12 hours and $35k? Stop your bullshit. I’ve dealt extensively with healthcare in the US. It’s more like 10 months and $110k.
My partner is literally waiting 10 months to see a rheumatologist for debilitating joint pain. A virtual visit, no less.
Look, some sacrifices are gonna have to be made if we want to continue having the best healthcare on earth.
Fortunately, we’ve mastered the sacrificing part, now we just have to tackle beginning “to continue having.”
You guys are having good healthcare?
Are these doctors just seeing patients all day, every day? If not, I can’t imagine how they could possibly justify making someone wait 10 months for a virtual visit.
A rheumatologist? Basically. Any ‘old person’ specialty is hard to get an appointment in because they’re booked out for ages, unless you’re lucky and live near a bunch of them or have insurance with a really big network of providers.
It can easily happen anywhere.
E.g. in the UK, someone I know had to wait 18 months for an (online) assessment for ADHD. I was along as a character reference, since I have ADHD myself, so could point out the bits they forgot (due to ADHD).
At the end, they apologised again for the delay. Apparently, since COVID, they have been receiving almost as many referrals in a week than they used to in a year. It takes a long time to train new doctors, particularly in specialist positions. They were swamped.
Many specialists are in the same boat, even before insurance companies get involved.
Honestly? A lot of them are. They also might have a few hours during the day where they review lab results or imaging for their various patients.
A lot of the specialists don’t work for a hospital or anything, so they’re basically a doctor and also a small business owner in a business with a very long ramp up time and uncertain demand on the timeframe that you can make the decision to work in the field. So you end up with “how many people do you think will have arthritis in five years, and how many people do you think will have decided to become rheumatologists by then?” And if you’re wrong you’re still a rheumatologist and you basically just need to move someplace that needs one and hope you can run a business.You might luck out if you’re near a big medical facility that’s involved in teaching, because then you might end up with several doing teaching and research.
The American healthcare system killed my grandpa by waiting so long to care for his severe foot infection that his heart (which was already damaged from a heart attack 15ish years prior) couldn’t handle the strain anymore and he passed away. I will never forgive that hospital or the insurance companies involved, and I never even got to say goodbye to him. That kind of shit doesn’t happen as frequently here in Canada and I am thankful for the system we do have, flaws and all.
Are you saying people are sitting around waiting at the emergency room for 10 months at a time and it’s a regular thing in the US?
They send you away for everything except imminent death. You then have to book an appointment with a specialist instead, and it’s at least a month from now.l if you’re lucky.
Last year my best friend got diagnosed with cancer, and his VA docs let him sit 3 months between appointments. By the time they offered a treatment plan, he had become terminal, almost a year in. He died last June. It’s really quietly horrifying to see it play out in real-time.
But on the bright side, the insurance company probably saved a lot of money. And as you know, line going up is more important than quality of life going up or even staying alive. /s
I’m sorry about your friend, nobody deserves that.
He said VA. No insurance there.
That’s heartbreaking. I’m so sorry for your loss.
To be fair I had to have an organ removed due to exploding or something. It took less than 24 hours. Then insurance denied it-no way to tell if said exploding organ was an elective surgery or required by the doctor who required us to do it.
Apparently all the cool kids are doing elective organ removal these days.
In America they shut down hospitals because the publicly traded corporation which bought the hospital realized it was more profitable to run 1 hospital per 5 counties.
I had a 14ga puncture wound last year in Canada, about 1" from my femoral artery. Rapidly flowing blood, tourniquet applied on-scene just below the groin.
Ambulance was on scene quickly, I was immediately put into the trauma center in the ER, stapled, full body CT with contrast, tetanus booster and some more stuff I don’t remember. Time in ER waiting room: zero. Time in hospital: ~1.5 hr total, mostly spent waiting for a follow up outside the ER.
I paid $250 for the ambulance and nothing else. Canada’s healthcare system is GREAT at keeping you alive (if you’re not indigenous, which is a true national shame).
Canada’s healthcare system is not amazing at keeping you healthy. Something minor and chronic? Get fucked, it’s a 2 year wait for a specialist referral. Minorly hurt but not at risk of death? Yeah enjoy the 4-10 hour wait in the ER room. When will you be seen? Idk when we can get to it. Want to see a doctor? Walkin will see you for free in about 45 minutes. Want to see your doctor? Yea they’re out this month working at the hospital, how’s 3 months from now?
