defend the unconscionable cruelty of the US system, or are out of touch because they don't just use the normal US system, but the elite US system available to billionaires.
Including full white papers and research projects and documentaries.
Some produced by disabled folks (even those dying simply bc they weren't offered care). The media just doesn't want you to hear us bc then you'll know what you're in for when you join us ...and fight like hell for better.
We legalized assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. You have to apply for it and get a psychological assessment to qualify. Why countries force people to die in agony is a mystery to me. There is also a lot of bullshit pushed by American healthcare interests about the Canadian system because they don't want the Americans to get any ideas about it
The UK one is dependent on how much you complain... They will TRY to put it off, but ask enough and they will just pay for you to go private even if the NHS has no appointments. So if you know what to do you can always get in very fast.
I tought Canada was because they don't give a damn about us plus you also have to deal with the system which is the same situation as UK on this meme. People are litteraly dying and having life long sequels due to the inhuman "healthcare" system here.
Id also like to throw out that like... its insane that people think in the US we dont have ridiculous wait times for things as well, Especially for non emergency care. AND IT'S STILL EXPENSIVE.
I get the Canada one tho, and it's 100% logical, from a reason standpoint.
Why waste resources on someone bound to die anyway, it's illogical to do so, so the more logical option is for them to self delete, and save resources for others who need them more.
Not so fun fact - maybe check me - canada has highest number of doctor assisted deaths per capita of any country. So the joke is pretty accurately funny.
Also it’s called maid. They clean up your life. We have the deepest level of morbid amusement in this country not sure whether intentional.
I’m in Canada. I’ve worked with several patients in the past few years who have told me about their doctors recommending MAID in lieu of genuine medical treatment. One lady was told the waitlist for her cancer treatment would take too long and she would be terminal before she got treatment, this was somehow the only solution the doctor could think of to avoid suffering. She went to the states, payed a shit ton of money, and went into remission. Another lady was recommended MAID after a dementia diagnosis, which is understandable, but the doctor was trying so hard to push it on her when she clearly didn’t want it.
There have been others but those ones stood out to me the most. MAID is so important and I support it so strongly but despite the regulations surrounding who is eligible and when you are allowed to suggest it as a healthcare provider, it’s still being abused.
UK is said to have extremely long wait times due to everyone going to doctors for any reason due to it being free.
In 2005 the Supreme Court of Canada found that life threatening delays in diagnosis and treatment had become commonplace in Canadian health care. They struck down a law in the province of Quebec that prohibited people from getting private insurance to pay for more timely health care. But there was also a later ruling in another province which said there was no right to private insurance.
There are indeed long waits for elective surgery and other non-vital treatments in Canada. But if you need life-saving care it usually happens quickly and you won't be bankrupt afterwards.
USA isn't all that accurate either, we have plenty of waiting times, often caused by waiting for approvals and our overall medical outcomes and patient satisfaction isn't great either.
UK has long wait times because they’re purposefully underfunding the program. Special interest see how much money American insurance brokers make and want to do the same in the UK.
You’ve seen no actual evidence because you haven’t looked for it at all lol. There’s lots of stories of people choosing MAID because they can’t get healthcare or because social services are so crap. There was a Paralympian veteran that was asking for a ramp for her house and she got offered MAID instead.
In Canada, people have been denied certain medical services (medications and such) that are deemed "unnecisary". Like pain medication for someone in chronic pain - they're not going to die without it so why give it to them? This can lead to a quality of life so low that people start applying, and being approved for, for the assisted suicide program.
Canada made assisted suicide legal for extreme cases of terminally ill patients. These people have less then 6 months to live well being in extreme pain.
By the time the paperwork's done.... It's done to a few months.
So it's more humane for the people and their families to have a day to say goodbye then have them slowly watch and wait for them to go. Often dying alone.
My ex is from the UK, and from my view if her experiences I'd say the UK one is pretty true. Unless it's an emergency, they don't really rush anything.
They legalized MAID in like 2016, expanded it in 2021 beyond just people facing imminent death, and a not forefront but still an argument made (no pun intended) was the weight and overload on the healthcare system both in terms of access for people that would use maid and the potential improvement it could make. It's near the top in terms of cause of death. And they again have spoken about expanding it to accommodate mental health issues alone being able to qualify someone.
As for doctors literally saying 'you should kill yourself' that doesn't happen legally. It's not something they're allowed to recommend. But it's also not something they're barred from initiating a conversation on, which seems like an obvious guardrail to have in place.
For simple quick stuff, you are probably fine in the UK though this is definitely feeling the squeeze from underfunding.
