Heavy question, I know. This is not intended to be political, please leave “taxes/government evil” out of it, I’m interested in a pragmatic view.
Infamously the US has mostly private health care, but we also have Medicare and -aid, the ACA, and the VA.
Most other nations have socialized health care in some format. Some of them have the option to have additional care or reject public care and go fully private.
Realistically, what are the experiences with your country’s health care? Not what you heard, not what you saw in a meme, not your “OMG never flying this airline again” story that is the exception while millions successfully complete uneventful and safe journey story. I’m also not interested in “omg so-and-so died waiting for a test/specialist/whatever”. All systems have failures. All systems have waits for specialists unless you’re wealthy, and wealth knows no borders. All systems do their best to make sure serious cases get seen. It doesn’t always work, but as a rule they don’t want people dying while waiting.
Are the costs in taxes, paycheck withholding (because some people pay for social health care out of paychecks but don’t call it a tax), and private insurance costs worth it to you?
I was expecting this to be a story of an issue, but this is actually really encouraging for what single payer could look like. The time scale isn’t great, but it’s pretty comparable to what I’ve experienced and heard about from friends here in the “efficient” private US system.
Part of the time scale was how low risk the issue ended up being. We knew from the first few months that even if it was a tumor, so there was no “rush” to get me in to see people.
One of the ‘mindsets’ of single payer is that more severe/risky issues can get fast tracked over less severe/risky ones. Ultimately, all that was happening to me was that my vision was slightly affected (because my eyelid wouldn’t open fully). But had it been a tumour, I likely would have been on the surgeons table within a month of them finding out.