All of this is vastly better than my time growing up in the US where the hospital missed diagnosing me with pneumonia and gave me permanent lung scarring. Or missed my fractured ankle on the xray and said I was fine. And then billed my parents 10’s of thousands of dollars.
Canada’s healthcare system is GREAT at keeping you alive
Canada’s healthcare system is not amazing at keeping you healthy
This is perhaps the most accurate explanation I’ve ever heard for our healthcare system here in Canada. I’m definitely going to use this in future.
I will say, in my city, our family doctor is in office at least 4 days a week.
If you dont have a scheduled slot, you can see another in the same clinic tho, but usually you wanna schedule if possible.
If you give them a few hours heads up before leaving, you can usually be in and out in lile an hour total which is fine imo for non-energency.
For emergencies you are not spending any time in the waiting room yeah, they are pretty good at fixing you up fast.
If you just go to a hospital 15 minutes out of town at a smaller city, non emergency wait times plummet tremendously.
We have like 3 hospital options where I live, to go to, that are an extra 15min drive but 1/10th the wait times for non-emergency.
Politicians love to pick the one hospital dead center of the city that is the busiest one and cherry pick its busiest time of year as average wait times.
In reality its the exception and most other hospitals are faster, and 1 city out from the major one and hospital wait times are negligible.
An ex had bad abdominal pain one night.
Trip to ER deemed emergency: free.
Night doctor determined likely gall stone, kept overnight in ER to be confirmed by morning ER doc: free. Morning doctor determined non-critical issue, added to wait list and scheduled checkin with specialist in 2 months. All free.Same pain next night. Same song and dance, ambulance, same ER night doctor, this time he stays overtime to ensure that it gets an ultrasound booked. Ultrasound later that morning determines it needs to come out. Admitted same day for surgery. Bumped two days because literal life and death surgeries(c-sections and a motorcycle v car accident victim) and some time to let the surgeon have some sleep. He shows up and gets it done first thing.
Two weeks later, end up getting minor surgery for drain removal because her parent’s cat purred on her nonstop and overhealed the drain scar.
All free.
Tldr: the Canadian system works on priority and is hobbled by conservatives.
6 month wait for a gall bladder removal in Ontario.
Tbh it would be nice to get those numbers down. Obviously not by privatising, but extending existing public capacity
That is the non critical wait time. If there is a risk at all of it bursting, that drops dramatically.
Every conservative government cuts funding for every provincial healthcare system and then acts like the idea is flawed after they kneecapped it by limiting nursing hiring, freezing/reducing funding, and doing the 400th reorg to “find efficiencies”. They shuttered 3 ERs in my city against the pleas of the College of Physicians and our ER wait times went up a couple hours overnight.
Who could have guessed?
I will vote Liberal, I will vote NDP, I will vote Green, I will never vote conservative.
The UK? If so, Tories are assholes. If not, Tories are assholes.
This is common and a literal conservative tactic called “starving the beast”. You strangle off funding to a thing you wanna cut, wait a couple months for the service to go to shit because they have to realign to compensate for having no money, and then go “wow look this sucks, better just kill it”.
Reagan did it in the 80s.
The “beast” in their narrative is “money going to poor people instead of me and my friends” lest you think any shred of what they do is defensible.
I had a rich guy leaving Canada claim that since he can get healthcare for $120 and see a doctor faster by flashing money in some 3rd world country, public healthcare is a scam. Like yea dude im sure if they privatized here the treatment would still be $120.
how do people not understand triage? The longer you wait, the less of an emergency it is.
If your experience with ER is waiting for longer than an hour, then you went to the Emergency Room without an Emergency.
Though I totally agree that triage is important, you can absolutely be left waiting for more than an hour with an emergency. It’s just not as pressing of an emergency as other people. There’s plenty that an urgent care can’t do for you that requires an ER but that is not life threatening within the next few hours.
American here. Reluctantly went to the ER because I had been vomiting for a couple of days. Turned out that my gallbladder just stopped working. Was immediately placed into a room, given IV antibiotics, and had surgery the next morning.
