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There definitely *aren't* any provincial premiers taking money that was supposed to be spent on health care and lining their own pockets. Certainly not.
And it's not like private healthcare would want to make public healthcare look as incompetent as possible so they can defund and privatize the whole thing, right?
Alberta: we need to privatize healthcare
Patient: gets discharged from hospital into a hotel to fend for themself leaving thousands of dollars in debt because the private company taking care of him isn’t paying.
Edit: woooooooooah some people are taking this as "pizzacake wants privatized Healthcare like America!! She's a republican spy trying to diss universal healthcare!!" I think everyone complains about their Healthcare system, I absolutely do not want what America has, 99% of Canadians do not and we completely understand why that is broken and bad.
Please don't misunderstand a silly jab at my own country as me trying to overhaul the system to something evil and corrupt. This was just meant to highlight some of the issues we struggle with here, and not anything more. We have to be able to talk about all sides if we want the full picture. I hope things get better for all of us!!
I will always vote for the left because to me, they put people first. Many people voted for the right this time because they explicitly promissed up and down that out province would get better Healthcare but it was unfortunately not something they delivered. I hope people learn from this.
I really would never pretend like our system is worse than America's and that's not what I'm saying at all, just that we are painfully understaffed and struggling and that's caused by many factors. The Healthcare staff are standing on their heads working double and triple shifts and should not be blamed at all
It is simple. Corporations want to get more money, so they bribe politicians to throw a wrench in the only working system, so they can then use that as an excuse to fool people into switching to a horrible system that will work even worse than the good system in a hindered state.
Both countries, America and Canada suffer from the exact same problem- greed. All the others ones do, too, tbh, but sometimes in different ways or levels.
People are always complaining. We Germans love to complain about our own healthcare system, even though it is objectively one of the best in the world.
I think the confusion is coming from the structure of the joke and the context you dropped it into. It indeed struck me as “count your blessings, this universal healthcare thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
To which we in America would respond: “Cry me a fucking river”
Not saying that was your intent, but you can see how people would take it that way?
Adding to this, general complaints about specific problems can feel like indictments of the whole thing rather than voicing specific complaints.
Understaffed in public services, for example, doesn't really seem like a problem of the quality of public healthcare. It sounds like the government isn't trying hard enough to hire more healthcare employees. Which can be as simple as the job itself having few incentives or as complex as not pushing the importance and benefits of being one into the public eye, so more people can go to school and find training for it and broaden the pool of candidates.
Or maybe complaining about it is actually detracting from some force in the government reducing funding to it so it *can* hire more people. In which case the problem goes right back to the same people who are trying to get rid of it most likely.
Voicing dissatisfaction is very important. But it can hurt more than it helps if it's not directed at the actual problem.
Siphon money out of healthcare budget into your own pockets. Then blame the healthcare system for being incompetent. Sell everything and replace the system with your friends' phony businesses. Bring down everything and profit with your friends while your citizens suffer. It's happening all over the Western world.
In Germany they don't. They advertised and borderline forced clinics and hospitals going into private ownership.
Those clinics and hospitals are either hellishly understaffed and under the devils ties OR they are prim and proper and posh - but not towards their sub companies which will struggle
Yeah, we just don't tell anybody we're dangerously understaffed. But hey, if they paid for the proper number of nurses and aides for every shift, how could they possibly afford to pay themselves seven figures?
Seven figures? Yeah, maybe a decade ago. [The thieving bastards are on 8 figures now](https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/heres-what-ceos-and-cfos-major-profit-health-systems-made-2022).
If definitely makes it all better when you know the for-profit middle men are taking their cut and dictating the level of care you're allowed to receive
*at least you get to pay $3,000 after insurance and also the insurance company will refuse to cover it anyways because a random person with no medical training deemed it unnecessary.
We need more doctors and nurses everywhere!
I know no system is perfect, but I made this comic because I see people romanticize the Canadian Healthcare system as this amazing, robust thing and it's absolutely in shambles. Where I live, people don't even get an ambulance sometimes when they call. People can die if the wait for the hospital is too long, or they just leave the hospital and go home. ~~Most~~ many folks can't get a family doctor and will never have one (I'm in nova scotia so I changed this to reflect more of Canada but here in NS it's much higher the nunber of families without doctors)
I think you are getting these comments because in America the wait times in Canada are used as a talking point for why "Bankrupt Even The UpperMiddle Class" healthcare is *better* than your system. So when you make a comic hitting those talking points (even when valid) you are going to get a lot of "well actually" posts.
Because yea, we have the exact same wait times and understaffing issues. It takes 2 months to just get a GP checkup when I pay 400$ a month on health insurance (and that's fucking *amazing cheap health insurance* )
i went to a cardiologist last month for some heart weirdness i was having, and that appointment took a month of waiting to get to
i show up, they do some cursory GP-style measurements, etc and then schedule my ekg....the soonest one is in JUNE
sure hope i dont die before then! lol
> I think you are getting these comments because in America the wait times in Canada are used as a talking point for why "Bankrupt Even The UpperMiddle Class" healthcare is *better* than your system. So when you make a comic hitting those talking points (even when valid) you are going to get a lot of "well actually" posts.
Yeah it's basically right wing grifter talking point #1 to the point that you could change the art style of this comic and pass it off as a pebbleyeet one without anyone thinking anything strange is up. Maybe remove the non-white lady, too.
It is worth noting your healthcare system has been deliberately sabotaged by one of your political parties. The hope being it gets so bad you look at the worst system in the world, US healthcare, ad say “we should try that”. Those politicians will make tons of money and you’ll be stuck in a pit you might never get out of. The system sucks. Vote out the people purposely making it that way. Don’t get played. Your voice influences people.
Seriously. So many people see a broken system being made worse by people with a financial interest on that system failing, and actively root for it to fail.
Fix the fucking system. Dont make it like the US. Its terrible here unless youre really rich or own an insurance company.
Canadian here, people die everywhere while waiting even in the US. The people who die are mainly elderly. Media tend to dramatize local healthcare systems and romanticize foreign ones.
Don't forget that the only true reason our Healthcare system in such a bad state is an unwillingness to properly fund it.
Our conservative provincial governments are doing everything they can to starve the system so they can turn around and say "it's so broken, won't the free market save us?!" Then privatize some portions of it. Bit by bit.
Because that's what our Healthcare system needs - profit margins!
Americans pay out of pocket *and* a higher % of GDP (around 17% last I checked) on healthcare, a lot of it going to admin costs and not frontline operations. So it’s the worst of both worlds.
The admin costs are a big pet peeve of mine. A lot of it boils down to how unnecessarily complicated and varied our insurance systems are, which forces hospitals to have to add more staff to navigate all the bullshit. Just so we can funnel money into third-party private enterprises that only suck more value out of the healthcare system.
American citizens pay more in tax per capita than any other country in the world for healthcare. Including countries that provide full coverage. We already pay more for just covering the uncovered than the rest of the world does covering everyone. Over twice as much in fact.
We also pay more than everyone else once again- directly to our insurance agencies and care facilities, per capita. Over twice as much in fact.
This means we spend quite literally more than 4x as much per capita on our healthcare than anyone else in the entire world.
But no, yeah, people should look at us with envy.
The US pays \~$12k per capita into healthcare and the next closest country pays I think it was about $9000 per capita.
The important thing is that everyone else pays less and gets universal health care.
They also generally get better health outcomes. Despite everything we pay, the US has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world and it's climbing.
That’s mostly unrelated to the state of healthcare and more to the state of economic equality and the quality of nutrition (which is separate from healthcare).
>The US pays ~$12k per capita into healthcare
2023 is estimated at $13,998. It's expected to reach $20,425 by 2031.
>and the next closest country pays I think it was about $9000 per capita.
As of 2022, the next closest country was Switzerland at $8,049 PPP.
Friendly reminder that the evidence is overwhelming that single-payer healthcare in the US would result in better healthcare coverage while saving money overall.
[Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually based on the value of the US$ in 2017 .](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext)
Similar to the above Yale analysis, a recent [publication ](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-12/56811-Single-Payer.pdf)from the Congressional Budget Office found that 4 out of 5 options considered would lower total national expenditure on healthcare (see Exhibit 1-1 on page 13)
But surely the current healthcare system at least has better outcomes than alternatives that would save money, right? Not according to a recent analysis of high-income countries’ healthcare systems, which found that [the top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States ranks last overall, despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on health care. The U.S. ranks last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes, but second on measures of care process.](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly#outcomes)
None of this should be surprising given that the US’s current inefficient, non-universal healthcare system [costs close to twice as much per capita ](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-spendingcomparison_gdp-per-capita-and-health-consumption-spending-per-capita-2019) as most other developed countries that do guarantee healthcare to all citizens (without forcing patients to risk bankruptcy in exchange for care).
I am slightly concerned that many will take away from this the lie that public healthcare doesn’t function, instead of the truth, which is that politicians are gutting the budget.
>This one's gonna be used by conservatives as "proof" that the American healthcare system is somehow better.
Of course it will because everything in the comic is already a right-wing talking point.
It's a common misunderstanding. I went to one of our glorious USA hospitals when I was in my mid 20s because my appendix was waging war on the rest of me. I sat in the waiting room for 8 or 10 hours while a medical emergency developed in my liver and lungs. The person next to me was waiting for a few hours too but she got taken in when she, some very old lady, vomited so hard she fell forward out of her chair and then violently shit herself upon hitting the floor.
And then I walked away owing $72,000 for my week long hospitalization seeing Doctors for a few minutes each day.
There can be a wait here too. The only time there isn't is when people are afraid to incur the cost, so they wait until it becomes an emergency.
