So, keeping this in context of the OP, how is Portugal’s system failing right now…both you as an individual and the general population. Have you been excluded from the basic provisions or required to pay a surcharge as something of an arriviste? Or been able to purchae a “major medical” plan at reasonable cost?
Doesn’t appear to me to be any more failures among the well established systems of medical care in other developed countries than the US. Quite the reverse?
About a year ago I asked for an appointment with my “family doctor” to get a general checkup since I had not gotten one in years and I was feeling some problems. The paperwork took less than an hour, bureaucratic perfection. I’m still waiting for the appointment.
I commented on this a long time ago. I asked a friend about it. His reply, “At the start of the day they have three slots for people without an appointment but you have to get there at the break of dawn. When I have something urgent I go to a private hospital.”
You be the judge? A great healthcare system? BTW, do you know the waiting time in the UK?
NHS says:
The maximum waiting time for non-urgent, consultant-led treatments is 18 weeks from the day your appointment is booked through the NHS e-Referral Service, or when the hospital or service receives your referral letter.
The Guardian says:
NHS hospital wait times above 18 weeks at a third of departments
30 weeks is over six months!
Why am I familiar with the UK healthcare system? My last job was to create a website for a private sports medicine outfit in London that had to report to the NHS. Their last request was a report about the wait times.
The Captain
In underdeveloped Venezuela I never had to wait over a week for a doctor’s appointment (private practice), The UK can’t even keep up with Venezuela!
HaHaHaHaHa
BTW, when I arrived in Portugal I had a broken tooth. My dentist in Caracas had warned me that it would break sooner or later. It broke in Madrid. I found a dentist the same day. He suggested I have it extracted in Berlin, my next stop, and all he did was to file it down a bit so it would not cause problems. Cost, over 80€. I decided to wait until I got to Portugal. There is dental clinic around the corner from where I live. There are dozens of private dental clinics and all sorts of private medical establishments in Porto and Gaia. They had a look and gave me an appointment for a few days later when the tooth was extracted. Cost 35€.
The Portuguese national healthcare system is backstopped by a huge private system. Would this private system exist if the public one really solved the healthcare issue? Markets say “No way José!”
All those short comings are a) management problems or b) a system problem that cannot be fixed. There ain’t just one system. Problems of all kinds infect private operations and they fix them all the time. (Unless it costs too much or they can bilk people more by not fixing them.)
Ref Portugal. The Gov system wouldn’t exist of Mr Private Schtick could actually get it up. He only is able to manage when the Gov system allows him to cherry pick among those who can pony up.
You did notice that the NHS supposed maximum wait times was for non urgent treatment, right…and that the Guardian’s article was really about wait times in general and in the context of the impact Covid had on an already strained system? Pretty sure most other readers will have (or they will now)
This is an interesting insight that isn’t likely to be obvious from the experience you think you’ve gotten from your design job but, as suggested in the Guardian article …and it’s something that any system can suffer from…years of underfunding and poor management have played havoc with the infrastructure of the NHS. Not just Conservatives governments either but the Tories are certainly responsible for systematic attempts to cripple it as an institution. The current rot was started with a vengeance during the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as PM. Not a political statement but one of historical fact.
The woman had a near pathologic and visceral hatred of public institutions and the public sector and manifest itself with cuts to higher education/grant funding and the NHS among others. What better way to promote “privatisation” and competion from the private sector, eh? In addition to the deep cuts to NHS services, parts of the NHS were systematically sold off to private companies…ostensibly in the name of efficiency and cost savings. Started off with non clinical parts of the whole like cleaning and catering and easily something to con an electorate credulous enough to fall for election promises such as “The NHS is safe with us” into accepting as a good thing. That was the thin end of the wedge…the result is what you’re reading in the Guardian article.