Heavy question, I know. This is not intended to be political, please leave “taxes/government evil” out of it, I’m interested in a pragmatic view.

Infamously the US has mostly private health care, but we also have Medicare and -aid, the ACA, and the VA.

Most other nations have socialized health care in some format. Some of them have the option to have additional care or reject public care and go fully private.

Realistically, what are the experiences with your country’s health care? Not what you heard, not what you saw in a meme, not your “OMG never flying this airline again” story that is the exception while millions successfully complete uneventful and safe journey story. I’m also not interested in “omg so-and-so died waiting for a test/specialist/whatever”. All systems have failures. All systems have waits for specialists unless you’re wealthy, and wealth knows no borders. All systems do their best to make sure serious cases get seen. It doesn’t always work, but as a rule they don’t want people dying while waiting.

Are the costs in taxes, paycheck withholding (because some people pay for social health care out of paychecks but don’t call it a tax), and private insurance costs worth it to you?

  • msage
    4·
    4 months ago

    So stuff works out pretty well in my European country. Personally I never got anything broken, my friend had their hand re-broken because they never realized it was broken in the first place, only noticed that the pain lasted many months. They did not pay a single thing, but had to move to go through all the surgeries (to their parents). That kinda broke them.

    Personally, I had a minor health surgery, that kinda left an ugly scar, which I feel like could have been avoided with better surgeon.

    Also we have health insurance, and there it gets tricky. Like state owns one, there are more private ones, as some groups try to privatize the healthcare, and then you have to pay the insurance, you can choose which insurance it is, and in some specific cases, some insurers can order different regimes of treatment. Which may not be ideal in every case.