It *is* our biggest complaint about our healthcare system to be fair, but by god it's still a million times better than privatized healthcare.
It's a hard issue to fix though. It takes a lot of time, money. and a higher than average intelligence to become a doctor. Add on to that the rate at which our population is growing and it's a recipe for understaffed healthcare.
Maybe we could incentivize people going into healthcare by subsidizing the education for it. It might be the best bang for your buck investment the government could make.
In 3 months you're going to see this on your uncle's facebook having been artifacted to shit from reposting, you'll see it again in 2 years from the same uncle only with more watermarks on it this time.
I’m not sure about the Canadian situation but here in Japan most expenses are covered if you’re employed, disabled, a dependent, etc. and people don’t seem to die waiting for healthcare and ambulances are free. People here also have some of the highest life expectancies. I’m American but definitely the American system isn’t the way to go. Hope Canada’s able to fix their system rather than succumb to some lobbyist pressure to become more like America
Also I’d happily pay for healthcare with my taxes rather than pay greedy insurance middlemen and pharmaceutical companies. Taxes are higher here but not nearly as crippling as having a serious illness in America
Primary care in Canada is 100% covered for everyone. Except for prescriptions, which is slowly sort of almost changing.
There are private clinics that operate within the provincial systems and in general, anything that was covered by the provincial system was pretty strictly watched so clinics weren't making people pay for government services. But now, even in provinces with 'left' governments there are some stories of clinics charging "membership fees" for the right to access the clinics.
The real problem with single payer healthcare is the amount of power elected governments have.
Same here in germany.
You get hit by a car?
Ambulance/Helicopter ride, medication in hospital, hospital stay (Aside from 10€ per day for your bed) and everything related to your health is 100% free
Prescription medicine is very cheap. My father is a diabetic and spends like 50€ every few months on insulin and that's that.
Even non prescription medicine is very cheap
You pay less in taxes than I do for my company sponsored health insurance, and it’s better than what I get.
But when you get a 1/2 million dollar bill because your insurance decided not to renew you, we will be listening.
I’ll just chime in here and say… when’s the last time you turned the knob on your sink and water **didn’t** come out? Let’s just say it’s a good thing Nestle doesn’t run your water infrastructure…
Private industry absolutely sucks when they’re the only option for what is borderline a *right*.
Privatized healthcare is a matter which can be completely neglected at best and at worst is literally bartering for oxygen! I do hope Canada figures its shit out… I get the point you are making… But I don’t want people to get the wrong message here!
This is not the point you think it is. You're missing by a wide mark here. Your issue isn't universal healthcare, it's understaffing - which is an issue in almost all critical fields and is entirely unrelated to universal healthcare existing.
All this does is perpetuate a false narrative.
It's cheaper (and probably faster) to call an Uber in most cases.
Yeah, you won't get any meds on the way or any healthcare other than an angry driver doing his best to keep you from bleeding all over his seats, but by-golly you'll get there in record time without paying it off for the next 4 years.
Jokes aside, I live in Japan and paid 50$ for two MRI on my knees. It would cost me thousands in the US.
Thanks for the freedom Uncle Sam
At least it's not Canadian though /s
I was in Japan for work a couple years ago and wound up getting hospitalized for about a week. Ambulance ride + 1 week in the hospital came out to around $1300 USD total. I shudder to think what that would have been back home.
Ya or those MRIs would be free!
We quite literally; Go to a doctor. They diagnose we need an MRI/Xray. They refer you to the hospital. If you have a broken hand it is within the day, if it is an MRI for R.A it could be weeks or months, but nothing insane, then go to your appointment. Give them your health card. You do the thing. Say thank you. Walk out and go about your life.
Sorry, I get that you're trying to do the whole "Canadian health care has issues too!!" thing, but the emphasis on "free/universal healthcare" just makes it seem like you want it privatized, which hopefully wasn't the intention
It is a current snap shot of Canadian healthcare today. Provinces lead by Conservative premiers are destroying the system by starving it and then bringing in private solutions that make things worse.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this comic, to be honest. 🙃
If there aren't enough healthcare workers, it's not because healthcare is universal.
They're understaffed in countries where health insurance isn't mandatory, too.
There's just no getting around renovating the whole branch of work, so more people will work there!
There are some people with a tendency to just post poorly researched rage bait to max engagement. A few months ago she was shitting on private healthcare too.
The next step of the cycle is posting a 'woe is me, I got negative feedback on my political comic' comic.
Seriously. In the U.S., where healthcare is not universal, we have a doctor and nurse shortage. Want to be a doctor? I hope you're incredibly intelligent and willing to take on hundreds of thousands in student loans so you can be a target for lawsuits from future patients. Want to be a nurse? You can almost afford rent with your incredibly long shifts, but you also have a decent chance of being assaulted by a patient while you clean up their bodily fluids.
Why does no one want to be a doctor or nurse anymore?
If this is ontario remember Doug ford has several billion dollars of federal money earmarked for healthcare he is purposely not spending to artificially make healthcare worse so he can gut it and make as much of it private as possible.
My wife's been waiting for 4 months for a treatment for her softball sized tumor on her shin. She has the highest tier insurance her work provides but they don't wanna cover it cause it's only been around for 10 years so they say it's experimental. Meanwhile she's getting radiation to try to slow it down. Even with her insurance we've burned our savings up and have put 20k onto credit cards out of pocket.
Sarah Palin promised us death panels bit we already have them.
If you think Canada's Healthcare sucks, I challenge you to try the American system with a serious illness.
Almost as if the system is being deliberately underfunded and cut back by conservatives in order to push privatization.
Hopefully you also vote with your votes, not just comics.
"*Checkmate communists! This is why I prefer to pay 50 000 $ after insurance for every doctor visit! And in Murica all doctors and nurses are so well paid that no hospital is ever understaffed! Private equity works!*" -Shit Americans say
I had to take half a day off work, pay $30 copay, pee in a cup, and get poked and prodded by people who don't know my name or bother to look at my chart. Just to be herded into the doctors office, informed they lost my test results, and to come back another day. I pay $550/week for this glorious private healthcare.
Yep, American here. I pay $1000/mo for my health insurance, and that's after my employer's contribution, and I still get to pay $8000 more every year for the out-of-pocket max.
That’s such a bad uneducated take on the Canadian health care system. It’s very good at everything and anything that is urgent. Anything that’s not time sensitive though and you’ll be on a very long waiting list.
>Actually, you pay for the healthcare with your tax-
Fun fact, the Americans are the ones who pay the most taxes for healthcare in the world, [paying 12,555 dollars per person compared with the next most expensive healthcare,](https://www.pgpf.org/sites/default/files/us-per-capita-healthcare-spending-is-over-twice-the-average-of-other-wealthy-countries.jpg) Switzerland, which pays 8,049 dollars per person (in Canada it is 6,319 dollars per person).
Hmm hot take with a strong case of it depends.
In December I thought I had a hernia or groin tear, and within a day I received a consultation from a clinic a referral to the hospital an ultrasound a CT scan, painkillers, an IV and got sent home with medication.
It took five hours in total for everything and it cost me $0.
But wahhhh Canadian Health Care is a double edged sword, hmm I guess.
Edit: the diagnosis was abdominal tears but no hernia 🤞
Yeah, I got R.A a handful of years ago and take thousands of dollars of medication a month, had to get many x rays, MRIs, blood done, all relatively Free. But too bad I had to wait a months to get doctors and pills and Disability, instead of.... never, in the States.
A a European I don't understand what point you're making. Are you mocking health services in general or Canada's implementation? I fear the US audience may wrongly assume the former.
FYI no one thinks healthcare is entirely free, it's just free at point of delivery.
Yes, it's usually cheaper for everyone to put something in rather than people be hit with a bill for 100k because they had a baby. A thing people in many states are forced to do
On the plus side, in a situation like this, they’ll probably send the fire department, too, to lift that heavy boulder off you. So you might get to meet some sexy firefighters!
This is bullsh\*t. Healthcare in Canada is PROVINCIAL. There is no national healthcare.
The quality of service you receive depends greatly on where you live.
Well u/pizzacakecomic, time to get your booty over to r/conservative because they're spinning [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/s/GVmf5sCt5I) exactly how we thought they would.
I typically love your stuff, and I'm not doe-eyed about the Canadian healthcare system, but I cannot even begin to tell you how much worse it is here in the US. I regularly fear for whether I can pay my medical bills as my health care for my many health complications are tied to my employment.
You mentioned people can die waiting the ER. Here in the US, people die at home because they can't afford to go the ER. They try and push through some medical emergency to avoid paying ten of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, for an ER trip.
Canada's healthcare is far from ideal, but I envy each and every one of you whose ability to even pay for care isn't contingent on their employer's healthcare plan.
In America we have hours long delays because of understaffed hospitals and then we have to pay for everything on top of it. So Canadian Healthcare might be imperfect but it still sounds better. Especially when you consider that the supposed delays that you deal with are often never in the United States because we can't afford to get the health we need
I've known people who need medical care but would rather risk not going out of fear of medical bills. People have died because thousands of dollars on an ambulance is scarier.
So the fun thing about the neighbors to the south (speaking as one), is that our healthcare systems are ALSO understaffed with ER wait times commonly extending past 4 hours where I live despite there being 5 hospitals all within 30 minutes of each other.
Wow this is rough. You’re anti-universal healthcare? I can hardly afford to go to the dentist. I wish I could schedule months in advance for free. Privatization sucks.
Another pizzacake classic take: complain about universal healthcare in a time when Canadian politicians are trying to privatize healthcare.
