I have always been one to judge the quality of life and comparing what we have in South Africa against my family in the UK. I am British having been born there and moved away, but lived and worked there for 11 years as well so I have my own experiences. Funny enough the reasoning for leaving the UK was because of the education standards which we felt were higher in SA.
I judge things on many aspects, but the services on offer especially medical facilities and timings involved is a good barometer to use as a gauge. I was thinking about this topic because my grandson had his tonsils out this week.
His process was very easy as we visited the GP on Monday had an appointment booked with the specialist on Wednesday and he had the operation on Thursday. So he entire process from start to finish was 4 days and he is already on the road to recovery. The cost over and above the private medical cover was an extra $400 which I believe is still money well spent because you cannot place a cost on family health care when you need it.
When I lived in the UK may year ago my son needed the same operation and the process was not so quick and even though I would not consider it slow this was about 3 weeks in total. This was 25 years ago so not a recent gauge to use. My son and grand son were both on private medical care so even back then till now the difference was 3 x longer in the UK. From what I have seen and been told that difference has increased considerably and we are now talking about months not weeks.
When I had my gall bladder out a few years ago I was in hospital the same day after seeing the doctor and under specialist care from day one. A friend of mine in the UK had the same problem and after seeing the doctor was sent home having to wait for a bed to become available at the hospital. Basically they were on a waiting list and the process took closer to a month from start to finish.
My brother needed to see a dentist and had to book and wait in excess of 6 months whilst I could phone on Monday and be seen and treated within a couple of days. This is kind of crazy when you start to compare and I regard these as the basic services we should all be experiencing without having to wait months for something we require.
You do worry if it is something more serious like what my mother has encountered and her life was on hold for well over 6 months before she saw a specialist. 6 months is a long time when you have a serious condition like she has and by the time the specialist saw her she had already deteriorated so much. This is not medical care that is servicing the public and why I do worry for my family living in the UK.
The big difference is I have always paid for private medical care no matter what the costs involved are because the difference is like night and day. In SA I pay for the entire family including the grand kids and wish I had the funds to have been paying for my mother at least in the UK.
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In USA coverage is reasonable, but how quickly you can get medical care really went downhill, especially after Covid.
Indeed... the grass is not always greener on the other side... but we still need money to make things better...
In the part of Asia I live in they have a near free medical service but it well known by the people who use it that it is only slightly better than not getting any medical care at all. On the other hand, private health care is kept cheap based on non intervention by the government and competition between hospitals. I'm not saying this is the answer but I do feel like when any nation offers something for "free" that it is going to end up corrupted or deteriorate into something that is barely worth having.