This is not an equivalent comparison.

In Europe many cancer treatments are simply not paid for by social health care, because it's too expensive or experimental.

Rich people still go to private health care providers for more niche treatments, or simply for shorter waiting lists.

What you have in Europe is - long wait lists, for everyone, and fewer numbers of actual treatments (plus many things not covered by social health care, e.g. dentists)

What you have in US is - no wait lists, healthcare that's probably 2-3x as expensive, but you actually can get the best of the best treatment if you pay for it

Clearly for poorer layers of society the US system is bad. But for society as a whole I would question which system is actually better. They both have bad and good parts.

To be honest if the US actually implemented a real market system for health care, and prices would drop a bit (with the kind of stuff Mark Cuban is building), the US health system would be FAR superior than Europe, even if its not free.

It's quite obvious which system is better if you look at life expectancy and infant mortality.

> Rich people still go to private health care providers for more niche treatments, or simply for shorter waiting lists.

You say rich, but private healthcare is a pretty normal benefit for people working in professional jobs. I'm on my third tech job and I've never not had some level of private insurance benefit.

So, this actually reinforces my point, many many people in Europe have private health insurance despite having free healthcare supposedely.

If european healthcare was so amazing AND free, why would people do this? It makes no sense. Of course it does when you realise the cost of free healthcare, which is that it just isn't that great in terms of quality, or you have insane waiting lists, even if it is free.

You're missing the cost of people not seeing a professional until it's very late into their illness and have to either undergo expensive procedures, end up disabled or die. Which is exactly what is happening in the US and is reflected by life expectancy. Private healthcare is just too expensive to the society as a whole. And you keep saying insane waiting lists, but critical procedures are prioritised accordingly and you don't have to wait long if you have a heart disease or cancer. Just to be clear, all healthcare systems have their own problems and not one is perfect, but the one in US is absurdly bad.

Blaming short life expectancy on the US healthcare system is pointing to a tree in a forest.

There are A LOT of reasons for this. For example fentanyl probably took quite a bit off it, considering over 200,000 people are dead at this point from it.

So does the obesity crisis.

Now - I think we are probably more in agreement than not, I think there are huge issues with the US healthcare system, the entire fentanyl crises WAS created by the healthcare system, but still - I don't think the root issue, or problem to be solved is private vs public. Switching to public would just mean another set of problems.

For the record, I'm not from the US, and I mostly use private healthcare, despite there being so called free healthcare available in my country. It's just terrible. So it's almost the same as the US - rich people get healthcare, poor don't.

If you don’t stratify life expectancy by demographics, it means nothing.

Asians in the US live to be 10 years older than Blacks.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_health_in_the_Unite...

Clearly lifespan is not solely determined by where you live.

At least in Poland private healthcare is great when it comes to simple procedures, but as soon as you have serious health issues you end up in a public hospital.

The us healthcare system is also insanely expensive, highest spend per person on the planet by a large margin

If the US took all the money it spent on Medicaid alone it could afford to fund U.K. level healthcare for everyone.

Not without a massive cut in doctor and (especially) nursing staff pay. Which might be problematic considering all the medical school debt they have.

People in the us visit healthcare providers about just as much, maybe a little less, it’s just that they pay 5x per visit compared to other countries in Europe due to massive regulatory capture and the behemoth of bureaucracy.

In Denmark, the law clearly states that there cannot be longer than 2 weeks from suspicion to initial examination, and if you indeed to have cancer, at most 2 weeks more for treatment. If the public healthcare cannot honor those deadlines you will have the equivalent examination/treatment at a private, and public healthcare pays. This includes some very advanced treatments for advanced cancers.

Yes it does...what bizarre takes. Lack of health insurance affects a gap of people that don't qualify for public programs and can't afford private insurance. Many people with way less than a million dollars buy private health insurance.