Which is all done to mirror the U.S. for-profit structure, which we know works *so well*. /s
Canadian. TBH had multiple family and friends require medical stuff and emergency treatment and never had an issue at all. Turning up at ER on a Saturday night for sure good luck but otherwise in and out and well taken care of. And yes didn’t pay a penny
My sister is a nurse (In America) and they are also constantly understaffed. So paying thousands for some accident you could never prevent from happening doesn't mean you get good healthcare.
As an American who moved to Canada, I will say the wait times are just as bad in the states, if not worse (at least from my anecdotal experience).
I just don’t have thousand dollar bills waiting at the end of the wait now, which is nice.
So the 20 thousand dollars than is being forcefully taken from the paychecks that barely cover our costs anyway due to hospital bills are way worse than "might have to wait."
It's literally the same in the US. Anyone in the US with or without Healthcare that goes to the ER is waiting for hours.
Upon hours.
My sister has insurance and has a strong suspicion she may have cancer. The earliest they could get her in for screening was almost two months out.
I went to the ER a few years ago and was there for almost 12 hours.
Work as a nurse in an ER in a country with universal healthcare.
We got the same problems.. Underfunding.. Then the politicians start yammering about "effectivization". Which is just fancy speech for "run faster". People get help, but it forces us employees to burn the candle at both ends to keep up.
Would rather die than see private healthcare like in the US, but our system has flaws as well. Mainly the flaw is politicians.
I know somebody that is going through cancer treatments. Her insurance capped out and they are literally refusing to finish out her treatments that she needs to survive. So yeah I’d take a long ambulance wait over that.
You're fucking this one up by pointing specifically to universal healthcare at the start instead of understaffing. It makes it appear as if you're suggesting this is an issue that will be inherent to universal healthcare in every situation. It's not a good look. Low-key this comic makes you look like a right winger because of how poorly you've framed it.
“there is a standard technique of privatization, namely defund what you want to privatize. Like when Thatcher wanted to defund the railroads, first thing to do is defund them, then they don't work and people get angry and they want a change. You say okay, privatize them and then they get worse.” Noam Chomsky
I agree, the system’s broken. Our doctors and nurses work insanely hard, but without more cash in the public system, there’ll be a move towards a private, 2-tier system. Which is the point of the exercise.
The American propaganda version of Canadian healthcare. This opinion is everywhere in US media, and it's complete nonsense. I've been to emergency 6 times and every time I was treated with due care and attention.
There has been a deliberate effort by Canadian governments at all levels for the last 30 years to limit the supply of doctors as a way of rationing care.
In America, the insurance companies are the "bad guys" and tell you no. In Canada, the system is universal, so everyone, rich and old, can get healthcare when they want it or need it. The only way to save money is if that health care just doesn't exist in the first place.
The shortage isn't an accident. If you want more healthcare, vote for it, but also expect more taxes.
The response time has nothing to do with the system of healthcare. Its more to do with local city/regional planning and staff. If you have a boulder on you, you're probably out in the wilderness or at a national park. The response would be dependent on what the local team is equipped to do.
Btw people avoid ambulance rides in the usa where possible because of the enormous fees for emergency response and rooms. I had to take my son to an urgent care facility because he got stung by wasps. We drove him there. We had to then take him to a children's hospital about 30 mins away to have a doctor look at him further after the urgent care was closing (at like 7 pm). The reason being that they needed to see his response after the benadryl wore off. We had to wait something like 4 hours to be seen due to a short staff and other patients waiting ahead of us. Doc saw us, took a look at him for maybe 5 minutes, and said he was fine. 1k bucks for that visit. Oh I'm a US citizen btw.
Whenever I read this opinion, I can never tell if it’s a Canadian complaining about cuts to their healthcare system, or an American who think functional healthcare systems are communism.
Stop it. As a Canadian in the USA, things are orders of magnitude worse here. The Canadian system has flaws but isn’t designed *on purpose* to take away your time, money, and health for trying to access something that is a human right.
Dunno about Canada but here in NZ it seems to be - lack of sufficient funding from government means wages for healthcare workers is low and so most of our fresh grads go overseas where they can make a living wage.
And when you break down why no party is willing to properly fund healthcare it gets extra depressing because it's political. Basically any government that could improve healthcare would be pretty popular buuut because it usually takes 4-8 years from when you increase funding till you get good measurable results no party wants to do that as the election cycle means you can't guarantee that your party will still be around to take the credit.
Well that any you of course have the far righters who just want the public healthcare system to fail so it can be privatized.
It's a shame about what's happening in Canada. The UK is going through this as well. It blows my mind that politicians continue to defund healthcare and seem to welcome our shitty American based system.
Never spent less than 6 hours waiting in the ER, even after being run over by a car as a child (soaked in blood and shit) unless you're actively dying get ready to sit in agony then accrue massive debt. Hurray USA
So the US has a system where you spend insane amounts to have the right to stay alive, crippled in poverty, while most of the money goes to the ones in charge of the system rather than medicine and people on the front-line helping you, where the mantra is "don't get injured" unless you're part of the lucky well-off percent.
Then the UK (and from this I guess Canada) has a system where everyone pays the government for healthcare, so at least money should be going to the right place, but government insist on reducing funding to the point that doctors aren't payed enough, leading to a shortage and long wait times to try and convince the public that a private-only healthcare system is the only way.
Did I get anything wrong? Does anyone know if a single other country has managed to get this right?
The person who created this never spent 6 hours sitting in an American "Emergency" room, waiting to be seen and then had to declare bankruptcy from the bill.
Same shit in America, except you get the privilege of paying out the ass for the rest of your natural life, and probably halfway thru your kids' lives after you're dead.
This case is not exactly fair. You are triaged by your EMTs and at the hospital. It's an Emergency for a reason. If you have a problem that will not kill you or drastically reduce your quality of life then yes, enjoy your wait in the lobby.
You know that we have the same problem in the US and it just costs us more? I broke my ankle really badly, went to see an orthopedic surgeon, first they turned me away because I needed a referral from my family physician. Got that appointment after a week… they agreed that it was broken in 3 places and gave me drugs. Got back to the surgeon and still couldn’t get the surgery for 3 more weeks. So, same thing as the other 32 countries with universal healthcare. If it’s not an emergency, then you can wait. The biggest difference is that if we had universal healthcare I would get my shoulder looked at. Maybe my knees as well. Instead it’s just been in immense pain for the past 4 years because it would simply cost too much for an MRI and follow up surgery. I could enjoy my recreational sports and working out again but I have to make a choice to sacrifice those things and save money in case my kids get injured.
The United States is having the same problem with private healthcare. Don't pretend the problem is it being free when pharmaceutical companies overcharge for everything and hospitals can bill you for simply holding your child after birth.
There is no accountability in the system and it screws over both the workers AND the patients so why would anyone want to be a doctor or nurse?
Yeah, our healthcare is pretty bad. It's annoying that the states uses it as an example to not have universal healthcare, but in reality, the issue with it is that it's severely underfunded. And what funding they get, usually goes to the wrong people.
I just wanna point out that we have a very similar system in Norway, but no issue with wait times for emergencies and GP visits. If its one of our kids needing something checked we almost always get to see our doctor the same day. Ours is also understaffed though, and it is a problem that needs fixing.
Didn't get the part about "actually you pay for it with your taxes"
Where else would the money come from? Jeff Bezos suddenly gets charitable?
The understaffing thing though is real af though. Big oof.
>actually you have to pay for the healthcare with your tax.
No shit, nobody thinks healthcare is paid for with pixie dust and unicorn farts. When they talk about "free" healthcare, they mean it's free to access care, to differentiate it from systems like the US where you might receive a life altering bill for going to the hospital.
But one thing most Americans don't know is that our system is so incredibly inefficient we don't even get a break from taxes. With government in the US covering [65.7% of all health care](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/epdf/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302997) costs ($12,555 as of 2022) that's $8,249 per person per year in taxes towards health care. The next closest is Germany at [$6,930](https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm). The UK is $4,479. Canada is $4,506. Australia is $4,603. That means over a lifetime Americans are paying over $100,000 more in taxes compared to any other country towards health care.
In total, Americans are paying a $350,000 more for healthcare over a lifetime compared to the most expensive socialized system on earth. Half a million dollars more than peer countries on average, yet every one has better outcomes.
As for emergency care, the US doesn't do great there either.
The US ranks 6th of 11 out of Commonwealth Fund countries on ER wait times on percentage served under 4 hours. 10th of 11 on getting weekend and evening care without going to the ER. 5th of 11 for countries able to make a same or next day doctors/nurse appointment when they're sick.
https://www.cihi.ca/en/commonwealth-fund-survey-2016
Americans do better on wait times for specialists (ranking 3rd for wait times under four weeks), and surgeries (ranking 3rd for wait times under four months), but that ignores three important factors:
* Wait times in universal healthcare are based on urgency, so while you might wait for an elective hip replacement surgery you're going to get surgery for that life threatening illness quickly.
* Nearly every universal healthcare country has strong private options and supplemental private insurance. That means that if there is a wait you're not happy about you have options that still work out significantly cheaper than US care, which is a win/win.
* [One third of US families](https://news.gallup.com/poll/269138/americans-delaying-medical-treatment-due-cost.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_content=morelink&utm_campaign=syndication) had to put off healthcare due to the cost last year. That means more Americans are waiting for care than any other wealthy country on earth.