Had to stay for 4 days to make sure I was in good shape. The surgery wasn’t super expensive, but the room itself cost me way too much.
Total cost was just over $24k. No insurance (contractor). Even on payments, it’s insane.
My plan is to just never get sick for the rest of my life so I don’t go into another debt hole.
unfortunately we all become disabled. It’s just a matter of time.
Not if you die violently on the assembly line
Medical debt aside, (not that it’s not important) you are an example of something that’s true about both systems: If you are at death’s door you’ll get treatment immediately, even if it’s just to stop you actively dying and stabilize you enough to wait for admission to the ICU. If you are waiting 12 hours in the ER before being seen by anyone but Triage, you’re probably the least sick/wounded person there.
Maybe instead of cursing the nurses and doctors, muster up the most powerful curse you can conjure, and send it to the germs and cancer cells in the Children’s Ward. Can’t hurt, might help. I like to start with “Fuck you, you filthy neuroblastomas! With your disgusting corrupted DNA and misshapen tumors oozing and squooging into places you don’t belong! Just fucking shrivel up and die! Don’t you know nobody wants you here? You’re fucking waste, so waste yourself and go out the shithole!”
Then see if you can call some good vibes for a quick resolution to the people who look miserable enough to be ahead of you. You’re on your own there, I’m not so good at prayers or that kind of thing.
Also a summertime reminder: a lot of people in the ER these months will be getting an IV because they’re severely dehydrated. And others will be getting an IV because their ability to withstand whatever else they have will be improved by getting better hydrated. You can help keep yourself and your friends out of there by pre-emptively drinking more water and non-alcoholic no-caffeine drinks, and being a …did “hydro homie” get ruined when I wasn’t paying attention?
I’m sure Canadian doctors do something similar
Yes I agree, both systems. That’s what triage is for.
hydro homie is not ruined yet, as far as I’m aware.
That’s a great plan until it’s not. If you’re able to, I’d highly recommend looking into getting Obamacare if you can’t get insurance through an employer due to being a contractor. I don’t know your personal situation, but Obamacare plans are often more reasonable than people imagine.
Obamacare is getting gutted bit by bit. You might have noticed the enrollment has dropped. This is because the premiums are way up, it’s now harder to get a subsidy to offset this, there are less insurance companies available, and the plans that are there now cover less. If Dems don’t win in the midterms, it’s toast.
Romneycare*
Never let Republicans forget that the best socialized healthcare system in the country was copied from a Republican system created and approved by voters in one of the most leftist states in the nation. It makes them so mad that they can’t blame a black guy for it when you do.
“Wasn’t super expensive”, " 24k", sorry what the actual fuck?
The worse part is that this is totally dependent on who your insurance is, and you don’t know prices on anything until the bill shows up 3 months later. You or your doctor also might have to fight your insurance to prove a procedure is necessary, or that a medication needs to be covered. Most times you can expect your procedure to not be covered, so you have to tell the insurance company that yes, this is covered, here’s why it was necessary (usually this first round of rejection is done via having an algorithm or ML setup “review” the case).
In some sense the US system is more reflective of the “true” cost of healthcare, just in the least humane way possible.
Take a country with “bad” socialized healthcare: Patient pays some percentage of visit cost, government pays the rest.
You break your leg: ambulance with two EMTs is $100/hr, 2 x-rays at $10/per, $30 in assorted bandages and plaster, and $150/hr for a doctor. Total patient cost: some percentage of $300.The US system charges all those, but also reflects the cost of those things existing and being available as reflected in patient usage. The socialized system sees the ambulance ride as distinct from when the community needs a new ambulance, or the cost of having EMTs available 24/7/365.
Likewise, you get charged not just for the bandaging, but the cost of the person who brought the bandage to the nurse applying them, the cost of the person tracking the inventory, and the cost of the nurse isn’t included in the medical care. Your room isn’t charged as a room but as the room plus the services of everyone who keeps a hospital room ready to go.
A socialized system just happily says “of course a hospital needs skilled janitors and maintenance people, but only an idiot would call what they do patient care”No one notices the cost of every hospital janitor and HVAC specialist in an entire country being divided amongst the entire tax base. You do when your share of the salary of all of them at your local hospital gets added to a bill addressed to you.