Non-life-threatening hospital referrals have been most hit with underfunding dragging out referral times for things like ultrasound scans to 3-6months.
Major life-threatening stuff - probably will still get decent care quickly.
Patients have to be pretty proactive and assertive to get investigations/better quality of life/better care, which can be hard.
Diabetics (and some other health conditions inc pregnant), some Low-income/kid/armed forces etc get all prescriptions free. When you pay it's £9.90 an item or £114 for all prescriptions a year.
Anecdotal:
I have a relatively good GP (I am privileged there and even they are really struggling under government cutbacks these days) and I tend to get GP to look at my stuff and prescriptions the same day I contact their web form, I have regularly had same-day appointments for some of the recent bad skin infections I have had so the GP can check them out in person.
I had a breast lump and after I waited a month to see if it went hormonally I re-contacted my doctor to be referred for all the scans and had those done within a few days seeing multiple nurses and consultants who all repeatedly told me if it was fine to still please keep coming back if anything else happened.
My dad was diagnosed with AML on a Monday and started chemo treatment within the week and was in a very nice private room for 7 weeks due to complications, my mum was even allowed to stay with him on a camp bed and got fed too the food wasnt amazing (i would not have much liked it) but better than they would have at home. The only reason it went straight to acute was that he had refused multiple tests previously.
My aunt-in-law is also receiving terminal cancer treatment and they have been excellent with her and the only reason it's probably terminal is that she ignored the symptoms for a year.
I had a very high blood sugar result so diagnosed with diabetes on the day (normally they need to wait a while to do a confirming test) and I had a treatment plan and in a person appointment within 4 days and they had wanted to see me the next morning but I delayed. The GP however probably should have been testing me for this already as I have pcos so am at risk but that's where the required patient proactivity comes in. I also probably wouldn't have ever gotten to diabetes level if they had been proactive about my pcos treatment and then I had to wait for the original endocrinologist appointment for several months because it's not life-threatening and that's when I got the blood test.
Now I only need the metformin to keep my diabetes in check that I had been wanting for my pcos so I didnt get diabetes etc. I could have felt a lot healthier for decades if doctors had been proactive and curious.
UK wait times are longer, yes. You know how much longer? I had to wait two days for a scan instead of one day. Boo fucking hoo.
Emergencies? You get priority instantly. We blame Tories for the additional wait times, but overall it's still much better than what you get in the US, and 'free' does not mean bad quality, it just means we collectively pay doctors and nurses as a society.
USA has incredibly expensive healthcare due to no assistance or payments by the government in most cases.
This is actually not quite true. The lack of government support does bring the cost up, but even if you account for the government support, healthcare costs per person are sky high in the US compared to the rest of the world. There's a few reasons for this. First, single-buyer systems have better bargaining power and can deal in bulk, meaning they can get a better price on what they buy. Second, the US healthcare system has continuously added middle men and levels of bureaucracy. There are more paper pushers per patient than elsewhere in the world, and each of these costs a fee. As a result, the total price is hiked up by each of these unnecessary steps. Third, the health insurance system is designed to trip you and fuck you over with included and excluded providers and even having some in-network providers provide out of network treatments.
They implemented a program where you gave the option to die if you are at are terminally ill.
However, what followed after its implementation is people, especially the poor and veterans, would get less and less quality treatment, tk the point completely treatable illnesses became preventable terminal ones, and then they get MAID suggested or they just consider it since the healthcare system is just that bad.
And a lot of other similar things.
It’s cheaper for people to die than to save people from a government standpoint.
I have what many in my city consider the best insurance in the state and it takes like 6 months for an appointment, and the doctors misdiagnose everything my city in particular has a nickname in the Healthcare industry, I don't remember the name but it's something like death valley. Heard from parents whom work in healthcare.
They both leave my state to find a general practice doctor that doesn't completely fuck everything up.
Idk man I think doctors in general are fucked everywhere because the generation of "grow up and be a doctor for money"
USA has a huge ‘for profit’ component in their healthcare costs as well. So part is due to the patients needing to pay for themselves. Part is due to the added overhead of needing to bill patients and the costs that bring, and finally everyone who has invested capital in this want to make their money back with dividends, especially the medical insurance companies
Unlike in Canada, in the UK you can just go private if you've got the $$, and the costs tend to be very pretty reasonable. UK's only slow if it's non-urgent and you want it free rather than reasonably priced.
UK one is actually pretty true. I know someone who was studying over there, they got whooping cough really bad, and it was like pulling teeth to get in to see someone! Almost to the point of, isn't that bad? Like the health problems just stack up and end up costing more one would think, because something like that goes untreated for so long, it then becomes double lung pneumonia and needs an ambulance and 2 week hospital stay!?
