Universal Healthcare Doesn't Mean Waiting Longer to See a Doctor [View all]

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http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/universal-healthcare-doesnt-mean-waiting-longer-to-see-a-doctor/281614/




Opponents of healthcare reform have, historically, argued that we should be wary of imitating foreign healthcare systems because people in other countries have to wait longer to see the doctor. Cheaper, more universal care, the argument seems to be, comes with the tradeoff of slower care.

This is not necessarily true, according to new numbers from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan organization that studies industrialized healthcare systems around the world.

The organization surveyed between 1,000 and 5,400 people in 11 industrialized nations. The first thing they found is fairly well-known: American healthcare is mind-bogglingly expensive, as compared to that of other Western democracies:


***SNIP


But what's less talked-about is that we don't actually get better access to medical care for our money. People in many countries that spend far less on healthcare than the U.S. are more likely to say they can usually get a same-day or next-day appointment when they need it, and to say they can get after-hours treatment without going to the ER. This is true for countries that have single-payer systems, like the U.K. (though not Canada), and for many Western European countries that have multi-payer systems like ours.