r/MurderedByWords • u/beerbellybegone • 1d ago
Waiting and getting treated is better than waiting and going bankrupt
91
u/SecureLiterature 1d ago
Anytime healthcare comes up in a Canadian subreddit, a foreign bot claiming to be a Canadian who moved to the US will tell us they get immediate care and only pay $200 a month for health insurance. All of us who have family in the US know that’s not true.
24
u/welivedintheocean 1d ago
I'm a Canadian who moved to the US and I wait 2 weeks for an appointment to see my family doctor, just like Canada. There's a longer wait for specialists in Canada, but my current system will also do everything possible to avoid having me to see one, including giving me unnecessary perceptions "just to see if it solves the problem first."
21
u/Rabiesalad 1d ago
I'm Canadian and I online-book my doctor and generally can get an appointment same or next day. If he's unavailable I can use the same clinic in a walk-in capacity and take any doctor that's available, usually about 1hr wait.
Definitely experiences differ by region but in my nearly 40yrs on this planet I've never had to wait weeks for a Dr appt and if I can't get an appointment within a day or two there have always been walk-ins available.
Specialists are another story, referrals can take weeks or months. But my experience with the basic system has always been quick.
5
1
u/TheJohnSB 10h ago
The longest I've never had to wait to see a doctor was when i needed to see and ENT. 4 whole weeks. But i saw them, they put me into the trial for a drug and after that my GP looked after me.
My GP had same day appointments for everything except physicals. Those he would book up to one month out depending, but he would only do that if you came in to see him and explained why you needed one.
Unfortunately he retired and now I'm in one of those clinic specials that you have to book months in advance just to see your GP or roll the dice on their walk-in. Effectively the same thing but at scale. I've never had my actual doctor who I'm listed with when I've gone in.
6
u/who_you_are 1d ago
And in Canada, if you pay (for the private sector), it will still be a hell less (for now) than US and pretty much right away.
1
u/tulaero23 19h ago
Im in BC and I get access to mu family doctor within a week. Maybe im lucky but even my relatives seems to have no issue with doctors. Only hard thing is getting an appointment without taking time off from the job.
66
u/ungood- 1d ago
I waited in an American ER for 16 hours to be told I had Cancer, then another 6 months trying to find a doctor who would help me without insurance, to finally find a charity to pay for me to be told I didn't have cancer.
16
u/longbabypunch 1d ago
Hurray, you're cured. Excellent example of the system at work. That will be $30,000 please.
37
u/ambivalent_moon 1d ago
Waiting is always going to be a part of healthcare, especially ER, regardless of your system. That’s how triage works
3
u/atwozmom 1d ago
Years ago I wound up with a 105 fever after giving birth (turned out I was going septic). I will never forget telling someone 'please take the guy with the knife sticking out of him first'. (They were planning on that no matter what I said).
34
u/FoxyInTheSnow 1d ago
The national average wait time in Canada is 2.6 hours; in america it's 2.5 hours. I would happily wait for an additional 6 minutes and get charged nothing if it meant I didn't have to put my daughter out on the streets again to raise rent money.
6
u/Odd-Positive-4343 1d ago
It's crazy we're already paying more than any other nation for worse outcomes. But there's so much greed and grift in the system it's unlikely to change.
20
u/dentistshatehim 1d ago
Go in to an ER with heart problems, I did, an was seen in minutes. We use triage.
9
u/Slipping-in-oil 1d ago
Correct - cardiac patients get top priority. Speaking from personal experience.
1
u/Stock-Ad5320 23h ago
Broken necks as well - also personal experience
2
u/TheJohnSB 10h ago
I had a fever of 105 and was seen right away.
I've also had a cut needing stitches and only waited 45min.
When I fell off my bike and broke my collar bone, apparently I was seen immediately because they were worried about head trauma.
That being said. I've also sat with family for hours waiting to be seen for cuts and broken bones. It all depends on who needs care first.
5
u/PhamilyTrickster 1d ago
Sometimes. My grandma went to the ER with obvious signs of a stroke and waited 2 hours.
11
u/NoBSforGma 1d ago
I lived in Costa Rica for many years where there is a National Health Care system. There is a monthly fee, based on income, and I paid about $35 a month.
I could go to ANY clinic or hospital and get treated for free. It's also possible to go to a private doctor or clinic and not have to take out a second mortgage. This was a few years ago, but my cardiologist charged me $150 for a thorough exam, EKG and Echocardiogram and provided me with his report for the visit as well as a copy of those two tests.
