Are you joking? The USA is internationally infamous for having the shittiest health care of the developed world!
I can’t say for other countries but here in Brazil health care is paid by my taxes and anyone, citizen or foreigner, has the same right to receive free health care. It’s far from perfect because there’s so much political corruption eating the money that should go to SUS, but you don’t get bankrupt by having cancer or die for lack of insulin (insulin is free and diabetic people get monitored to prevent stuff like diabetes feet)
I’m pretty sure that Japan and most of Europe if not all and Canada have similar healthcare.
The last I knew about elders in the US is that people were divorcing to prevent their family from inheriting their healthcare debts and bankrupting families by dying. There’s so many GoFundme pages asking for help to bury people that died from preventable causes it’s heartbreaking.
Those are worst-case-scenarios, indeed, sort of like the horror stories that are spread in the US about international (socialized) healthcare and being put on five-month waiting lists for doctors or sitting in a state-run ER for two days.
The reality is that we came very close to having a healthcare system like yours. Our new president has dismantled what we had bit by bit, and now there’s GoFundMes being used as if they’re normal.
Most provinces have reciprocal agreements around common services. But non-residents will get billed, whether you’re from another province and the provinces haven’t agreed to cover that for each other, or you’re from out-of-country. Drugs are subsidized and might be more so depending on your province and income level. What gets covered also varies by province.
It’s not perfect, but it’s still a hell of a lot more affordable than the US.
I have endured long ER waiting times, 6 hours for example, but on arrival you have your level of emergency screened and receive a wristband color-coded for urgency. White you wait, red you are priority number uno. And yes, you may have to wait for an specialist to have an opening in their schedule because the system is being actively affected by the lack of resources, but that’s bad administration in a banana Republic.
Still much better than having to pay outrageous amounts of money for basic things.
The thing is, he’s never had to worry or think about how to afford a doctor for a single day of his life. Born rich and gifted millions, he cannot possibly conceive of the idea of staying sick because you can’t afford your co-pay or not going to the hospital because you don’t have insurance.
A couple of years ago, I had to wait for almost two months to get a colonoscopy after a doctor told me I “probably” had cancer, and the only hospital my insurance covered was booked up. Spending a few months not knowing if you’re about to die or not isn’t much fun. So on the whole I’d rather go with a socialized medicine system; at least I don’t have to worry about whether I can afford it.
No, in a case like this if they cannot book you with a public service you get to pick a private clinic near your home address on a list of providers and SUS will pay for you. I had a brain cancer scare a couple of years ago (a hormone was off the charts thanks to collateral effect of medication) and had to do a CAT scan in a private clinic. It was scheduled for the same week (like, a couple days after). I just went there and presented the SUS exam request and my ID. It was an immense relief to have everything dealt with in about a week.
Our taxes are high so government better provide me the services I’m paying for and with quality. It’s not like government is giving me services for free because I’m pretty.
If you cap payments based on income I don’t see there’s any need for any other protections. If you’re disabled the loan balance could go sky high but what difference does that make?
Yeah, I guess it’s a more viable solution for creative jobs, I see a lot of fellow US illustrators & cartoonists dismissing art school because of its cost. Art School in France are way cheaper but I don’t know if it’s a a good idea for a US citizen to actually study in France.
My friends (U.S. citizens) have a daughter enrolled here and she starts in the fall:
We shall see!
I am curious to find out just what her “learning takeaway” in the non-curriculum sphere will be. She was raised in the U.S., is whip-smart, and has long cast a critical eye on American culture [if that is not a contradiction in terms, and I say this as a native-born U.S. citizen myself].
I have a relative who spent about two years getting a dual citizenship from a European country (because a relative came from that country). That means he can work in the EU and in fact lives in Europe now. He just bought a house with his girlfriend. I doubt he sees any benefit to returning to the US
