Comment on America continues to fall behind the rest of the world
MisterFrog@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yes, but the first one is not true.
Tired of calling what countries like Australia and Germany have as “universal healthcare”.
It isn’t. Simply isn’t.
In the case of Australia in most familiar with. It’s a weird mix of public and private, with most medical costs covered under a private subsidy model, where your health service can change whatever, and you have to pay the gap between the Medicare rebate and what the services charges.
Doesn’t cover dental, has a small rebate for physio and other allied health (again, private providers, public rebate) and covers a basic check up for eyes every 3 years only, but doesn’t cover most optical.
The hospital system is also and absolute mess of a two-tiered system I won’t get into here.
It’s not fucking universal and I’m sick of people pretending like it is. It’s just kilometres better than the USA, which is the lowest bar ever.
That’s not at all how it works in Germany, though. Dental treatments are paid, as is medication. There is a surcharge for medication, which is capped at 10 Euros. And some dental options, which are not strictly necessary (debatable in many cases, I’ll give you that!) are not included. Physio and optical costs are also included.
Some of the payments require a doctor’s prescription in order to be accepted, but I would call that pretty fucking universal.
Dental treatments are paid
Nonsense. Dental treatments are slightly subsidised, but even with the subsidy are more expensive than paying outright in cash in France. They are only covered if you’re, like, gonna die from a tooth infection or something, and then they’ll remove it but not do anything about the missing tooth. The subsidy doesn’t even cover simple fillings, which still cost more than 100€ even for shitty resin ones. Why do you think everyone goes to Poland or Turkey when they need real dental care?
Ok, here’s what is subsidised, assuming you speak German:
verbraucherzentrale.de/…/alle-kassenleistungen-de…
Call that nonsense if you wish, I’m not going to enter into a discussion of that kind.
So clearly you haven’t been to the dentist in Germany, or even read that very article you posted. Yes your 6-monthly checkup is covered, that’s great. But the subsidy for fillings in molars, for example, only covers amalgam fillings. Dentists don’t actually do those anymore, so you have to pay more than 100€ “extra” to get a resin one. The majority of other situations are similar to that. In the end, even though the rule says that medically necessary things are supposed to be covered, in practice they really aren’t.
If it covers everyone, then it’s universal. Doesn’t mean that it can’t be improved, but that’s literally what universal healthcare coverage means.
Universal healthcare means it covers all healthcare. If you’re needing pay pay out of pocket to private providers, and it doesn’t even cover a bunch of things, I refuse to call that universal - and so should you.
Universal means nothing, otherwise.
Medicare defenders really need to dream bigger, damn.
Universal healthcare means it covers all healthcare.
I mean, no it doesn’t. And as an example off the top of my head, the NHS in the UK doesn’t cover dental. It’s still universal health care.
I’m not defending Medicare or anything here, id appreciate it if you didn’t put words in my mouth.
We shall have to agree to disagree then. Calling a healthcare system that doesn’t cover all available healthcare universal just doesn’t make sense.
I can accept that’s what people call it, but that’s about it.
I think they’re wrong.
By this logic the USA has universal healthcare, because a hospital must treat you for emergency, life-saving care, even if you’re unable to pay.
So, the definition is absurd if it’s just that a system covers everyone.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
Yeah, same thing in Canada which actually is single payer so yay, but is constantly, constantly under attack by privatisation hawks.