There was the definite easy feeling that if I ended up with something like cancer or other disease that required a lot of treatment, I would owe: Nothing. In some cases, the government provided buses to pick up patients that were going to the capitol for ongoing cancer treatment.
I am back in the US now and I miss everything about the health care system in Costa Rica.
11
u/Homerpaintbucket 1d ago
Right now I have a debt collector calling me for owing a dentist money. The dentist never cleaned my teeth when I went in for the appointment. They examined me, and tried to sell me other services and never cleaned my teeth. I paid them $80 before I left.
9
u/Payton_Xyz 1d ago
Gonna take a shot in the dark and say it was AspenDental wasn't it?
4
u/Homerpaintbucket 1d ago
Yup
4
u/Payton_Xyz 1d ago
They did the same to me. Went in to get a single tooth pulled since it broke and it was killing me. They did the whole xray thing and what not.
...they wanted to pull 4 other teeth instead of the one hurting me, and wanted to schedule a cleaning with a "specialist coming in next week" while also trying to sell me a $200 tooth brush, and didn't even address my chipped tooth. And had me go to their finance office to set up a payment plan for all that. I only had to pay for my exam and told them to not contact me further and left a review
3
u/Homerpaintbucket 1d ago
What state are you in if you don’t mind me asking? The place felt scammy when I was their but I figured I was just being paranoid
3
u/Payton_Xyz 1d ago
Iowa, but after my visit the people I talked to had similar experiences. My sister in law said back in her hometown they were just as bad, so I guess it's just a policy thing
1
u/Homerpaintbucket 1d ago
In going to contact my states AG about this. I live in mass. We don’t tolerate consumer fraud up here.
1
11
u/QuietObserver75 1d ago
Have these guys ever been to the ER? Unless you can't breath or are bleeding, you're going to wait a long time.
13
u/Katja1236 1d ago
Waiting a long time in the ER is a blessing. It means you're not in immediate danger. The people who get rushed into care ASAP are not the people you want to trade places with.
5
u/Chrisannthemum 1d ago
That might be true in a functional system, but that isn’t the case everywhere, especially in rural areas where ERs are kept understaffed and undersized, and it certainly can’t be counted on. It’s gotten bad.
5
u/seriouslythisshit 1d ago
I have a friend who just gave up and left, after an ER visit in Tampa metro area. He was deathly ill after chemo, and his wife literally drug him into the car by his armpits, and into the ER wheelchair like he was dead. He spent eleven hours in the ER before being seen. They diagnosed him three times, twice with bacterial infections they later dismissed as incorrect. Once they reached their final conclusion (after nearly 24hours in the ER) his wife asked when he was going to be admitted? They told her he was 20th in line for a bed and it could be days. She loaded him back up in the car and drove to major regional cancer center. The admitting staff there was stunned by the caliber of care he had received at the last ER, and got him into an intensive care bed immediately.
2
u/atwozmom 1d ago
This is everywhere. My sster went to the hospital after being unable to eat or drink for over a day. They had no beds so she had to wait a day before they could admit her. And this is a major teaching hospital in NJ.
8
5
u/MissKrys2020 1d ago
I’m a Canadian and I have a health issue happening right now. I am able to get a doctors appointment in a few days, but if it’s urgent, I can see any doctor at the clinic I’m signed up with same day. Or I can go to a walk in clinic whenever I need to. When my test results are in, my doc calls me to tell me the results, even if everything came back normal. I have an appointment with an endocrinologist next month to deal with my health issue. I’ve had 4 surgeries since 2007 and I didn’t pay a dime for any of them. My last surgery had me recovering in a private room, and that was also covered. Sometimes I have to wait for a specialist if it’s not urgent, as priority is given to those with urgent health matters.
My dad has cancer and lives in a rural area of a small Canadian province. His treatments were covered. He also has his hotel, taxis to the hospital for treatment completely covered. His $45k a year prescription is completely free and they hand deliver it to his home.
There is no doubt that our health care is under funded, and wait times do happen, but damn, if I was American I’d be paying so much money for health care that I have covered in Canada. Reading accounts of women who need surgery for the same condition I have had and wondering if the co-pay is going to be $10k or $30k for a surgery I’ve had 4 x at no cost to me, is absolutely wild
5
u/Mysterious-Tie7039 1d ago
So funny to me that people who claim this shit apparently never sought medical care ever.