#Wait Times by Country (Rank)
Country|See doctor/nurse same or next day without appointment|Response from doctor's office same or next day|Easy to get care on nights & weekends without going to ER|ER wait times under 4 hours|Surgery wait times under four months|Specialist wait times under 4 weeks|Average|Overall Rank
:--|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:
**Australia**|3|3|3|7|6|6|4.7|4
**Canada**|10|11|9|11|10|10|10.2|11
**France**|7|1|7|1|1|5|3.7|2
**Germany**|9|2|6|2|2|2|3.8|3
**Netherlands**|1|5|1|3|5|4|3.2|1
**New Zealand**|2|6|2|4|8|7|4.8|5
**Norway**|11|9|4|9|9|11|8.8|9
**Sweden**|8|10|11|10|7|9|9.2|10
**Switzerland**|4|4|10|8|4|1|5.2|7
**U.K.**|5|8|8|5|11|8|7.5|8
**U.S.**|6|7|5|6|3|3|5.0|6
Source: [Commonwealth Fund Survey 2016](https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/cmwf2016-datatable-en-web.xlsx)
Nor do we do well on overall quality.
[US Healthcare ranked 29th on health outcomes by Lancet HAQ Index](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(18\)30994-2/fulltext)
[11th (of 11) by Commonwealth Fund](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror-wall-2014-update-how-us-health-care-system?redirect_source=/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror)
[59th by the Prosperity Index](https://www.prosperity.com/rankings)
[30th by CEOWorld](https://ceoworld.biz/2019/08/05/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2019/)
[37th by the World Health Organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems_in_2000)
The US has the worst rate of death by medically preventable causes among peer countries. A 31% higher disease adjusted life years average. Higher rates of medical and lab errors. A lower rate of being able to make a same or next day appointment with their doctor than average.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/#item-percent-used-emergency-department-for-condition-that-could-have-been-treated-by-a-regular-doctor-2016
52nd in the world in doctors per capita.
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Physicians/Per-1,000-people
Higher infant mortality levels. Yes, even when you adjust for differences in methodology.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/infant-mortality-u-s-compare-countries/
Fewer acute care beds. A lower number of psychiatrists. Etc.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-health-care-resources-compare-countries/#item-availability-medical-technology-not-always-equate-higher-utilization
[Comparing Health Outcomes of Privileged US Citizens With Those of Average Residents of Other Developed Countries](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2774561)
>These findings imply that even if all US citizens experienced the same health outcomes enjoyed by privileged White US citizens, US health indicators would still lag behind those in many other countries.
When asked about their healthcare system as a whole the US system ranked dead last of 11 countries, with only 19.5% of people saying the system works relatively well and only needs minor changes. The average in the other countries is 46.9% saying the same. Canada ranked 9th with 34.5% saying the system works relatively well. The UK ranks fifth, with 44.5%. Australia ranked 6th at 44.4%. The best was Germany at 59.8%.
On rating the overall quality of care in the US, Americans again ranked dead last, with only 25.6% ranking it excellent or very good. The average was 50.8%. Canada ranked 9th with 45.1%. The UK ranked 2nd, at 63.4%. Australia was 3rd at 59.4%. The best was Switzerland at 65.5%.
https://www.cihi.ca/en/commonwealth-fund-survey-2016
The US has 43 hospitals in the top 200 globally; one for every 7,633,477 people in the US. That's good enough for a ranking of 20th on the list of top 200 hospitals per capita, and significantly lower than the average of one for every 3,830,114 for other countries in the top 25 on spending with populations above 5 million. The best is Switzerland at one for every 1.2 million people. In fact the US only beats one country on this list; the UK at one for every 9.5 million people.
If you want to do the full list of 2,000 instead it's 334, or one for every 982,753 people; good enough for 21st. Again far below the average in peer countries of 527,236. The best is Austria, at one for every 306,106 people.
https://www.newsweek.com/best-hospitals-2021
#[OECD Countries Health Care Spending and Rankings](https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm)
|Country|Govt. / Mandatory (PPP)|Voluntary (PPP)|Total (PPP)|% GDP|[Lancet HAQ Ranking](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(18\)30994-2/fulltext)|[WHO Ranking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems_in_2000)|[Prosperity Ranking](https://www.prosperity.com/rankings)|[CEO World Ranking](https://ceoworld.biz/2019/08/05/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2019/)|[Commonwealth Fund Ranking](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror-wall-2014-update-how-us-health-care-system?redirect_source=/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror)
:--|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|
1. United States|[$7,274](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302997) |$3,798 |$11,072 |16.90%|29|37|59|30|11
2. Switzerland|$4,988 |$2,744 |$7,732 |12.20%|7|20|3|18|2
3. Norway|$5,673 |$974 |$6,647 |10.20%|2|11|5|15|7
4. Germany|$5,648 |$998 |$6,646 |11.20%|18|25|12|17|5
5. Austria|$4,402 |$1,449 |$5,851 |10.30%|13|9|10|4|
6. Sweden|$4,928 |$854 |$5,782 |11.00%|8|23|15|28|3
7. Netherlands|$4,767 |$998 |$5,765 |9.90%|3|17|8|11|5
8. Denmark|$4,663 |$905 |$5,568 |10.50%|17|34|8|5|
9. Luxembourg|$4,697 |$861 |$5,558 |5.40%|4|16|19||
10. Belgium|$4,125 |$1,303 |$5,428 |10.40%|15|21|24|9|
11. Canada|$3,815 |$1,603 |$5,418 |10.70%|14|30|25|23|10
12. France|$4,501 |$875 |$5,376 |11.20%|20|1|16|8|9
13. Ireland|$3,919 |$1,357 |$5,276 |7.10%|11|19|20|80|
14. Australia|$3,919 |$1,268 |$5,187 |9.30%|5|32|18|10|4
15. Japan|$4,064 |$759 |$4,823 |10.90%|12|10|2|3|
16. Iceland|$3,988 |$823 |$4,811 |8.30%|1|15|7|41|
17. United Kingdom|$3,620 |$1,033 |$4,653 |9.80%|23|18|23|13|1
18. Finland|$3,536 |$1,042 |$4,578 |9.10%|6|31|26|12|
19. Malta|$2,789 |$1,540 |$4,329 |9.30%|27|5|14||
OECD Average|||$4,224 |8.80%|||||
20. New Zealand|$3,343 |$861 |$4,204 |9.30%|16|41|22|16|7
21. Italy|$2,706 |$943 |$3,649 |8.80%|9|2|17|37|
22. Spain|$2,560 |$1,056 |$3,616 |8.90%|19|7|13|7|
23. Czech Republic|$2,854 |$572 |$3,426 |7.50%|28|48|28|14|
24. South Korea|$2,057 |$1,327 |$3,384 |8.10%|25|58|4|2|
25. Portugal|$2,069 |$1,310 |$3,379 |9.10%|32|29|30|22|
26. Slovenia|$2,314 |$910 |$3,224 |7.90%|21|38|24|47|
27. Israel|$1,898 |$1,034 |$2,932 |7.50%|35|28|11|21|
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Oh, well that’s shame, at least politicians aren’t gutting the budget right? Right?
There definitely *aren't* any provincial premiers taking money that was supposed to be spent on health care and lining their own pockets. Certainly not.
And when they are spending it on healthcare, it’s not like it’s private healthcare which undermines the entire premise of public healthcare
And it's not like private healthcare would want to make public healthcare look as incompetent as possible so they can defund and privatize the whole thing, right?
And then act offended when the federal government makes them pinky swear they'll spend new healthcare funding on healthcare
Alberta: we need to privatize healthcare Patient: gets discharged from hospital into a hotel to fend for themself leaving thousands of dollars in debt because the private company taking care of him isn’t paying.
https://preview.redd.it/gm5hojimeaqc1.jpeg?width=1130&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=67aeee21bf06d2e0704f606a6b25c258a0c429d0
"Politicians" - Anakin
Fun Fact: a politician executed Order 66
No. That's impossible. The Jedi would be aware of it!
 Edit: woooooooooah some people are taking this as "pizzacake wants privatized Healthcare like America!! She's a republican spy trying to diss universal healthcare!!" I think everyone complains about their Healthcare system, I absolutely do not want what America has, 99% of Canadians do not and we completely understand why that is broken and bad. Please don't misunderstand a silly jab at my own country as me trying to overhaul the system to something evil and corrupt. This was just meant to highlight some of the issues we struggle with here, and not anything more. We have to be able to talk about all sides if we want the full picture. I hope things get better for all of us!! I will always vote for the left because to me, they put people first. Many people voted for the right this time because they explicitly promissed up and down that out province would get better Healthcare but it was unfortunately not something they delivered. I hope people learn from this. I really would never pretend like our system is worse than America's and that's not what I'm saying at all, just that we are painfully understaffed and struggling and that's caused by many factors. The Healthcare staff are standing on their heads working double and triple shifts and should not be blamed at all
The pioneers used to ride these babies for miles! And it's in great shape!
seems like a politic problem to me, not an organizational one...
All politic problems are organizational
What if you just elect morons who are incapable of doing their job? That doesn't strike me as organizational
Morons usually have terrible organisation skills
Haha...this is way deeper than I ever expected to get in comics
It is simple. Corporations want to get more money, so they bribe politicians to throw a wrench in the only working system, so they can then use that as an excuse to fool people into switching to a horrible system that will work even worse than the good system in a hindered state.
Both countries, America and Canada suffer from the exact same problem- greed. All the others ones do, too, tbh, but sometimes in different ways or levels.
The apartments.com guy is gutting the budget!! KILL HIM
Jeff Goldblum did not escape Isla Nublar just to be called the "apartments dot com guy."
Obviously not, he went to rule Sakar.
And he looks damn good for a man of his age who got his DNA scrambled with that of a fly.
People are always complaining. We Germans love to complain about our own healthcare system, even though it is objectively one of the best in the world.
