Dumb question regarding single payer health in the USA
Dumb question regarding single payer health in the USA
I apologize if this is offensive, but I really need to understand:
An instructor of a course I'm taking claims that several years ago, a 70 year old Canadian friend of the family was denied a stent, due to age. This sounds sus af to me, so I'm wondering if there is any province that would deny this procedure to someone based solely on their age?
Tyia.
The question is unclear... The friend was in the USA at the time? Is it not understood that the USA has no single payer (aka universal) healthcare?
I failed in the title! My apologies. I said in a class that single-payer care seemed it would be more accessible to more citizens, after introducing an article claiming (probably correctly, or close to correctly) that 40% of Americans forego necessary medical care because we can't afford it, yet the US spends more on health care, per capita, than any other developed nation. She then told the related tale.
I don't know about Canada specifically, but doctors do routinely weigh operations against the possible impact on quality of life. For example anesthetic can be a significant risk for elderly patients and the cure may end up being worse than the disease. How and if this happened in this case I can't say but it's one possible explanation.
I'm a dual citizen, currently living in the States. I can say with certainty that there is some lingering fear mongering around single-payer healthcare. Lots of Americans have this idea that healthcare in other countries is terrible. I've had people flat-out refuse to believe that hospital wait times for deadly emergencies don't regularly exceed 6 hours in Canada.
I'm guessing that the people profiting from the current system in the US have done their best to convince everyone that it's the best way.
The U.S. doesn't have single-payer health care.
Doctors definitely will in some cases say "you're too weak for such an operation" or "you wouldn't survive the operation" or some such. (Basically if the patient's prognosis is better if they don't get the common treatment for their condition, it's valid to deny the patient the operation.) It's not about age. The patient could be 30 and be denied for being too sick for the operation or 90 and be approved. Just depends on their condition.
All that said, even if there are legitimate reasons to deny treatments in some cases, doctors routinely deny treatments for bad reasons too. It's plausible that it's worse in the U.S. than other places (I don't know, personally) but I doubt this is unique to the U.S.
So as an American I’ve heard stories of such things happening here as well. Doctors weigh a lot and money is usually the last concern when it comes to potentially lifesaving procedures. Old age makes surgery risky and decreases how good good outcomes can get.
In general governments are more willing to pay to keep people alive than for profit corporations. And if insurance says no few Americans can afford to override it
I'm American, so is she. She's so far proven not to be very honest.