Our system is the way it is because otherwise no one pays for the pharmacist, and insurance caps things weirdly. Also, you have to multiply everything by 3 because the insurance company will refuse to pay anything above 1/3 of “list” price.
It may be outstandingly cruel, but it is
goodalso terrible at providing cost transparency. Which is worthless to everyone except accountants at work paying for healthcare.So yeah. That’s cheap, and the WTF goes deeper than most people can imagine.
Yes and, insurance companies spread out their costs among all their enrollees, whether or not they have to use those hospital services and equipment, in the form of premiums. (And of course they add on the cost of their CEO’s yacht, etc. because evil.) So that’s how they “save you” a portion of the billed amount.
But having so many uninsured people, whether healthy or sick, that aren’t even part of the system hurts everyone.
Which is why we need to eliminate the insurance racket, make healthcare universal and pay for it through taxes, perhaps a sliding scale based on net worth as long as I’m fantasizing.
Don’t all of those costs have a profit counted into them? I’ve always thought that a socialized system is incentivized to be as cheap as possible, to have as few “customers” as possible, which means that the whole system, from education to taxation, should make policies that improve people’s health, to make sure they need to use the hospital as rarely as possible.
That depends a lot on the medical system. Some systems target profit, but some are non-profits, affiliated with universities or other arrangements that make sense for a medical system.
The city I live in has two main hospitals. One is run by a for profit corporation. The other was a non-profit that got government funding to cover the difference because they were the main “ER as only healthcare” hospital in the area, since the other was built on the rural side of the suburbs and this one was in the middle of the population center. Then they got bought by, of all things, another non-profit operated by a public university. The first non-profit also owned a for-profit insurance company and a fitness center. I think the disposition of those is an ongoing legal question, since the university also owns an insurance company and there’s some weird conflict of interest interplay.
It’s a clusterfuck but the redeeming side is that the hospitals are actually extremely good.
Having at some point or another used all three systems I can say that the prices were basically the same. The staff all like that they can transfer patients to the university easier, but dislike the new parking system.
Yeah it’s actually a serious problem how many hospitals in the US are non profits run by religious organizations. Like, your local ER has a decent chance of being owned by the catholic church and you won’t know until you need medical care they don’t approve of.
Yes, but that’s socialism and therefore bad.
/S just in case
Edit: actually, it’s lost potential revenue which is even worse.
You seemed to miss the part where he said the surgery wasn’t all that expensive, it was the stay in the hospital that was.
You can haggle with them. Save up a few k and then call them offering to pay a lump sum to settle the debt. A few years ago I broke my wrist and ended up with a 16k bill. I got 3k together, called them, told them I’m poor AF, that they could take the 3k or nothing. They took the 3k.
There’s a horror in having to haggle for the price of your healthcare whilst in the hospital.
Similar story back when I didn’t have insurance for a bit. In my case the hospital billing actively offered a settlement when I called and asked about options.
That instant room you got is nothing special, but just how triage works. I came to the emergency room some years ago, shitting and vomiting my guts out, and they placed me in quarantine faster than I could hand over my insurance card. Come with a sore ankle and wait until the other patients are stabilized.
(Germany)
My gf had a mini stroke a few weeks ago. We were traveling so didn’t go to the hospital right away, mostly because she hates them and is terrified of the bill. On the way home and got way worse. We went immediately. They tried to tell us it was nothing more then a headache, and charged us 18k. I’m also a contractor so even if I could get insurance, because I’m not married to her I would have to pay double. Fuck this system.
I ended up in the emergency room last year.
The ambulance ride was something like $1200, which I’ve come to learn was “cheap” comparatively speaking, as they’re typically thousands of dollars each. My insurance didn’t cover the cost of that ambulance because the particular service that picked me up was out-of-network. Insurance also didn’t cover the ibuprofen I was given for pain citing the fact that they require prior authorization for it. Two ibuprofen alone cost me $40.
Remember, you can make payments, they just don’t have to be the suggested amount. $10 a month for life.
I don’t recall if medical debt impacts credit ratings like others. It shouldn’t in a sane world, but here we are.
So far, that total hasn’t, but there was a $985 bill for something relating to the stay that did hit my credit as a “derogatory mark.”
I hate this system lol.
Based on the price and it affecting your credit, it must have been something that you asked for, rather than needed. Like a couple of Tylenol for pain.