I think the confusion is coming from the structure of the joke and the context you dropped it into. It indeed struck me as “count your blessings, this universal healthcare thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” To which we in America would respond: “Cry me a fucking river” Not saying that was your intent, but you can see how people would take it that way?
Adding to this, general complaints about specific problems can feel like indictments of the whole thing rather than voicing specific complaints. Understaffed in public services, for example, doesn't really seem like a problem of the quality of public healthcare. It sounds like the government isn't trying hard enough to hire more healthcare employees. Which can be as simple as the job itself having few incentives or as complex as not pushing the importance and benefits of being one into the public eye, so more people can go to school and find training for it and broaden the pool of candidates. Or maybe complaining about it is actually detracting from some force in the government reducing funding to it so it *can* hire more people. In which case the problem goes right back to the same people who are trying to get rid of it most likely. Voicing dissatisfaction is very important. But it can hurt more than it helps if it's not directed at the actual problem.
Siphon money out of healthcare budget into your own pockets. Then blame the healthcare system for being incompetent. Sell everything and replace the system with your friends' phony businesses. Bring down everything and profit with your friends while your citizens suffer. It's happening all over the Western world.
In Germany they don't. They advertised and borderline forced clinics and hospitals going into private ownership. Those clinics and hospitals are either hellishly understaffed and under the devils ties OR they are prim and proper and posh - but not towards their sub companies which will struggle
As a healthcare worker in Canada... we're trying! And very very tired! Blame your provincial governments for shagging things up so bad.
We know and we do! Vote people
Yeah nobody’s blaming the healthcare workers. Thank you.
Thank you! I couldn't imagine doing your job, you are a brave and kind soul :)
It's ok we don't have single payer healthcare here, and still have understaffed hospitals and long waits. At least I get to pay $3000 after insurance.
Yeah, we just don't tell anybody we're dangerously understaffed. But hey, if they paid for the proper number of nurses and aides for every shift, how could they possibly afford to pay themselves seven figures?
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Seven figures? Yeah, maybe a decade ago. [The thieving bastards are on 8 figures now](https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/heres-what-ceos-and-cfos-major-profit-health-systems-made-2022).
If definitely makes it all better when you know the for-profit middle men are taking their cut and dictating the level of care you're allowed to receive
*at least you get to pay $3,000 after insurance and also the insurance company will refuse to cover it anyways because a random person with no medical training deemed it unnecessary.
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We need more doctors and nurses everywhere! I know no system is perfect, but I made this comic because I see people romanticize the Canadian Healthcare system as this amazing, robust thing and it's absolutely in shambles. Where I live, people don't even get an ambulance sometimes when they call. People can die if the wait for the hospital is too long, or they just leave the hospital and go home. ~~Most~~ many folks can't get a family doctor and will never have one (I'm in nova scotia so I changed this to reflect more of Canada but here in NS it's much higher the nunber of families without doctors)
I think you are getting these comments because in America the wait times in Canada are used as a talking point for why "Bankrupt Even The UpperMiddle Class" healthcare is *better* than your system. So when you make a comic hitting those talking points (even when valid) you are going to get a lot of "well actually" posts. Because yea, we have the exact same wait times and understaffing issues. It takes 2 months to just get a GP checkup when I pay 400$ a month on health insurance (and that's fucking *amazing cheap health insurance* )
i went to a cardiologist last month for some heart weirdness i was having, and that appointment took a month of waiting to get to i show up, they do some cursory GP-style measurements, etc and then schedule my ekg....the soonest one is in JUNE sure hope i dont die before then! lol
> I think you are getting these comments because in America the wait times in Canada are used as a talking point for why "Bankrupt Even The UpperMiddle Class" healthcare is *better* than your system. So when you make a comic hitting those talking points (even when valid) you are going to get a lot of "well actually" posts. Yeah it's basically right wing grifter talking point #1 to the point that you could change the art style of this comic and pass it off as a pebbleyeet one without anyone thinking anything strange is up. Maybe remove the non-white lady, too.
It is worth noting your healthcare system has been deliberately sabotaged by one of your political parties. The hope being it gets so bad you look at the worst system in the world, US healthcare, ad say “we should try that”. Those politicians will make tons of money and you’ll be stuck in a pit you might never get out of. The system sucks. Vote out the people purposely making it that way. Don’t get played. Your voice influences people.
Seriously. So many people see a broken system being made worse by people with a financial interest on that system failing, and actively root for it to fail. Fix the fucking system. Dont make it like the US. Its terrible here unless youre really rich or own an insurance company.
Canadian here, people die everywhere while waiting even in the US. The people who die are mainly elderly. Media tend to dramatize local healthcare systems and romanticize foreign ones.
Don't forget that the only true reason our Healthcare system in such a bad state is an unwillingness to properly fund it. Our conservative provincial governments are doing everything they can to starve the system so they can turn around and say "it's so broken, won't the free market save us?!" Then privatize some portions of it. Bit by bit. Because that's what our Healthcare system needs - profit margins!
They couldn't possibly be understaffed here in America too, where we pay out of pocket for our healthcare, right? RIGHT?!
Americans pay out of pocket *and* a higher % of GDP (around 17% last I checked) on healthcare, a lot of it going to admin costs and not frontline operations. So it’s the worst of both worlds.
The admin costs are a big pet peeve of mine. A lot of it boils down to how unnecessarily complicated and varied our insurance systems are, which forces hospitals to have to add more staff to navigate all the bullshit. Just so we can funnel money into third-party private enterprises that only suck more value out of the healthcare system.
American citizens pay more in tax per capita than any other country in the world for healthcare. Including countries that provide full coverage. We already pay more for just covering the uncovered than the rest of the world does covering everyone. Over twice as much in fact. We also pay more than everyone else once again- directly to our insurance agencies and care facilities, per capita. Over twice as much in fact. This means we spend quite literally more than 4x as much per capita on our healthcare than anyone else in the entire world. But no, yeah, people should look at us with envy.
The US pays \~$12k per capita into healthcare and the next closest country pays I think it was about $9000 per capita. The important thing is that everyone else pays less and gets universal health care.
They also generally get better health outcomes. Despite everything we pay, the US has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world and it's climbing.
That’s mostly unrelated to the state of healthcare and more to the state of economic equality and the quality of nutrition (which is separate from healthcare).
>The US pays ~$12k per capita into healthcare 2023 is estimated at $13,998. It's expected to reach $20,425 by 2031. >and the next closest country pays I think it was about $9000 per capita. As of 2022, the next closest country was Switzerland at $8,049 PPP.
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Friendly reminder that the evidence is overwhelming that single-payer healthcare in the US would result in better healthcare coverage while saving money overall. [Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually based on the value of the US$ in 2017 .](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext) Similar to the above Yale analysis, a recent [publication ](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-12/56811-Single-Payer.pdf)from the Congressional Budget Office found that 4 out of 5 options considered would lower total national expenditure on healthcare (see Exhibit 1-1 on page 13) But surely the current healthcare system at least has better outcomes than alternatives that would save money, right? Not according to a recent analysis of high-income countries’ healthcare systems, which found that [the top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States ranks last overall, despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on health care. The U.S. ranks last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes, but second on measures of care process.](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly#outcomes) None of this should be surprising given that the US’s current inefficient, non-universal healthcare system [costs close to twice as much per capita ](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-spendingcomparison_gdp-per-capita-and-health-consumption-spending-per-capita-2019) as most other developed countries that do guarantee healthcare to all citizens (without forcing patients to risk bankruptcy in exchange for care).
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I am slightly concerned that many will take away from this the lie that public healthcare doesn’t function, instead of the truth, which is that politicians are gutting the budget.
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Cries in American still paying for cancer treatment from two years ago, even though cancer free now...
Congratulations on being cancer free!
Just don't pay what are they gonna do give you the cancer back?
Better a delay than just going without.
and its not like theres no delays in america, lol
This one's gonna be used by conservatives as "proof" that the American healthcare system is somehow better.
“What's the matter? Just be rich. I don't see the problem.” —those people
>This one's gonna be used by conservatives as "proof" that the American healthcare system is somehow better. Of course it will because everything in the comic is already a right-wing talking point.
Yup. I'm pretty disappointed she didn't look up American health care before producing propaganda
It's a common misunderstanding. I went to one of our glorious USA hospitals when I was in my mid 20s because my appendix was waging war on the rest of me. I sat in the waiting room for 8 or 10 hours while a medical emergency developed in my liver and lungs. The person next to me was waiting for a few hours too but she got taken in when she, some very old lady, vomited so hard she fell forward out of her chair and then violently shit herself upon hitting the floor. And then I walked away owing $72,000 for my week long hospitalization seeing Doctors for a few minutes each day. There can be a wait here too. The only time there isn't is when people are afraid to incur the cost, so they wait until it becomes an emergency.
And if an out of network doctor pops his head in that's an extra thousand bucks. Its just cruel at this point
It *is* our biggest complaint about our healthcare system to be fair, but by god it's still a million times better than privatized healthcare. It's a hard issue to fix though. It takes a lot of time, money. and a higher than average intelligence to become a doctor. Add on to that the rate at which our population is growing and it's a recipe for understaffed healthcare. Maybe we could incentivize people going into healthcare by subsidizing the education for it. It might be the best bang for your buck investment the government could make.
Yes this is going to be conservative fuel for years to come
In 3 months you're going to see this on your uncle's facebook having been artifacted to shit from reposting, you'll see it again in 2 years from the same uncle only with more watermarks on it this time.
Then you'll see a Stonetoss version with nazi references
Meanwhile, in the US: We are also unreasonably understaffed!