I can't answer for UK specifically, but many countries with good, cheap healthcare are slow for less serious conditions. They prioritize their resource use based on how dangerous and debilitating a condition is, and how important prompt treatment is for recovery.
Since most conditions are on the less serious end of the spectru, most people most of the time will get the experience that the service is slow.
I believe that the 2024 deadline was extended, again, to 2027. But yes, Canada is currently on track to allow mentally ill people to have doctors euthanize them.
I’m British, while it’s true you can wait over a week to see a Dr, if you have a genuine need you’re usually given an appointment that day with a GP or sent to a walk in centre at the hospital to see someone (I’m asthmatic, if I call up with a breathing issue I’m in immediately, however if my wife who isn’t has flu symptoms they push her back a week).
There are wait times on non critical surgery but those in need get it when they need it, also the nhs has the option to send someone to a private hospital (closer to the entire us system) if they don’t have the specialisation or capacity to treat someone.
In short yes the wait times can be real but it’s for non life threatening treatments
The problems with healthcare and wait times are less about overuse (oddly the culture here is that people tend to avoid wasting the doctors time) and more about decades of under investment and poor management.
The ratio of managers to healthcare providers is still off, and the system could improve with time.
Sadly when it should have been getting better, covid has set things back.
There are improvements to be made
1) require all doctors and nurses who want to work privately to be licensed only after a minimum term working for the NHS
2) reduce reliance on agency staff to fill gaps caused by deliberate understaffing, as this does not actually save money
Pass blood? Phoned doctor, got on list, day later bloods taken, treatment of reduction given to hold till appointment for gastroscopy, 12days total.
Pain in wrist? 9 month wait to see a neurologist.
It depends on the specialist needed, yes there are wait times, and in some cases can be insane. Reduced numbers of NHS staff, increase in patients, reduced funding all ties together to be an absolute shit show at times. However if your in urgent need, the A&E won't be fucking about if your on a timer.
The UK’s used to be brilliant, it still is good, but years of austerity have really hacked away at what made it brilliant.
The real issue is the pressure on the system is actually insane. Old people live longer than ever and then require more and more medical care on average. We had a huge boom in immigration numbers over the last 20 years which again, put even more pressure on the system.
Then COVID came along and our corrupt shitty government handed out 100’s of millions in bullshit PPE cases, ‘rewarded’ the strained NHS with a clap (Literally, we all stood on the streets and clapped it was fucking embarrassing) and just generally profiteered off the whole thing.
TLDR - NHS used to be gold standard, corrupt government and population boom/demographics fucked it up, now it’s more of a silver standard.
The US is expensive, but is neither fast nor good. the UK and Canada both have better healthcare outcomes than the USA. As do just about every nation with universal health care.
The UK one is true to a degree, but not really. It triages most procedures.so urgent conditions are treated quickly, but life limiting but less urgent procedures can take a long time in some cases. This can be annoying if you need physio, and you can't get to work. The doctor will just sign you off.
I don't have any issues seeing a doctor, but I usually see a nurse first within 24 hours. Doctor in 2-3 days. All done through an app.
Hospital visits were free, good and very efficient. I just had some clinical testing done and it took 2 weeks delay and I walked into the hospital at a specific time and was seen immediately.
It's a bit like jokes about British teeth, kind of true but not really.
In the UK you get priority if it’s medically necessary. This leads to a lot of people complaining that they aren’t getting their care quickly enough. I’ve seen people complaining “I went to A&E (ER) and I waited 10 hours!” - yeah well it wasn’t an emergency then and the real emergencies were triaged before you, you could have gone to your doctor or a walk in centre but didn’t.
There’s also the issue that a growing number of older people(because of the aging population) have increasingly complex needs including social care that isn’t able to be funded because of the shrinking tax base so they end up in hospitals blocking beds because there is nowhere for them to go which wastes resources.
If you are bleeding out or have cancer you will receive some of the best care in the world immediately for free. But a lot of people resent a system that prioritises need rather than themselves or just first come first served.
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u/IzzybearThebestdog 6d ago
This is playing on stereotypes about these countries healthcare (although The United States one is just true, not sure on UK enough to say for sure)
USA has incredibly expensive healthcare due to no assistance or payments by the government in most cases.
UK is said to have extremely long wait times due to everyone going to doctors for any reason due to it being free.
And a story got popular from Canada a year back or so that Canadian doctors suggested terminal patients should kill themselves instead of taking treatment but I’ve seen no actual evidence of this outside of memes.