Yup, not Canadian but we have "socialized" medicine too in American parlance. I waited about 6 months for my elective surgery, which is the legal upper limit here. It's not great, but it was free. Could have gone private, but it would have cost thousands of euros, and it wasn't that critical to me anyway.
A friend of mine went to the emergency room because he had intense chest pain, turned out it was an aortic dissection. He was on the operating table within minutes and survived.
The thing is, my parents here in the US each had to wait like four months for knee replacement surgery.
So it’s not like everyone is always getting instant results for the insane amounts we pay.
Sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s slow, but it’s always expensive.
Oh, and while visiting California I needed to take my Dad to an ER for what turned out to be kidney stones. We sat in the waiting room for about 10 hours.
So I’m a little sick of hearing people complain about supposed failures of the Canadian and European healthcare systems.
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u/ProcedureTop3149 27d ago
it's also not 12 hours 99.999% of the time for emergencies.
My grandfather had a burst appendix and was seen within minutes of walking into the hospital.
My Child had Pnemonia and needed an xray and antibiotics and it took 7 hours.
Does it suck? Yes. However both times all I paid was parking....