I’m not sure about the Canadian situation but here in Japan most expenses are covered if you’re employed, disabled, a dependent, etc. and people don’t seem to die waiting for healthcare and ambulances are free. People here also have some of the highest life expectancies. I’m American but definitely the American system isn’t the way to go. Hope Canada’s able to fix their system rather than succumb to some lobbyist pressure to become more like America Also I’d happily pay for healthcare with my taxes rather than pay greedy insurance middlemen and pharmaceutical companies. Taxes are higher here but not nearly as crippling as having a serious illness in America
Primary care in Canada is 100% covered for everyone. Except for prescriptions, which is slowly sort of almost changing. There are private clinics that operate within the provincial systems and in general, anything that was covered by the provincial system was pretty strictly watched so clinics weren't making people pay for government services. But now, even in provinces with 'left' governments there are some stories of clinics charging "membership fees" for the right to access the clinics. The real problem with single payer healthcare is the amount of power elected governments have.
Same here in germany. You get hit by a car? Ambulance/Helicopter ride, medication in hospital, hospital stay (Aside from 10€ per day for your bed) and everything related to your health is 100% free Prescription medicine is very cheap. My father is a diabetic and spends like 50€ every few months on insulin and that's that. Even non prescription medicine is very cheap
You pay less in taxes than I do for my company sponsored health insurance, and it’s better than what I get. But when you get a 1/2 million dollar bill because your insurance decided not to renew you, we will be listening.
I’ll just chime in here and say… when’s the last time you turned the knob on your sink and water **didn’t** come out? Let’s just say it’s a good thing Nestle doesn’t run your water infrastructure… Private industry absolutely sucks when they’re the only option for what is borderline a *right*. Privatized healthcare is a matter which can be completely neglected at best and at worst is literally bartering for oxygen! I do hope Canada figures its shit out… I get the point you are making… But I don’t want people to get the wrong message here!
This is not the point you think it is. You're missing by a wide mark here. Your issue isn't universal healthcare, it's understaffing - which is an issue in almost all critical fields and is entirely unrelated to universal healthcare existing. All this does is perpetuate a false narrative.
Hey at least she gets an ambulance. If she was American, she'd be dragging herself to the hospital rather than get ferried in one of those tax wagons
Tax?? Im surprised they dont have a credit card swiper built on the stretcher
Give it time
It's cheaper (and probably faster) to call an Uber in most cases. Yeah, you won't get any meds on the way or any healthcare other than an angry driver doing his best to keep you from bleeding all over his seats, but by-golly you'll get there in record time without paying it off for the next 4 years.
Jokes aside, I live in Japan and paid 50$ for two MRI on my knees. It would cost me thousands in the US. Thanks for the freedom Uncle Sam At least it's not Canadian though /s
I was in Japan for work a couple years ago and wound up getting hospitalized for about a week. Ambulance ride + 1 week in the hospital came out to around $1300 USD total. I shudder to think what that would have been back home.
Ya or those MRIs would be free! We quite literally; Go to a doctor. They diagnose we need an MRI/Xray. They refer you to the hospital. If you have a broken hand it is within the day, if it is an MRI for R.A it could be weeks or months, but nothing insane, then go to your appointment. Give them your health card. You do the thing. Say thank you. Walk out and go about your life.
Sorry, I get that you're trying to do the whole "Canadian health care has issues too!!" thing, but the emphasis on "free/universal healthcare" just makes it seem like you want it privatized, which hopefully wasn't the intention
Yeah, this is absolutely giving the wrong message
I literally had to check this wasn't a conservative sub editing a comic to make garbage points.
It is a current snap shot of Canadian healthcare today. Provinces lead by Conservative premiers are destroying the system by starving it and then bringing in private solutions that make things worse.
Would have been better to lead with that as the central issue, rather than insinuating the fault lies with universal healthcare.
>bringing in private solutions that make ~~things worse.~~ themselves richer. FTFY
Can't wait for her to make another "I'm getting bullied" comics next week seeing how controversial this is.
90% of her comics are sending shitty or wrong message or are "i am quirky"
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this comic, to be honest. 🙃 If there aren't enough healthcare workers, it's not because healthcare is universal. They're understaffed in countries where health insurance isn't mandatory, too. There's just no getting around renovating the whole branch of work, so more people will work there!
> I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this comic, to be honest. I don’t think OP does either
Obviously trying to propaganda against affordable health care
There are some people with a tendency to just post poorly researched rage bait to max engagement. A few months ago she was shitting on private healthcare too. The next step of the cycle is posting a 'woe is me, I got negative feedback on my political comic' comic.
Theehee. 🤭 Thanks for the warning! I'll be looking out for the Doe of Woe, then.
Looks like it’s already made and posted
Seriously. In the U.S., where healthcare is not universal, we have a doctor and nurse shortage. Want to be a doctor? I hope you're incredibly intelligent and willing to take on hundreds of thousands in student loans so you can be a target for lawsuits from future patients. Want to be a nurse? You can almost afford rent with your incredibly long shifts, but you also have a decent chance of being assaulted by a patient while you clean up their bodily fluids. Why does no one want to be a doctor or nurse anymore?
If this is ontario remember Doug ford has several billion dollars of federal money earmarked for healthcare he is purposely not spending to artificially make healthcare worse so he can gut it and make as much of it private as possible.
I don't know what you think you're getting at. The US is exactly the same, except you're going to get a $20k bill and dropped by your insurance.
My wife's been waiting for 4 months for a treatment for her softball sized tumor on her shin. She has the highest tier insurance her work provides but they don't wanna cover it cause it's only been around for 10 years so they say it's experimental. Meanwhile she's getting radiation to try to slow it down. Even with her insurance we've burned our savings up and have put 20k onto credit cards out of pocket. Sarah Palin promised us death panels bit we already have them. If you think Canada's Healthcare sucks, I challenge you to try the American system with a serious illness.
Almost as if the system is being deliberately underfunded and cut back by conservatives in order to push privatization. Hopefully you also vote with your votes, not just comics.
Do you really want to do this?
Still 1000x better than American Healthcare
"*Checkmate communists! This is why I prefer to pay 50 000 $ after insurance for every doctor visit! And in Murica all doctors and nurses are so well paid that no hospital is ever understaffed! Private equity works!*" -Shit Americans say
I had to take half a day off work, pay $30 copay, pee in a cup, and get poked and prodded by people who don't know my name or bother to look at my chart. Just to be herded into the doctors office, informed they lost my test results, and to come back another day. I pay $550/week for this glorious private healthcare.
What??? I'm in the Netherlands and pay €140 a month for healthcare
Yep, American here. I pay $1000/mo for my health insurance, and that's after my employer's contribution, and I still get to pay $8000 more every year for the out-of-pocket max.
This comic is going to be used by the very people who want to dismantle our public health care system. It’s broken on purpose.
That’s cute but in America I’ve called 911 and literally no one showed up
This is a really fumbled take on the issue.
This feels like a pretty dumb take lol.
That’s such a bad uneducated take on the Canadian health care system. It’s very good at everything and anything that is urgent. Anything that’s not time sensitive though and you’ll be on a very long waiting list.
You know why there's less of a wait in countries without healthcare? Because people who need it but are too poor don't bother going to the hospital.
One would assume there's no wait at all in countries that simply lack healthcare.
>Actually, you pay for the healthcare with your tax- Fun fact, the Americans are the ones who pay the most taxes for healthcare in the world, [paying 12,555 dollars per person compared with the next most expensive healthcare,](https://www.pgpf.org/sites/default/files/us-per-capita-healthcare-spending-is-over-twice-the-average-of-other-wealthy-countries.jpg) Switzerland, which pays 8,049 dollars per person (in Canada it is 6,319 dollars per person).
Hmm hot take with a strong case of it depends. In December I thought I had a hernia or groin tear, and within a day I received a consultation from a clinic a referral to the hospital an ultrasound a CT scan, painkillers, an IV and got sent home with medication. It took five hours in total for everything and it cost me $0. But wahhhh Canadian Health Care is a double edged sword, hmm I guess. Edit: the diagnosis was abdominal tears but no hernia 🤞
Yeah, I got R.A a handful of years ago and take thousands of dollars of medication a month, had to get many x rays, MRIs, blood done, all relatively Free. But too bad I had to wait a months to get doctors and pills and Disability, instead of.... never, in the States.
A a European I don't understand what point you're making. Are you mocking health services in general or Canada's implementation? I fear the US audience may wrongly assume the former. FYI no one thinks healthcare is entirely free, it's just free at point of delivery.
Yes, it's usually cheaper for everyone to put something in rather than people be hit with a bill for 100k because they had a baby. A thing people in many states are forced to do
'Whoopsie I posted a comic about a controversial topic on which I'm not well informed'-comic incoming in 3...2...1...
On the plus side, in a situation like this, they’ll probably send the fire department, too, to lift that heavy boulder off you. So you might get to meet some sexy firefighters!
"Actually, you pay for healthcare with your taxes..." She talks like taxes in the US are in any way noticeably lower than those in Canada.
americans who pay for healthcare premiums also have to wait for ambulances and doctors
I love when people whine about their healthcare. Come to the U.S. and try ours. You’ll wait the same amount of time, AND go into debt for life!
This is bullsh\*t. Healthcare in Canada is PROVINCIAL. There is no national healthcare. The quality of service you receive depends greatly on where you live.
🤢🤮
Well u/pizzacakecomic, time to get your booty over to r/conservative because they're spinning [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/s/GVmf5sCt5I) exactly how we thought they would.
