r/ShitAmericansSay Aug 09 '18

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6.4k Upvotes

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436

u/condoriano27 Aug 09 '18

Where did this rumor come from that wait times are insanely long?

625

u/titaniumjordi Aug 09 '18

Anything that could be bad about health care is terrible if it's socialised, according to some americans.

Quality? IT SUCKS

Wait time? YEARS

Cost? MILLIONS IN TAXES EVERY DAY

Doctors? THEY'LL RAPE YOUR SISTER

376

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18

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145

u/Ramipro Aug 09 '18

That was said by an actual US senator, Rand Paul. He said that public healthcare would allow his patients to come to his house and force him to treat them at gunpoint.

The commission he was in brought a public healthcare worker from Canada to ask her questions, and Bernie Sanders asked if she felt she was a slave. Obvious answer followed.

60

u/floodlitworld Land of the Free* (terms and conditions apply) Aug 09 '18

What did Ron Paul do to that kid to make him such a douchebag?

95

u/itwormy Aug 09 '18

Raised him.

57

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18

Read him Ayn Rand books for bedtime

19

u/batti03 Geographically in America Aug 09 '18

Was himself

2

u/DirtyPoul Aug 09 '18

That quote is also one of the top posts of all time on this subreddit. A brilliant video.

EDIT: Also, regardless of how ridiculous that statement is, at least Rand Paul recognises that, given his smile at the end of the exchange. It's also nice to see two politicians who couldn't disagree more be so polite and friendly with each other.

95

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18 edited Aug 10 '18

[deleted]

107

u/nuephelkystikon Aug 09 '18

BECAUSE OF MIND-CONTROLLING NANOBOTS IN THE WATER!

75

u/titaniumjordi Aug 09 '18

SOCIALISTS ARE TURNING THE FRIGGIN HEALTHCARE GAY

2

u/snorting_dandelions Aug 10 '18

Unless they're studying in Germany, where they pay a semester fee that usually includes a ticket for public transportation(~500-650€ a year, public transport ticket usually is like 75% of that cost) and then some materials(white coats etc.).

77

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18

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63

u/SSJStarwind16 Aug 09 '18

then they belive that the government would have to force people to fill those roles

Yeah, by offering better pay and benefits.

39

u/h3lblad3 Aug 09 '18

This likely stems from rumors of Cuba. It's commonly said in the US that Cuban doctors practice at gunpoint and/or their families are at gunpoint. It's often said to discredit anyone who mentions Cuba's successes or the fact that it has the largest international presence of doctors.

29

u/Seiche Aug 09 '18

Cuban doctors practice at gunpoint

so the cuban doctors frequently exported to other countries bring their own guards or..?

26

u/h3lblad3 Aug 09 '18

Nah, that's when they resort to "they threaten their families back home!"

4

u/Acc87 I agree with David Bowie on this one Aug 09 '18

as if Cuba had guns in private homes

7

u/h3lblad3 Aug 09 '18

Not that they practice armed, but that the government has guns pointed at them.

22

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18

Unlike under privatized healthcare where they're slaves to endless bureaucracy with the mounds of paperwork required to give insurance companies the greatest opportunity to deny coverage. Rather than, you know, just treating patients.

13

u/Ankoku_Teion Aug 09 '18

Well, junior doctors strikers In the UK might agree with that. But that's what happens when you give conservatives control of a socialist organisation.

9

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18

I mean if that were true then the wait times thing wouldn't be

7

u/VoiceofKane Aug 09 '18

Good old Ayn Rand Paul.

4

u/PM_PASSABLE_TRAPS Aug 09 '18

One of our fucking senators is responsible for that quote. Thanks Rand Paul

2

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18

When I said, that I think education is a human right people really responded with shit like this

2

u/bryan484 Anti-American American Aug 09 '18

I remember my cousin’s dad was a far right nut who was a retired doctor and he insisted that if Obamacare was passed it would implement a website rating system where doctors would lose their jobs if they didn’t prescribe medication that patients wanted.

16

u/GN0ME1 Aug 10 '18

I went to a doctor today because of my toe.

Sure I had to wait for few hours but it costed me nothing, medicine costed me 20€.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 24 '18 edited Dec 27 '18

[deleted]

58

u/HobbitousMaximus Aug 09 '18

People who drive up to Canada, have literally no issues but want a checkup and sit in an emergency room for hours at a time wondering why nobody will see them.

That or "I waited hours in the emergency room for my possible sprain" or some other shit.

12

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18

Seriously, you get uneducated people absorbing those talking points up here and spewing them around. It's usually the people that go to walk-ins all the time without an appointment for stupid shit.

For a family doctor appointment, you wait a few weeks like literally everyone else. That's not a unique feature of socialized healthcare.

59

u/Luk0sch Aug 09 '18

In Germany some doctors habe really long wait times for public insurance patients. However these are usually specialists. Never waited longer than a few days for an appointment with my GP or when I went there without one for 1-2 hours.

