I’m talking about Universal Health Care systems (for clarity: totally free healthcare for residents in that country), not Public Health Insurance systems.
Europe is unfortunatelly also riddled with the latter system and having lived in countries with one kind and countries with the other, they’re quite different and the system with Insurance is invariably worse in terms of denials of coverage as well as cost (also because nowadays they all have laws that force every resident to have health insurance, which as result is more costlier than before those laws - as I saw first hand when I lived in a country with such a system when such a law came into effect), whilst UHC tends to have longer waiting lists (think 1 or 2 years of wait for some cirurgical procedures).
Absolutelly, some of the absurdities of the US system are also present in the so-called “Mixed” Systems (i.e. the ones with healtcare insurance but more regulated and with a public option for some) and if you look at the kinds of governments in those countries for the last 3 decades, you’ll notice they’ve been invariably neoliberal mainstream parties (setting up such systems is part of the broader tendency in Europe to privatise just about everything that has been going on since the 80s and was copied from the US).
IMHO, except for the long waiting times, the problems with Healthcare systems in part of Europe are the result of them having been transformed to become more like the US system in the last 3 decades.
szczuroarturo@programming.dev 1 week ago
Exatcly they dont know shit. While american healthcare system is clearly fucked there are many problems in european healthcare ( very country dependent tho ) ranging from lack of qualified doctors and long waiting times to very expensive treatments not covered in eu for some reason ( the one ive seen the most being uber expensive often experimental treatment where you usualy have to go to america ).
parrhesia@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I’m not sure I’m other places but there’s a physician shortage in the US, Canada, but there looks to be a shortage in Europe as well…
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9799366/ euronews.com/…/doctor-shortages-low-pay-and-overt…
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
From what I’ve seen, treatments not being covered are only the case were those treatments are very expensive and there are other effective treatments (though less effective) which are much cheaper.
Mind you, I’m talking about Public Healthcare Systems, not the so-called Mixed Systems that have mandatory Health Insurance (usually highly regulated and with a Public Insurance option for the less well off) - Mixed Systems have some of the same problems as the US System at least in my experience living in countries with one and with the other kind of system.
anarchyrabbit@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I have read the UK NHI doesn’t work very well exactly for the reasons mentioned above.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
The UK NHI doesn’t work well because the neoliberal parties in successive governments (both the Tories and New Labour) have been defunding it so that they can - like Thatcher did with the railways - oncy it’s quality has fallen due to lack of funds claim that it’s bad because of Public management whilst it would be much better if it was Private because the Private Sector is much more competent, and privatise it.
Just like the US has fatcats that are perfectly happy to mass murder people for personal profit, so does the UK (and the British Political System is almost as bad as the American) and plenty of those just dream about that country having 13% of its GDP flowing through a Private Healthcare sector like the US so that they can make billions of pounds out of it.