Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Japanese React To The US Healthcare Costs | Street Interview" video.

  1. I think it's important to note there is a conflation and mix there in the interview on prices with and without insurance... I guess for effect? Remains true though the fact that healthcare prices in the US are outrageous, and in Japan it's almost absurdly cheap. xD I'm from a different country. I think every healthcare system is complex to navigate, but if I were to simplify things by quite a lot, it goes like this - we have a national all citizens coverage for a public, free, paid by taxes healthcare system. You need to register, but that's mostly it. It's not great, but it's there. Everything has lines. For a simple basic check people have sometimes to wait weeks to months to get it. There are several times of the years, in several cities, that public ER gets packed to the brim to the point hospitals needs to refuse more patients, and then ambulances need to hunt for another hospital for vacancy. This is more a consequence of poverty in my nation rather than anything else, the system has lots of hospitals, lots of doctors, lots of money invested in, but it's just hard to manage so many people all at once. Holidays are hell. Weekends you can also expect hospitals to be packed for most of the year. And it's a tropical nation, so you have all those tropical endemic diseases hitting hospitals constantly. Parallel to that, we also have a private healthcare system for which you either have to pay from your own pocket for everything, or pay for private healthcare insurance and plans. It's fairly expensive to go that route, but I'd say it's at least some 10x less expensive than private healthcare in the US, both the raw prices and the private plan prices. Private is also better in general than public healthcare. From diagnostic tools, to professional qualification, treatment, and several other factors - if you have the money to pay for it, you'd want to go private. Mostly not to get stuck in lines though, that's kinda the main issue really. As for private plans, we have mostly the same issues that every country with private healthcare has - hospitals that don't accept people from x or y plan, private healthcare companies trying to swindle costumers out of certain types of treatment, corruption scandals, all of those things. Even though government and justice has been slowly advancing on this, prohibiting dirty schemes coming from healthcare companies of not covering their costumer needs, but it's a constant battle. And then, you have the final equation on this that wasn't in the interview - price of drugs, medicine. This I think is a huge indicative of how US healthcare system is bankrupt, with people going to Mexico or Canada to buy medicine. Well, in this case I think US' case is fairly unique, my country is mix of what you can expect in other nations. Other than drugs made in private labs, government has a program of national coverage of subsidized medicine - but this only covers few of the most commonly used drugs. So, stuff used for treatment of most common types of diabetes, heart disease, that type of stuff. It also has a program of breaking patents of several drugs and allowing labs to make "generic" versions of them, to be sold cheaper. It follows very strict regulations, so it's pretty safe. This covers lots of drugs, but it kinda takes time, so you don't have it for drugs of more uncommon specific treatments, or drugs that are too new in the market. So we're kinda like, in between US and Japan. xD I personally think the system itself is pretty good, we just need to work on general wealth inequality, work on some kinks and details, and keep regulating the whole system well enough. The rest is more a matter of solving poverty in the country rather than messing with the system.
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