I think, by this point, most Americans who are willing to listen to reason know that emergency medicine is 1000000x better in basically every other developed country, and even in many less developed countries. It can be a country where the entire medical system is publicly funded, like the UK. Or it can be one where it's all privately funded but insurance is mandatory and the lowest-cost plans are controlled and subsidized by the government like in Switzerland.

But, what's hard to convey is how much freedom and peace of mind this all gives you. So many Americans are locked into a specific job because it has good health insurance, or because if they switched jobs they'd have to find new health insurance while having a pre-existing health condition. Being unemployed is terrifying because your health insurance is tied to your job. And, even if you have insurance, there's the fear that they won't honour a claim or will weasel out of a payment.

Even if someone has good insurance and isn't afraid of losing it, there's all the bureaucracy. There's in-network doctors and out-of-network doctors. There's co-pays. There's trying to decide which spouse goes on the other's health plan. There's filing forms. There's even sometimes stuff like wondering if the doctor is prescribing something because it helps with their bottom line, or if they genuinely think that you need it.

Then there's the billing. If you have good insurance you might never actually have to pay anything other than a nominal co-pay, but you often can't escape the billing paperwork. At best that's just time consuming and annoying. At worst it's a constant source of terror and stress. This is especially true with serious health issues that are expensive to treat, and where your time, energy and effort should really be about getting well.

I'm in Canada but I've lived in the US, and I hated every second of their health care system, despite having effectively a Rolls Royce insurance plan. In Canada can be fired, quit my job, retire, join a start-up, or do anything I want and my health insurance is completely unaffected. If I had a spouse, they'd be on the same plan, there's not second spent thinking about strategizing about that, or about anything else. There are no co-pays. There are no forms to fill out. I never worry about a doctor upselling me on something I don't need. Behind the scenes doctors still bill for their work, someone pays for the medicine, the hand sanitizer, the bedding, the wheelchairs, and everything you might see in a hospital, but the patient (and their family) never sees any money change hands, it's just so much more simple that way.

Oh, and I just forgot another example of where the US system fails in ways that Americans probably wouldn't notice: airborne illnesses. In most countries, people get flu shots. If they feel sick they have sick leave, and if they want to see a doctor they can. If you're on public transit in Switzerland you don't often see someone coughing or sneezing because if they're not feeling well they're not out in public. In Japan they take that even further and people put on masks when they feel like they might be coming down with something so that they don't spread it. In the US, a lot of people don't have healthcare coverage. They can't see a doctor if they're feeling ill. They expect to be charged for vaccinations and maybe flu shots. So, if you're on public transit in the states, you're more likely to be sharing a cabin with people who are coughing or sneezing or sniffling because they can't get it looked at, and they can't afford to miss work (and there are no guaranteed sick days).

This made the pandemic so much worse in the US. Even before you throw in the anti-vaxx misinformation and "the gubmint can't control my body" idiocy, you still have people who probably have COVID out in public spreading it around because they can't miss work, and don't believe they can get tested or treated for free.

Anyhow, I hope that the more obvious benefits of socialized medicine, like being treated for free no matter what are becoming more clear to Americans. But, really, they should understand that that's just the big, obvious thing. The massive social and mental health drag their system puts on their entire society is something that's hard to appreciate if you haven't lived in both systems and felt how different they are.

Godamn I envy this

Dead* not death,

Death is like the subject of dead/dying, whereas dead is a state that things can be if that makes sense, as I type this I'm realizing I'm still a little drunk, excuse me