Canadian here - yep, there are sometimes wait times, especially for specialists, especially if it's something that is unpleasant but not urgently life threatening. That sucks. I'd still take that over some percentage of the population just not having access to care, or having a huge number of medical bankruptcies.

As for the ER - it even says in the article you link, that's largely people who could have gone to their primary care physician. Those are the people waiting. If you go in with a stroke, you're not waiting. I've (luckily) never been to the ER for a life-threatening situation, but I have for injuries where I needed urgent care, and got excellent treatment - and yes, once I had to wait for the guy ahead of me who had a stroke. I'm ok with that.

Yup. I'd rather wait 10 hours in ER for something non-life-threatening than get immediate care and spend the next 10 weeks fighting with insurance companies or filing for bankruptcy.

What? Where does it say that in the report? The figure is 24% of Americans and _56%_ of Canadians!

Patients who waited 4 weeks or longer to see a specialist, after they were advised or decided to see one in the last 2 years: Country results from highest to lowest

Canada, 56% (below average); Norway, 52%; New Zealand, 44%; Sweden, 42%; United Kingdom, 37%; Commonwealth Fund average, 36%; France, 36%; Australia, 35%; Germany, 25%; United States, 24%; Netherlands, 23%; Switzerland, 22%

Also, here's a quick guide to health insurance systems around the world. As a Canadian, I would urge all Americans to be extremely suspicious of the National Health Insurance model that Canada has. Wait lists are very real. The Bismarck model seem like a better fit for US culture and needs (still universal access).

http://www.pnhp.org/single_payer_resources/health_care_syste...

If you have a cold, you find a PCP or a "health clinic" and make an appointment for same-day or later-that-week. And sure it's hard to find that PCP, but with my PCP in the US I have to book appointments three weeks in advance!

I'd argue "75%ile time waiting in the ER" is not a great metric. That neither tells you how easy it is you are to get preventative or routine treatment, nor how well your ER is able to handle a mass-shooting type catastrophe.

The healthcare in the U.S. seems nuts because you are _billed_ for hundreds of dollars, but that's because they have to subsidize medicare patients AND insurance companies have negotiated rates based on percentages. So, they may only pay 40% of what is billed, but you are shown much more.

It's a scam everyone is involved in, which is why we need open pricing and open "how much insurance actually paid".

The US spends about 8% of GDP on private medical care, and another 8% on public care. Universal healthcare is about making the public, taxpayer-funded part of that expenditure more efficient, not about abolishing the private part of it.

Anybody who does this: "I have a medical issue but I'm not going to seek treatment for it because I'll get a bill for $10K" should be viewed as having infinite wait times, and counted in the stats thusly. But they aren't.

"Oh, I've got this giant infected cut on my hand and I'm not going to go to the doctor because I'll end up broke" simply doesn't exist in Canada or Ireland, or any other first-world nation.

And hey poster, I guess you didn't get to the bottom of your linked article: "Almost three-quarters of Canadians rated their quality of care as very good or excellent, well above the international average of 65%, she said."

But the main thing is this has nothing to do with the universality of healthcare, more about how it has been implemented in those two countries. Go look at the UK, France, Germany, Australia.

I’m assuming that you realise the singular first person in that statement is very much that: singular.

> Let’s get real

The New York Times sees “real” as under a Rawlsian veil: they imagine being any citizen. You seemingly disagree with that approach.