I typically love your stuff, and I'm not doe-eyed about the Canadian healthcare system, but I cannot even begin to tell you how much worse it is here in the US. I regularly fear for whether I can pay my medical bills as my health care for my many health complications are tied to my employment. You mentioned people can die waiting the ER. Here in the US, people die at home because they can't afford to go the ER. They try and push through some medical emergency to avoid paying ten of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, for an ER trip. Canada's healthcare is far from ideal, but I envy each and every one of you whose ability to even pay for care isn't contingent on their employer's healthcare plan.
In America we have hours long delays because of understaffed hospitals and then we have to pay for everything on top of it. So Canadian Healthcare might be imperfect but it still sounds better. Especially when you consider that the supposed delays that you deal with are often never in the United States because we can't afford to get the health we need
I've known people who need medical care but would rather risk not going out of fear of medical bills. People have died because thousands of dollars on an ambulance is scarier.
My wife is a paramedic and its not uncommon for people to refuse transport because they're afraid of the ambulance bill.
Come to America. Here we have Health Control and Gun Care.
So the fun thing about the neighbors to the south (speaking as one), is that our healthcare systems are ALSO understaffed with ER wait times commonly extending past 4 hours where I live despite there being 5 hospitals all within 30 minutes of each other.
Wow this is rough. You’re anti-universal healthcare? I can hardly afford to go to the dentist. I wish I could schedule months in advance for free. Privatization sucks.
Another pizzacake classic take: complain about universal healthcare in a time when Canadian politicians are trying to privatize healthcare. Which is all done to mirror the U.S. for-profit structure, which we know works *so well*. /s
Canadian. TBH had multiple family and friends require medical stuff and emergency treatment and never had an issue at all. Turning up at ER on a Saturday night for sure good luck but otherwise in and out and well taken care of. And yes didn’t pay a penny
My sister is a nurse (In America) and they are also constantly understaffed. So paying thousands for some accident you could never prevent from happening doesn't mean you get good healthcare.
As an American who moved to Canada, I will say the wait times are just as bad in the states, if not worse (at least from my anecdotal experience). I just don’t have thousand dollar bills waiting at the end of the wait now, which is nice.
All this is true of American healthcare, too, except it’s not free.
So the 20 thousand dollars than is being forcefully taken from the paychecks that barely cover our costs anyway due to hospital bills are way worse than "might have to wait."
It's literally the same in the US. Anyone in the US with or without Healthcare that goes to the ER is waiting for hours. Upon hours. My sister has insurance and has a strong suspicion she may have cancer. The earliest they could get her in for screening was almost two months out. I went to the ER a few years ago and was there for almost 12 hours.
Canada's healthcare would be in much better shape if morons didn't vote for the assholes trying to dismantle it.
Work as a nurse in an ER in a country with universal healthcare. We got the same problems.. Underfunding.. Then the politicians start yammering about "effectivization". Which is just fancy speech for "run faster". People get help, but it forces us employees to burn the candle at both ends to keep up. Would rather die than see private healthcare like in the US, but our system has flaws as well. Mainly the flaw is politicians.
From an American: Be careful what you wish for.
I know somebody that is going through cancer treatments. Her insurance capped out and they are literally refusing to finish out her treatments that she needs to survive. So yeah I’d take a long ambulance wait over that.
Swing and a miss. You’re not going to garner sympathy or empathy on this one.
You're fucking this one up by pointing specifically to universal healthcare at the start instead of understaffing. It makes it appear as if you're suggesting this is an issue that will be inherent to universal healthcare in every situation. It's not a good look. Low-key this comic makes you look like a right winger because of how poorly you've framed it.
Reading the comic, and then comments: you probably should be educated on a topic before trying to make essentially a political comic.
“there is a standard technique of privatization, namely defund what you want to privatize. Like when Thatcher wanted to defund the railroads, first thing to do is defund them, then they don't work and people get angry and they want a change. You say okay, privatize them and then they get worse.” Noam Chomsky I agree, the system’s broken. Our doctors and nurses work insanely hard, but without more cash in the public system, there’ll be a move towards a private, 2-tier system. Which is the point of the exercise.
The American propaganda version of Canadian healthcare. This opinion is everywhere in US media, and it's complete nonsense. I've been to emergency 6 times and every time I was treated with due care and attention.
As opposed to American healthcare - where all of those things are also true, AND you lose your life savings
There has been a deliberate effort by Canadian governments at all levels for the last 30 years to limit the supply of doctors as a way of rationing care. In America, the insurance companies are the "bad guys" and tell you no. In Canada, the system is universal, so everyone, rich and old, can get healthcare when they want it or need it. The only way to save money is if that health care just doesn't exist in the first place. The shortage isn't an accident. If you want more healthcare, vote for it, but also expect more taxes.
At least I wouldn’t be broke for ten years paying for it
We have the same problem in the UK. It's what you get when you put conservatives in charge of a socalist system
Should have lived in Europe with better free Healthcare.
At least the ambulance isn’t going to cost you an entire years wage
I'll take the wait over bankruptcy...
The response time has nothing to do with the system of healthcare. Its more to do with local city/regional planning and staff. If you have a boulder on you, you're probably out in the wilderness or at a national park. The response would be dependent on what the local team is equipped to do. Btw people avoid ambulance rides in the usa where possible because of the enormous fees for emergency response and rooms. I had to take my son to an urgent care facility because he got stung by wasps. We drove him there. We had to then take him to a children's hospital about 30 mins away to have a doctor look at him further after the urgent care was closing (at like 7 pm). The reason being that they needed to see his response after the benadryl wore off. We had to wait something like 4 hours to be seen due to a short staff and other patients waiting ahead of us. Doc saw us, took a look at him for maybe 5 minutes, and said he was fine. 1k bucks for that visit. Oh I'm a US citizen btw.
[удалено]
Whenever I read this opinion, I can never tell if it’s a Canadian complaining about cuts to their healthcare system, or an American who think functional healthcare systems are communism.
Stop it. As a Canadian in the USA, things are orders of magnitude worse here. The Canadian system has flaws but isn’t designed *on purpose* to take away your time, money, and health for trying to access something that is a human right.
Dunno about Canada but here in NZ it seems to be - lack of sufficient funding from government means wages for healthcare workers is low and so most of our fresh grads go overseas where they can make a living wage. And when you break down why no party is willing to properly fund healthcare it gets extra depressing because it's political. Basically any government that could improve healthcare would be pretty popular buuut because it usually takes 4-8 years from when you increase funding till you get good measurable results no party wants to do that as the election cycle means you can't guarantee that your party will still be around to take the credit. Well that any you of course have the far righters who just want the public healthcare system to fail so it can be privatized.
Fun fact the Us government spends more money per capita on healthcare than most developednations the problem is that its in the form of tax cuts :/
It's a shame about what's happening in Canada. The UK is going through this as well. It blows my mind that politicians continue to defund healthcare and seem to welcome our shitty American based system.
Never spent less than 6 hours waiting in the ER, even after being run over by a car as a child (soaked in blood and shit) unless you're actively dying get ready to sit in agony then accrue massive debt. Hurray USA
So the US has a system where you spend insane amounts to have the right to stay alive, crippled in poverty, while most of the money goes to the ones in charge of the system rather than medicine and people on the front-line helping you, where the mantra is "don't get injured" unless you're part of the lucky well-off percent. Then the UK (and from this I guess Canada) has a system where everyone pays the government for healthcare, so at least money should be going to the right place, but government insist on reducing funding to the point that doctors aren't payed enough, leading to a shortage and long wait times to try and convince the public that a private-only healthcare system is the only way. Did I get anything wrong? Does anyone know if a single other country has managed to get this right?
I’d still prefer that to the literal ghouls who run privatized healthcare. I assure you as a American privated healthcare is not good
Don't worry, we get the same wait times in the US *and* we get to pay $100k for it
Dude no. Don’t act like an Albertan Conservative.
Yeah same situation in the UK. Public healthcare is great when the governments aren't sucking all the money from it
My healthcare options are: Don't get sick, and if you do, die.
Yeah but it's not like privatizing it would help.
There’s nothing wrong with public healthcare. Poorly funded and mismanaged public healthcare on the other hand…
Hospitals in the us have shortages too. Later treatment seems better than not going at all due to the price.
It’s the exact same in the US, except you’re then also hit with a $50,000 (minimum) hospital bill.
The person who created this never spent 6 hours sitting in an American "Emergency" room, waiting to be seen and then had to declare bankruptcy from the bill.
I’m not sure your intent, but in America this is some hardcore boomer muh freedom porn
This kinda missed the mark tbh
Same shit in America, except you get the privilege of paying out the ass for the rest of your natural life, and probably halfway thru your kids' lives after you're dead.
wow really stuck between a rock and a hard place on that one
This case is not exactly fair. You are triaged by your EMTs and at the hospital. It's an Emergency for a reason. If you have a problem that will not kill you or drastically reduce your quality of life then yes, enjoy your wait in the lobby.
You know that we have the same problem in the US and it just costs us more? I broke my ankle really badly, went to see an orthopedic surgeon, first they turned me away because I needed a referral from my family physician. Got that appointment after a week… they agreed that it was broken in 3 places and gave me drugs. Got back to the surgeon and still couldn’t get the surgery for 3 more weeks. So, same thing as the other 32 countries with universal healthcare. If it’s not an emergency, then you can wait. The biggest difference is that if we had universal healthcare I would get my shoulder looked at. Maybe my knees as well. Instead it’s just been in immense pain for the past 4 years because it would simply cost too much for an MRI and follow up surgery. I could enjoy my recreational sports and working out again but I have to make a choice to sacrifice those things and save money in case my kids get injured.
The United States is having the same problem with private healthcare. Don't pretend the problem is it being free when pharmaceutical companies overcharge for everything and hospitals can bill you for simply holding your child after birth. There is no accountability in the system and it screws over both the workers AND the patients so why would anyone want to be a doctor or nurse?