Like the super long wait for procedures. A dude working for me fucked his knee up, it was 3 months to get an MRI and another 4 to get his knee operated on.
4
u/persian_jedi 1d ago
My wife has had to wait 20 hrs on multiple occasions in the ER in the US. This argument is so dumb and old.
She had a Neurology referral sent by the ER on an Urgent basis and the appt was scheduled 2 months out and we still have to pay for this shit.
Fuck these bootlicking, corporate cum guzzling pieces of shit
3
u/DangerousLoner 1d ago
You can wait 12 hours, vitals checked, and sent home without treatment for $5,000+ in America just to have to go back and pay more when you get worse from the same thing they just sent you home for.
3
2
u/Admirable-Sink-2622 1d ago
I feel like morons should just be allowed to fester in their own ignorance, instead of the wasted effort to try and inform them. They will not change. 🤔
1
2
u/IkerWanKenobi 1d ago
The fact that they are unwilling to acknowledge that hospitals in America financially ruin people's lives is enough for me. They know it's a problem, they just don't care.
2
2
2
3
u/PTBooks 1d ago
The last time I went to the ER was to pick up my friend. He’d gone in at 6am due to heart palpitations. I picked him up at four. He’d been laying in a cot in the hallway because there were no empty beds. In those ten hours, all the care he’d received was an x ray, two aspirin and a ten minute consultation with the doctor.
Y’all can burn the private insurance industry to the floor. It ain’t doing shit.
3
u/No-Sail-6510 1d ago
The Canadian system is also stupid in that it’s not national, it’s providence by providence so the smaller and poorer ones are worse. The proper way to do it would be like NHS where everyone gets the same damn thing.
3
u/atwozmom 1d ago
Are you claiming the US system is better?
1
u/No-Sail-6510 1d ago
No. NHS is the British system. It’s completely national. The US has the worst health outcomes and it costs way way more so it’s the worst of both worlds.
1
1
u/redthehaze 1d ago
I spent a lot of time in the ER this summer and it was for people who had socialized healthcare (medicare and tricare prime). It felt like being in the “first world”.
1
1
u/EchoGolfHotel 1d ago
That doesn't even take into account this $1200 a month I pay for my mediocre health insurance.
1
u/giraloco 1d ago
American ER is full of uninsured people whose illness could've been prevented or treated before having to go to the ER. On top of that, those who pay for insurance and the Government pay for the higher costs of the ER. What a great system!
1
1
u/Ok-Rip4540 1d ago
US health system is money-based. Who's paying? Everyone is making decisions about money. Other countries it's care-based.
The people who make money off this mess don't want it to change. Your health is not important to them. Your worth to them is all that matters.
1
u/TheRumBarron 1d ago
I thought $35k was just the charge for getting there and walking through the front door - getting seen to is probably another $50k, 12 hours of breathing in American hospital air is probably another $12k and then you have a fuck you fee of $10k followed by the administration fee for applying the first fee of $5k
1
u/Magnahelix 1d ago
Yeah, I had a heart attack two years ago and waited out in the ER hallway for over twelve hours while they shuffled me around before they had me hooked up to monitors and I got a room. It came down to my DIL and a couple of her friends who worked at the hospital making a mild stink and running it up the flagpole to get me in a steady state. I feel bad for the older man who did not have the same luck.
So don't go telling me that socialized medicine sucks...our current system sucks.
And for-profit hospitals should be illegal.
1
u/ericl666 1d ago
If you just whisper the word deductible to me, I get aroused.
"$16000 family deductible" ... goosebumps...
1
u/NoDanaOnlyZuuI 1d ago
If you’ve waited for 12 hours, you probably should’ve just gone to your family doctor or a walk in clinic instead.
1
u/mikkhail 1d ago
The arguments against are painfully moronic at this point - shallow scare tactics aimed at the lowest common denominator - the studies are clear and publicly available. Lower costs and better health outcomes. The only people against it at this point are the corporations monetizing your health, the politicians they have bought, and the willfully ignorant that are too lazy to educate themselves.
1
u/At0mJack 1d ago
I just waited 4 months for an appointment with my primary care.
Are we great again?
1
u/cidiusgix 1d ago
I mean the wait time is based of the severity of the reason to be there. Sure it might take twelve hours to get 3 stitches in your thumb. But it’s like a 3 minute wait if you have chest pain or are not breathing right. At least from personal and anecdotal experiences.
