I would agree with sergio, that much of the health care in the U.S. is of high quality, insofar as they have all the newest and latest toys for diagnosing problems and the hospitals are not dingy and they have advance surgical techniques, etc... but I would argue that general medical care for the average person of average health is not better. I don't think that the average healthy person receives better care there than here or Canada or Brazil or anywhere else with a more socialized medical system. And without a doubt, poor and underdeveloped areas of the U.S. are under-served and those that fall into the lower and lower middle class do not receive good care or service at all.
In the U.S. there are no free flu vaccines. You can wait hours after showing up on time to see a doctor, when you are suffering pain or fever or whatever, and never actually see the guy whose name is on the door. Health insurance companies require the doctors that participate in their plans see a set number of patient each day. It can be upwards of 20-30 in major cities, which means that a doctor can only spend 15-20 minutes with each patient in eight hours of working. And that's when accepts one company, most accept multiple.
The emergency room care also is horrible. I've been in the emergency room 2 times in Mississippi (stitches and broken arm) and 2 times in New York (stitches and allergic reaction) and have waited on average 3 hours to see someone arm dangling, bleeding and throat swollen with hives. Versus our experience here where we walked in the door with my son and we saw a doctor within 5 minutes without even first filling out paperwork.
Also, it's a little misleading to say, if you have a good job for a good company you will have insurance. It's not true that working a 40 hour week for a real company will automatically get you health insurance. Until the health care reform bill private employers were not required to provide health insurance to full time employees, so you could be the secretary for an architect, you could be an architect or work for any other reputable, established company, work 40+ hours/week and have no benefits. You could also work for a company like Wal-Mart, Target or some other giant corporation that provides full time employees with benefits and they can work you 39 hours to avoid paying your insurance, circumventing their own internal policies.
It true that there is legislation now set to start in 2014 that will require employers to provide insurance, but I'm a cynic. There are always ways to avoid paying and companies will always find them.
marksoc is right. It's unfortunate, but if you take all the things discussed here and all the issue you hear on the news and your multiply them in severity by 1000, you still couldn't touch how utterly messed up, bureaucratized, confused, self-defeating and self-destructive the U.S. health care system really is.
