> But what I would like to point out is that without doing any deep searching I found three different news stories about Canada, Britain, and Ireland where there are prolonged wait times for diagnostic procedures, like MRIs.

Do people think that healthcare is instant with private US insurance? It's fucking not...

My wife had chronic back pain and went to see an Orthopedist. Our insurance required her to do 12 weeks of physical therapy before she could get an MRI. The physical therapy did nothing for her and often times she came home feeling worse from her PT appointments than before she went in. The Physical Therapist said that if she had the MRI they'd at least know what they were dealing with and could maybe target exercises better to address the pain, but still insurance wanted to wait things out and see if things improved on their own.

After the 12 weeks were up, she got the MRI, it was a herniated disc as she suspected because she had a similar issue with her back when she was a teenager. So great, PT was never going to fix that. She needed back surgery. She made an appointment, had to schedule that out another 6 weeks before she could get a slot. A spot opened up after 1 week and they called her and asked if she wanted it. She of course said yes, she was in so much pain for so long she would have literally crawled over nails to get there. She called me so happy and excited, and then 30 minutes later called me back again in tears because the doctors said they couldn't give her the appointment because our insurance wouldn't be able to process the paperwork that quickly...

My wife works for the state of NJ. Our insurance isn't "bad", it's essentially the best available in our state, and since it's almost 100% covered by the state, we have the absolute best plan her job offers her.

And still my wife had to wait 18 weeks before she could have the surgery she needed to fix her back pain. She had a baby in September... Her back pain began in December and she didn't have surgery until May. She literally felt pain every time she lifted our infant child... Could you imagine how torturous that was for her? Can you imagine how difficult it is to comfort someone crying about not being able to care for her own baby?

But yeah go ahead and tell me how bad other countries have it with their scary socialized medicine...

The only people who get healthcare instantly are people rich enough to pay out of pocket for it. That is true in countries with and without socialized medicine. So let's fucking stop using it as an argument as to why the US system is better...

My anecdote is not an exception. US wait times are comparable to other countries with socialized medicine and if you think otherwise it's because of the propaganda we are fed to think such things.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/health-care-wait-times-by-country