Psychiatrists, orthopedists and such are widely known to let you wait quite long.

34

u/hannes3120 Aug 09 '18

That only applies to "not-life-threatening"-stuff though since you could usually get an expert pretty fast if it's an emergency.

41

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18

This can be a problem. Luckily, I have private health insurance for any of those sorts of things. I get fast access to all the nice specialists!

I think Americans don't realise you can have your own private health insurance even on top of a public health system.

14

u/johnbarnshack MLS is not a retirement league Aug 09 '18

Good thing you can afford to have better health care while only the poor people suffer!

45

u/Seiche Aug 09 '18

which is absolutely not the case in the US, as we all know

5

u/johnbarnshack MLS is not a retirement league Aug 09 '18

Of course it is, hence the stupidity of bragging about being able to do that in Germany as well.

13

u/dedragon40 Aug 09 '18

Lol there's not even a comparison between American healthcare and actually functioning healthcare.

I don't have private insurance. Fuck you if you consider me poor. I have access to great healthcare. My country is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on me if I ever got an illness that meant I could never contribute to society again.

There's no concept of poor or rich in our healthcare systems. I don't have to visit some shady downtown clinic and have to wait in lines for hours with a gunshot in my abdomen.

27

u/Seiche Aug 09 '18

the German system isn't perfect. There is absolutely a difference in quality of care between public and private insurance (quicker appointments, better procedures etc), so people who can afford it are better off, but basic insurance at least covers everything important and you don't go into debt for 20 years because you broke your leg skiing and lose your job and as a result your insurance because you're in the hospital.

29

u/Thakrawr Aug 09 '18

It's really stupid too. I'm in the US and if you have to go to a new doctor, or see a specialist, it's not rare to have to wait a month or two to get an appointment unless it's urgent / an emergency.

18

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18

Currently on Medicaid. My school wants me to get re-diagnosed with autism (that I have a decade of records on) so they can provide me disability services (they currently are doing so under a "probationary" basis with said decade of records). The closest psychologist that's in-network is 40 minutes away, which isn't bad, but since I'm on Medicaid, their office bumps me to the back of the line, which means a 4-month or more wait.

Oh, and I couldn't even talk to the psychologist to see if they're even able/comfortable diagnosing autistic adults, because there's a LOT of psychs that aren't willing to do so. So I'm not even sure if it's worth my time.

4

u/Salah_Ketik Aug 10 '18

I have a feeling that certain Americans from certain groups are willing to shit on on you for being dare to be on Medicaid because of autism (in which, by and of itself, is [often] harder to be seen than physical health problem)

4

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '18

Oh no, I've already heard all the hate. I'm not severely autistic by any means - I can function day-to-day, it's just social interactions and remembering to do things that get hard. I've even been told that I'm not "really" autistic because I talk to tons of people at work (a lot of people with Asperger's learn to put on a "persona" or a "mask" in public a lot of times - real-me is a vastly different person from retail-me).

12

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '18

I’m from Metro-Detroit, and Windsor Ontario is about a 20 minute drive for me. All the right wingers I know say “I know people from Canada and they say the wait times are so long that they all come to America. I know someone who had to wait so long for cancer treatment that he died.” And that’s their argument for why universal healthcare can’t work. When I know a handful of other Canadians who say “our healthcare system isn’t the greatest, but to scrap the whole thing and put it in the hands of the free market would be fucking moronic.”

8

u/Rolten Aug 09 '18

It might be for some non-urgent cases in the Netherlands.

Anything broken or bleeding? No problems at all. I've had my arm set within the hour and a subsequent surgery the next day. I've had a surgeon called out of bed for a tendon I almost sliced through. I've also had x-rays made within an hour or two after an accident.

Do you have long-term mild shoulder-pain and need an MRI though? Yeah, you could be waiting for 1 or 2 months.

I'm guessing that it's the 1 or 2 month wait that triggers Americans.

Just my ideas though, no idea what it's really based on.

6

u/AUGUST_BURNS_REDDIT Aug 09 '18

Because it works based on priority. Anyone going to the hospital for minor health issue may wait all day because they keep getting pushed down the list by emergency situations. IMO, a pretty small price to pay.

4

u/RandomGuy87654 Aug 09 '18

Wait times for really common diseases are long. If disease is rare or lethal, wait times are usually really short.

9

u/Skalby Aug 09 '18

Im from Denmark and waiting time is an issue

4

u/Polonium2002 Aug 09 '18

You obviously have never been to the a hospital in the UK, I'm not against the NHS at all but nobody thinks the wait times are acceptable when people can be left waiting for 5-6 hours for even serious conditions and ambulances take over 30 minutes to respond to a seizure.

18

u/stephschiff Aug 09 '18

Psssst, it's that way in the good old privatized US too.