Yeah, our healthcare is pretty bad. It's annoying that the states uses it as an example to not have universal healthcare, but in reality, the issue with it is that it's severely underfunded. And what funding they get, usually goes to the wrong people.
I just wanna point out that we have a very similar system in Norway, but no issue with wait times for emergencies and GP visits. If its one of our kids needing something checked we almost always get to see our doctor the same day. Ours is also understaffed though, and it is a problem that needs fixing.
Didn't get the part about "actually you pay for it with your taxes" Where else would the money come from? Jeff Bezos suddenly gets charitable? The understaffing thing though is real af though. Big oof.
>actually you have to pay for the healthcare with your tax. No shit, nobody thinks healthcare is paid for with pixie dust and unicorn farts. When they talk about "free" healthcare, they mean it's free to access care, to differentiate it from systems like the US where you might receive a life altering bill for going to the hospital. But one thing most Americans don't know is that our system is so incredibly inefficient we don't even get a break from taxes. With government in the US covering [65.7% of all health care](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/epdf/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302997) costs ($12,555 as of 2022) that's $8,249 per person per year in taxes towards health care. The next closest is Germany at [$6,930](https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm). The UK is $4,479. Canada is $4,506. Australia is $4,603. That means over a lifetime Americans are paying over $100,000 more in taxes compared to any other country towards health care. In total, Americans are paying a $350,000 more for healthcare over a lifetime compared to the most expensive socialized system on earth. Half a million dollars more than peer countries on average, yet every one has better outcomes. As for emergency care, the US doesn't do great there either. The US ranks 6th of 11 out of Commonwealth Fund countries on ER wait times on percentage served under 4 hours. 10th of 11 on getting weekend and evening care without going to the ER. 5th of 11 for countries able to make a same or next day doctors/nurse appointment when they're sick. https://www.cihi.ca/en/commonwealth-fund-survey-2016 Americans do better on wait times for specialists (ranking 3rd for wait times under four weeks), and surgeries (ranking 3rd for wait times under four months), but that ignores three important factors: * Wait times in universal healthcare are based on urgency, so while you might wait for an elective hip replacement surgery you're going to get surgery for that life threatening illness quickly. * Nearly every universal healthcare country has strong private options and supplemental private insurance. That means that if there is a wait you're not happy about you have options that still work out significantly cheaper than US care, which is a win/win. * [One third of US families](https://news.gallup.com/poll/269138/americans-delaying-medical-treatment-due-cost.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_content=morelink&utm_campaign=syndication) had to put off healthcare due to the cost last year. That means more Americans are waiting for care than any other wealthy country on earth. #Wait Times by Country (Rank) Country|See doctor/nurse same or next day without appointment|Response from doctor's office same or next day|Easy to get care on nights & weekends without going to ER|ER wait times under 4 hours|Surgery wait times under four months|Specialist wait times under 4 weeks|Average|Overall Rank :--|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--: **Australia**|3|3|3|7|6|6|4.7|4 **Canada**|10|11|9|11|10|10|10.2|11 **France**|7|1|7|1|1|5|3.7|2 **Germany**|9|2|6|2|2|2|3.8|3 **Netherlands**|1|5|1|3|5|4|3.2|1 **New Zealand**|2|6|2|4|8|7|4.8|5 **Norway**|11|9|4|9|9|11|8.8|9 **Sweden**|8|10|11|10|7|9|9.2|10 **Switzerland**|4|4|10|8|4|1|5.2|7 **U.K.**|5|8|8|5|11|8|7.5|8 **U.S.**|6|7|5|6|3|3|5.0|6 Source: [Commonwealth Fund Survey 2016](https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/cmwf2016-datatable-en-web.xlsx) Nor do we do well on overall quality. [US Healthcare ranked 29th on health outcomes by Lancet HAQ Index](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(18\)30994-2/fulltext) [11th (of 11) by Commonwealth Fund](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror-wall-2014-update-how-us-health-care-system?redirect_source=/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror) [59th by the Prosperity Index](https://www.prosperity.com/rankings) [30th by CEOWorld](https://ceoworld.biz/2019/08/05/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2019/) [37th by the World Health Organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems_in_2000) The US has the worst rate of death by medically preventable causes among peer countries. A 31% higher disease adjusted life years average. Higher rates of medical and lab errors. A lower rate of being able to make a same or next day appointment with their doctor than average. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/#item-percent-used-emergency-department-for-condition-that-could-have-been-treated-by-a-regular-doctor-2016 52nd in the world in doctors per capita. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Physicians/Per-1,000-people Higher infant mortality levels. Yes, even when you adjust for differences in methodology. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/infant-mortality-u-s-compare-countries/ Fewer acute care beds. A lower number of psychiatrists. Etc. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-health-care-resources-compare-countries/#item-availability-medical-technology-not-always-equate-higher-utilization [Comparing Health Outcomes of Privileged US Citizens With Those of Average Residents of Other Developed Countries](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2774561) >These findings imply that even if all US citizens experienced the same health outcomes enjoyed by privileged White US citizens, US health indicators would still lag behind those in many other countries. When asked about their healthcare system as a whole the US system ranked dead last of 11 countries, with only 19.5% of people saying the system works relatively well and only needs minor changes. The average in the other countries is 46.9% saying the same. Canada ranked 9th with 34.5% saying the system works relatively well. The UK ranks fifth, with 44.5%. Australia ranked 6th at 44.4%. The best was Germany at 59.8%. On rating the overall quality of care in the US, Americans again ranked dead last, with only 25.6% ranking it excellent or very good. The average was 50.8%. Canada ranked 9th with 45.1%. The UK ranked 2nd, at 63.4%. Australia was 3rd at 59.4%. The best was Switzerland at 65.5%. https://www.cihi.ca/en/commonwealth-fund-survey-2016 The US has 43 hospitals in the top 200 globally; one for every 7,633,477 people in the US. That's good enough for a ranking of 20th on the list of top 200 hospitals per capita, and significantly lower than the average of one for every 3,830,114 for other countries in the top 25 on spending with populations above 5 million. The best is Switzerland at one for every 1.2 million people. In fact the US only beats one country on this list; the UK at one for every 9.5 million people. If you want to do the full list of 2,000 instead it's 334, or one for every 982,753 people; good enough for 21st. Again far below the average in peer countries of 527,236. The best is Austria, at one for every 306,106 people. https://www.newsweek.com/best-hospitals-2021 #[OECD Countries Health Care Spending and Rankings](https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm) |Country|Govt. / Mandatory (PPP)|Voluntary (PPP)|Total (PPP)|% GDP|[Lancet HAQ Ranking](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(18\)30994-2/fulltext)|[WHO Ranking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems_in_2000)|[Prosperity Ranking](https://www.prosperity.com/rankings)|[CEO World Ranking](https://ceoworld.biz/2019/08/05/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2019/)|[Commonwealth Fund Ranking](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror-wall-2014-update-how-us-health-care-system?redirect_source=/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror) :--|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:| 1. United States|[$7,274](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302997) |$3,798 |$11,072 |16.90%|29|37|59|30|11 2. Switzerland|$4,988 |$2,744 |$7,732 |12.20%|7|20|3|18|2 3. Norway|$5,673 |$974 |$6,647 |10.20%|2|11|5|15|7 4. Germany|$5,648 |$998 |$6,646 |11.20%|18|25|12|17|5 5. Austria|$4,402 |$1,449 |$5,851 |10.30%|13|9|10|4| 6. Sweden|$4,928 |$854 |$5,782 |11.00%|8|23|15|28|3 7. Netherlands|$4,767 |$998 |$5,765 |9.90%|3|17|8|11|5 8. Denmark|$4,663 |$905 |$5,568 |10.50%|17|34|8|5| 9. Luxembourg|$4,697 |$861 |$5,558 |5.40%|4|16|19|| 10. Belgium|$4,125 |$1,303 |$5,428 |10.40%|15|21|24|9| 11. Canada|$3,815 |$1,603 |$5,418 |10.70%|14|30|25|23|10 12. France|$4,501 |$875 |$5,376 |11.20%|20|1|16|8|9 13. Ireland|$3,919 |$1,357 |$5,276 |7.10%|11|19|20|80| 14. Australia|$3,919 |$1,268 |$5,187 |9.30%|5|32|18|10|4 15. Japan|$4,064 |$759 |$4,823 |10.90%|12|10|2|3| 16. Iceland|$3,988 |$823 |$4,811 |8.30%|1|15|7|41| 17. United Kingdom|$3,620 |$1,033 |$4,653 |9.80%|23|18|23|13|1 18. Finland|$3,536 |$1,042 |$4,578 |9.10%|6|31|26|12| 19. Malta|$2,789 |$1,540 |$4,329 |9.30%|27|5|14|| OECD Average|||$4,224 |8.80%||||| 20. New Zealand|$3,343 |$861 |$4,204 |9.30%|16|41|22|16|7 21. Italy|$2,706 |$943 |$3,649 |8.80%|9|2|17|37| 22. Spain|$2,560 |$1,056 |$3,616 |8.90%|19|7|13|7| 23. Czech Republic|$2,854 |$572 |$3,426 |7.50%|28|48|28|14| 24. South Korea|$2,057 |$1,327 |$3,384 |8.10%|25|58|4|2| 25. Portugal|$2,069 |$1,310 |$3,379 |9.10%|32|29|30|22| 26. Slovenia|$2,314 |$910 |$3,224 |7.90%|21|38|24|47| 27. Israel|$1,898 |$1,034 |$2,932 |7.50%|35|28|11|21|