Ostronopolis wrote:In Sweden, the wait for heart surgery can be as long as 25 weeks, and the average wait for hip replacement surgery is more than a year. Many of these individuals suffer chronic pain, and judging by the numbers, some will probably die awaiting treatment.
Uhm, that's a bunch of bull. The only wait for crucial heart surgery that even approaches 25 weeks in Sweden that I am aware of is transplant surgery - for obvious reasons - and surgery that requires considerable planning and where waiting can be a way to assess non-surgical intervention. For instance, the university hospital I work for, that services 1 million inhabitants, has a "waiting" period for planned coronary bypass grafts around a month or two (depending on the severity - most people don't need and shouldn't be operated on immediately), and for acute surgery... well, those are usually done within a day or two from the onset of unstable angina/heart attack. PCI is done upon arrival to the Cardiac Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit. In fact, we junior doctors tend to bitch about it because we never get to see "classical" ST-elevation infarctions because they don't even go by the regular ER - the ECGs are assessed electronically by cardiologists as the patient is on route in the ambulance and are diverted to the PCI lab/OR for surgical intervention directly. And this is done 24/7/365 - "time is myocardium!"
As for hip surgeries, one needs to look at indications. Fractures? Operated within a day, two tops if the patient is stable enough for surgery, as hip fractures are deadly if left untreated and one runs serious risks the longer one waits (infections, thromboses and so on). Osteoarthritis (a disease that develops over decades) has waiting periods ranging from a month to a year depending on the degree of disease and discomfort the patient suffers - most people with osteoarthritis can medically defer surgery for a long time with effective non-surgical treatment and physiotherapy, and indeed joint replacement surgery is "better" the later it is done due to wear and tear of the artificial joint and the demands put on it (the younger you are, the less satisfactory the effect of a replacement is to your needs, and the longer you have to live with your artificial joint, the likelier you are to need re-operating due to the wear and tear I mentioned, and the younger you are at the time of surgery the more wear and tear you will subject the joint to). Most people with osteoarthritis do not need acute surgery, and thus a year's waiting period is not a big deal (the "writhing in pain" in wait of surgery patient is a patient I have never come across; the "I'm waiting for surgery down the line, but I'm on meds meanwhile and doing quite fine with my physio", on the other hand) - especially seeing as the option with a private insurance system is them simply not getting one if they can't afford it.
I am actually quite pleased with our health system. It's not perfect - none are - but we pay less than, say, the USA for it, and we have better results than they do despite them paying so much more than we do for their private system. We have a longer life expectancy, higher general health levels, much lower infant and child mortalities and so on and so on. What a freaking "socialist" nightmare to have far more of our kids survive, and our elderly not only be healthier but live longer, too, no? Bloody parasites...