I have never had a situation where essential care was delayed. There ARE waits for some procedures that are not critical but that would not be the case if we spent as much of our GDP on our healthcare as the US does. I am always surprised at how modest the Canadian per capita healthcare spend is given how our small population is spread over a larger geography than the US.
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We’re getting places in Canada that offer MRIs on demand for $$$ too.
ETA: A clinic near me is open 24hrs!!!
Strictly speaking, no insurer can make such a dictate in the US, either. However, insurers can/do differentiate coverage terms and claim processes Ng mechanics between “in network” and “out of network” practices, and the can/do negotiate discounts with providers who are “in network” (
and I suspect that out-of-network, rack rates are insane in the US as an unintended indirect consequence of this).
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A huge piece of why the US spends so much is, in a phrase, unit cost. We pay more for drugs, we pay docs more, private equity has taken over DME, specialty clinics, and so on. It’s possible that Canada has artificially low utilization because of shortages of doctors, or in general, shortages of funding. I wonder how many problems Canada could solve if it closed just 10% of the gap in spending compared to the US.
The Western European countries should have better medical systems than Can and the US given their high level of expenditure and small geographies.
TIL about the antikythera mechanism.
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The NHS is at the bottom of the pile.
You do not want single-payer. It is a complete disaster when the demographics deteriorate.
The European systems (Spain, France, Switzerland etc) work much better in the face of deteriorating demographics.
Wow!
At the time, the experts said, “The orbits are irregular; I don’t know why; this mechanism corrects them.”
Why not ask why?
This guy had some things right:
Died in exile after a trial for impiety.
Non-vanity California license plates have the form 1ABC234. What I learned today is that the list of three letter combinations they do not use is quite extensive. Some of them are obvious why (FCK), other are not (ABM). The full list is toward the bottom of this page.
ABM is short for Anti-Ballistic Missile. Maybe that’s the reason?
I assume ABM could be interpreted as “a bowel movement”.
I like the juxtaposition of the two guesses.
A Bowel Missile?
TIL about Estevanico. How is this not taught in American History classes?
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Although that’s been true since the 1980’s, California has exhausted (or is about to) that format.
CA is now (or soon will be) issuing regular plate numbers in the pattern 123ABC4.
EDIT: Per California License Plates they made the changeover in March.
Apparently the US has new rules for entry.
Its affecting a few people I know in the UK.
Anyone that has been to Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Syria since 1 March 2011 or visited Cuba since 2021: This is an issue with the ESTA application, if you choose a route through the States. If you have you will need to have an interview at the US embassy to get a visa.
They also have a Gold on Black option, harking back to the good ol’ days.
FWIW, folks who have visited Cuba have been blocked from ESTA since 2023.