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As someone living in socialized healthcare, and who has lived with socialized healthcare in about a dozen countries, just a reminder:
**Socialized Healthcare is a broken and backwards system**
inb4: No I am not promoting the american healthcare system. It may fix or address the parts that are broken in socialized healthcare, but it has its own problems... There are solutions (though no one talks about it) that doesnt resemble either of these failed systems.
Problems I have repeatidly faced both here and in other socialized health care countries:
* Abusive wait times leading to unnecessary suffering and in my case surgery that wouldnt have been needed if I had prompter care.
* Lack of access to many prescriptions - (I have had at least a dozen medicines I couldnt get because the cost would be too much of a burden to a socialized system).
* Monopolies making unfair and abusive rules to line their pockets at the expense of patients (A good example of this is melatonin being a prescription in Israel due to a pharmecutical monopoly).
* Lack of privacy / anonymity - Since everything is registered through centralized systems (usually) there is no way for you to hide or keep private your medical records. In the USA I would pay cash for prescriptions I dont want on record, not really an option in socialized systems.
@freemo I don't know how long it's been since you tried that last one, but I don't think it applies anymore. The prescriptions here are all tracked by computer, so if you need a prescription for it, you're already being tracked whether you pay in cash or not.
@freemo Maybe for the government. But I'd bet anything the pharmacy database is (inter)national depending on how big the company is.
@LouisIngenthron Well thats easily mitigated, just go to a small pharmacy. I know the big ones let you opt-out of their system last time iw as there too
@freemo Pretty sure the US banned small business a few years back, lol.
@LouisIngenthron Yea that last one has went down hill, but only slightly. They do have databases now,, even if you pay with cash but its limited to 1) only the class of drugs consiered particularly dangerous for abuse (adderall for example), doesnt apply to most low-risk things 2) Even in the case where it is tracked each database is limited to state-wide access, it isnt national.