“But they have long wait times in Canada!”

avilociraptor:

I am from the USA.

I have one of the most top-teir private insurance plans available.

I live in a city with four, count ‘em, FOUR hospitals.

I have been a patient of my pulmonologist for 2 years.

I scheduled my next appointment today. The first available appointment?

In three and a half months.

Please stop with this “you can see a specialist in a week!” Nonsense. No you can’t. Not with elite insurance and not as an existing patient. I’ve had to make specialist appointments as far as 8 months out.

Yesterday I made an appointment with my primary for a somewhat urgent matter. His next available? In 3 weeks.

I hate going to the emergency room because the average wait time is 4-10 hours. I ended up in a coma once because of complications caused by the wait time.

I am in the most medically privileged position a chronically ill person in the US can be, and the wait times to see my doctor are still very very long.

There are people in my country who can’t even afford to go to the doctor and people justify it by saying “but in Canada, they have to ~*wait*~.

We wait here too. We wait JUST AS LONG, and sometimes even LONGER.

But not everyone gets to wait, and they die because of it.

That disgusts me.

Universal health care now, please. And yes, my full time working, disabled, chronically ill self is more than happy to fork over taxes so that nobody goes without healthcare-even the people I don’t like!