this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
677 points (96.7% liked)
Memes
45200 readers
1974 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I had a medical emergency yesterday that may me realize how lucky I am to live in Canada.
I'm getting weekly immunotherapy allergy shots (which are also covered by the free healthcare here) and I had a bad reaction to a shot. They needed to give me 2 epipens and some ventilator drug and stretchered me in an ambulance to the hospital where I waited about 5-10 min (I was stable at this point) for a private room. They kept me there for like 4 hours with IV drip and prescribed me another EpiPen.
Total cost was 0 with no questions asked. I know for non life threatening injuries like broken bones you might be waiting a few hours to get in, but I'd rather it be like that then have the possibility of going in massive debt.
It's not as if waiting times here in the US are any better. (In fact, they can be worse, since the profit motive has e.g. been causing rural ERs to close entirely.)
Make no mistake: us here in the States aren't choosing to pay more to get better healthcare; we're being forced to pay more to get absolutely fuck-all in return except for the unjust enrichment of insurance industry middlemen.
Interesting, I never realized it was also that slow to get in for the States. To be fair it's not perfect here, surgery wait times can be really bad. I'm on a year long waitlist for deviated septum surgery and my dad waited quite a long time for a hip replacement and he was in a ton of pain everyday. But the thing is we also have the option to pay to get it done privately.