America has some of if not the best hospitals in the world. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean equal access, but those are facts not ideology.

We can argue if that is fair or not, but if you have a well paying job with good employee provided HC, America is [one of] the best places to be for medical care.

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microtonal 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is similar to universities, the US has some exceptional hospitals/universities and a lot of mediocre ones. Exceptional facilities are more accessible to certain groups than others. Many European countries strive for a high average, perhaps not as good as the US's best, but much better than the US average, and they are accessible to everyone [1].

My parents also lived in the US (and IIRC they were on private insurance), but no way would they want to trade European healthcare/education for the US counterpart.

At any rate, all the statistics show that the US pays ~twice as much for health care with worse outcomes for the general public.

if you have a well paying job with good employee provided HC

It's always so surprising that people from the US do not see the issue with this. Let's say, assuming that you are in tech, I hope you don't get laid off in the next round.

[1] I have to add a bunch of qualifiers here, because the EU or Europe is not a single country and some countries have private insurance, private clinics, etc.

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stavros 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So basically you're saying "if you can afford it, the US is one of the best places to get medical care". Well, if I can afford it, why wouldn't I just fly to the US to get that care then? I don't have to be living there.

	▲	saghm an hour ago \| parent [-]
		"If you can afford it" also conveniently glosses over the fact that a private insurance system means that the costs for paying out of pocket tend to be insanely high, since that an insurance company pays the hospital is basically entirely unrelated to the price that you'd get charged as an individual. Even if you're making a decent software engineering salary in the US, which would put you in a much cushier financial position than most of the country, you'd better hope that you don't ever have any major accidents or develop any uncommon medical conditions or you'll be eating into your savings at an alarmingly high rate.