I’m beginning to think if I need to call 911 for myself, I should grab a couple Tylenol to take with me, even if I’m not sure it’s a good idea to actually take them. In my experience it’s possible to get permission from a doctor to take one’s usual home meds and the nurse will chart that you did so. In my husband’s case it was Evrysdi, which they were very glad we could provide, and his insurance (Platinum Plan because he needs it) did cover Tylenol, but I bet mine doesn’t.
I recently wound up with a ~$300 ER bill while unemployed for an extended period. I tried to negotiate a payment plan, and they insisted the minimum payment was $100/month. So, they got zero.
Or you finally get into the OR and the insurance broker calls the surgeon in the middle of the operation to debate on how necessary a heart transplant is.
People who complain about 12 hour wait times in Canada are there for minor things on the triage list, anything life threatening is handled immediately and without hesitation. They always have rooms available for those who need it, the problem is people expect everything to be handled immediately - even when it’s not serious.
I’ve spent way too many months in the hospital, ICU’s, and being rushed to hospital bleeding out or near death, and everytime they saved my life very quickly. Not a broken system at all, I left there with zero bills.
Most people don’t have a family doctor, so hospitals are unfortunately the only option. Walk-ins are hit or miss. The last walk-in I went to required appointments and they were fully booked up for weeks.
My family doctor was pressured into taking a much higher patient load to help alleviate shortages and I can see the effect it’s had on him. Where before I got excellent personalized care now he’s trying to refer me to specialists to offload the burden. I still only wait a week max to see him, and in emergencies I can get a same day appointment but I can see the toll it’s taking on him and it worries me about his long term health.
I had my appendix burst and waited for 18 hours in the ER. I nearly died, and owed thousands even though I have insurance. I live in the USA. Freedumb.
If you’re waiting 12 hours for an ER, you have no idea what an ER is.
First of all, there is no line.
A lot of people sincerely do not understand how the triage process works.
That said, triage sometimes gets things wrong. I’ve twice had my personal doctors call or bring me to the ER directly so that they could ensure I was seen immediately/ASAP.
As someone with ulcerative colitis, I frequent the ER regularly. I have never waited less then 12 hours, even when blood just keeps leaving my body and I’m severely dehydrated.
Last time I went to the ER was because I slipped on the stairs, dropped a coffee mug, bashed my elbow into the shards of shattered mug (RIP beloved TARDIS mug) and needed to get the pieces removed, elbow stitched up, and an X-ray to make sure nothing was left inside.
Total time at the ER from parking in the parking lot to getting in the car to drive home was about 3 hours. I think the co-pay was $500.
That’s a suburban hospital on a relatively quiet evening. However, I’ve had other, similar experiences at that ER, and I don’t think I’ve ever had an unreasonable wait time there. They used to guarantee that you’d see a doctor in 30 minutes, but I think they abandoned that policy when they were absorbed into a larger health system.
If I was headed to a major, inner-city hospital, I would expect to be in the waiting area for a long time. I’ve definitely had ER visits that were 12 hours from start to finish at the downtown ER.
Fun trick if you don’t want to hang around in the waiting area:
Bring an obviously pregnant woman along. I’ve had the ER rush me along when my pregnant wife took me there. They are so conditioned to move pregnant women out of the ER that they’ll rush you through even if the pregnant woman is just your ride home (kidding kind of).
They are so conditioned to move pregnant women out of the ER that they’ll rush you through even if the pregnant woman is just your ride home (kidding kind of).
That’s probably for the best. Pregnant women (and their fetuses) are at much greater risk if they should catch a communicable disease and you never know what might be circulating in that waiting area.
Americans would KILL for a 12-hour wait.
Americans literally live their lives without hope of going to the doctor.
Not frustration at it taking so long.
Literal despair that they will never get to go to the doctor, paired with fear that if they do, they will have to pay literally tens of thousands.
It’s like if there’s a homeless person, and you tell them “I could bring you some food in 12 hours, or I could just never bring it to you. Which do you prefer?” And the Republicans will straight-up claim the homeless person would choose to never get the food because 12 hours is too long to wait.
Me explaining to US friends that I’m upset that after leaving the hospital after surgery they had me buy my own antibiotics