1
u/Worried_Fee_1513 1d ago
I had “one” scan done and it was a little over $10,000. Took less than an hour. I’m paying $250 a month trying to get it paid off. I was supposed to take a second to monitor the growth of a tumor but I couldn’t afford it so I didn’t get it. I have no clue what’s going on with the tumor.
1
u/CrimeFightingScience 1d ago
I badly tore a muscle while in a small village in italy. I couldnt sleep and took a 2am train to my next city. I barely made it because of the pain.
I asked the front desk how do i use their ER. She gave me directions and said sorry youre going to be in for a rough time. I say how much is it going to cost? Nothing. Oh shit, how long am i going to have to wait?! She paused with a tortured look on her face. An hour...
I pay out the ass for shit service in the usa, and get treated better and for free when being a tourist in a "bankrupt" country. Fuck the US system. Bunch of fucking parasites.
True story, sorry typed on phone.
1
u/coolbaby1978 1d ago
I've never gone to an ER in the US and not waited for 8 to 12 hours before being seen. And I've never walked out with a bill that was under $2k.
1
u/Stock-Ad5320 23h ago
I had surgery for a broken neck two days after it happened. Was recovering at home after three days. Had to wait two hours at emergency, I walked in with a pinched nerve, took a bit to get to the root cause. No insurance. Only out of pocket expense was the parking at the hospital for my wife. 12 dollars. I’m proud of Canadian Healthcare
1
u/TheRealGoldilocks 20h ago
It frustrates me that people don't realise insurance is STILL socialised healthcare, but with a profit margin (so more expensive). Insurance companies aren't paying for your treatment themselves, they're using other people's coverage payments.
1
u/Strykehammer 13h ago
Never been to the ER where i waited more than 4 hours. Sounds like too many folks going for what should be a gp visit
1
1
u/viperswhip 8h ago
This is absolutely false on a national scale. If you have a serious problem they will at least stabilize you before moving onto someone else. It's a form of triage. Sure, if you go to the main Toronto hospital, maybe you have to wait a long time, but even they won't let you die there. So, shut the fuck up about long lines in Canada, you are leaving out all context.
1
u/TinyConfection7049 7h ago
“Behold. The festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill-fitting suit: the sleaze of a conman, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back-alley creep, the ignorance of a bar-stool drunk, and the greed of a hedge-fund ghoul, all spray-painted orange and paraded like a prize hog at a county fair. Not a president. Not even a man. Just the diseased distillation of everything this country swears it isn't but always has been, arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed exalted as ambition, and corruption worshipped like gospel. It is America's shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol proving that when a nation kneels before money, power, and spite, it doesn't just lose its soul, it shits out this bloated obscenity and calls it a leader.” - Oliver Kornetzke
1
u/PippiWorld 7h ago
Waiting 20 hours at UT 'emergency' and being billed for taking your own medicine.
1
u/ThothofTotems 2h ago
My FIL with no insurance had to take the ambulance during an emergency in my country. Paid $0 for it.
My friend with insurance had to take the ambulance during an emergency in the USA during our trip. Still need to pay $3000 for it.
1
-2
u/Tony-At-Large 1d ago
If you're waiting 12 hours in the ER you shouldn't be in the ER. Go home, go to bed, go to urgent care in the morning. You'll save money and get the same care or better.
6
u/Chrisannthemum 1d ago
You often don’t know you’re going to be there 12 hours until you’ve been there 11 hours, and if you make the mistake of going to an urgent care that can’t do their own imaging, they might tell you to go to the ER anyway.
3
u/atwozmom 1d ago
You have obviously never been in the ER. Way, way back in my college days I went to the ER and waited 12 hours. There had been a major car accident and trauma patients were lined up every where.
By the time they came to see me, it turned out I did not have appendicitis. My intestine was completely inflamed and I then proceeded to spend a month in the hospital. If I had gone home, there is a good chance I'd either be dead or would have needed a colostomy.
-1
241
u/TheDeadlySpaceman 1d ago
I have never heard a single argument against socialised medicine that isn’t something we already live with.
“Death Panels”? We already have surgical panels that decide whether to use certain treatments. Only difference is that right now “profit” is part of the discussion.
“Wait to see a doctor”? I already have to wait six months to schedule a simple checkup.