you also have to deal with every person at every step of the way trying to gatekeep healthcare from you instead of trying to help you.

Parent comments is still correct, NHS is free from the Financial Incentive problem. I don't think anyone claims the system is good, just this one aspect is correct.

Very incorrect. NHS is still an health insurance company that is trying to save money by using their own doctors.

There is a long history (20 years) of people who gave up, did their surgeries in France, and sued NHS for reimbursement. More recent stories are from EU, when NHS was part of unified health system (they should pay for medical procedures done in other EU countries to UK citizens).

Dealing with NHS if you need surgery, is basically full time job. You have to navigate Kafka like administrative labyrinth. Sometimes you have to drive 10 hours, to other side of country, because the only specialist who takes new patients is in Scotland.

NHS is doing everything it can, not to pay! If you have any problems and can do so, save your mental health, and just do medical tourism to Turkey, Malaysia or Thailand!

They maybe have a bit of the opposite problem of avoiding treatments to save resources. That said it mostly works kind of ok.

In the US, I am waiting 6 months for an eval appointment to redo an eval to see if a brain problem has progressed enough to put in a shunt.

how is this different from NHS?

It is not different, that is the point. Theme of this thread is that NHS is somehow better because it "does not have financial incentives"!

whereas here, if I paid more, I would get faster service, which means there is a financial incentive to provide slow service, pushing people to a higher-priced but not necessarily better-quality service.

I have that gold plated US insurance that you pay a lot for. Just last week, I was rushed to the hospital due to my heart. We don't yet know what tried (or is actively trying) to kill me. The cardiologist ordered an emergency MRI.

Three weeks. I am told to wait three weeks. The doc wants it last week. We are having to call around and mess with coverage questions. Similar for my dad and a specialist. Waiting a month while having breathing issues.

People wait already for emergency medical situations, but we pay a premium. And I am still not sure what my 20% shared cost is gonna be for the ambulance and hospital stay. And yes, that factored into my decision to even be treated, which, had I stayed home, may have killed me.

Fuck our system. Medical should not be for profit. It should cost money to run because it should be a service.

It might help if congress allowed more doctors and hospitals to keep the ratio per capita the same it was a century ago.

My mother waited for 3 months for imaging on her heart. 4 ER trips in that time, she spent much of it afraid she could die at any minute. We tried to comfort ourselves with the idea that her GP and the cardiologist knew what she was experiencing, surely if it were as critical as it felt to her something would be escalated right? But when they finally got a lock at her heart they all but handcuffed her to the hospital bed, and scheduled emergency surgery for the morning. 4 valves repaired and I don't recall what all else. She is doing well now, but our conversations during those months where she was simultaneously trying not to scare me, but also make sure her affairs were in order will undoubtedly be with me for the rest of my life.

Our system is broken.

How long did you wait in hospital, before you actually talked to doctor? Did you actually had MRI the same day?

In UK we had to wait 10 hours in ER before talking to doctors. Only passing out would get us some attention! Getting MRI was impossible in system. We had to pay privately for MRI, as part of building up case to get surgery approved.

And we also pay good money to NHS.

I went at night and there was no line, so I saw a general doctor immediately. I've gone in the past and had to wait hours for less critical issues. I was shipped to a larger hospital with a cardiac unit. I was seen for catheter placement the following day.

I still need an MRI. Haven't had one. It has been over a week and I am still waiting on a back up option to open up next week. Meanwhile, nobody knows what my heart is doing aside from EKGs that a nurse can run that say something aint right yet.

> Is that a joke? With NHS you have to wait to get GP appointments, wait several weeks for examination by specialists, more waiting in waiting list for surgery... The backlog for everything is huge!

My experience of healthcare in capitalist America is exactly the same in that regard. I have a mole I want examined, and one of the dermatology practices I called (part of a major local health system) was taking appointments for March 2025! I usually have to wait 3 or 4 weeks to see my primary care doctor (though I suppose I could settle for a rando doctor with an opening or a nurse practitioner and be seen sooner, but whenever I've done that there have been other issues).

When I moved a few years ago and had to look for a new doctor, new patient appointments were all at least 8-9 month waits. We regularly have to wait 1-2 months even as established patients. Due to these extreme waits, we end up going to Urgent Care clinics for routine things that we used to just go to our family doctor for. This is in the USA.