desymbol: “Americans! You Have The Worst Healthcare”: A Guy Who Was Paying $2k/Month For Insurance Revealed What Happened When He Needed Help

The spread of the coronavirus means that the healthcare system and medical professionals are getting more attention than usual. Lots of people are pointing out the flaws in the system and Twitter user Doctorow is one of them. But this isn’t another coronavirus story.

According to Doctorow, the US has “the worst healthcare in the developed world.” He then explains why using his personal experience with health insurance and how his provider refused to cover the inexpensive medication that he needed. Scroll down to read Doctorow’s story in his own words.

Doctorow’s thread got over 3.4k likes on Twitter and more than 1.1k people retweeted it. The thread also spread to other social media channels, including Imgur where it got over 4.8k upvotes and was viewed by more than 131k users.

Doctorow explained what he went through with his health insurance provider and why, in his opinion, the US has “the worst” healthcare

Image credits: doctorow

A lot of people agreed with the Twitter user’s opinion about how the system in the US needs to be improved. Preferably, by following the fully-functioning example set by other developed countries.

The Atlantic writes that the US has the lowest-performing healthcare system in developed countries, according to the Commonwealth Fund. The highest performing nations are the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia, even though the US spends the most money.

David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund, said that this is “consistent across 20 years.” He explained that there are 3 reasons why the US can’t catch up to its allies.

First of all, there’s a lack of insurance coverage: in 2016, over 27 million Americans were uninsured. That’s because they simply can’t afford it. “The literature on insurance demonstrates that having insurance lowers mortality. It is equivalent to a public health intervention,” Blumenthal said.

He also pointed out that the US wastes a lot of money on administration. “Doctors and patients [report] wasting time on billing and insurance claims. Other countries that rely on private health insurers, like the Netherlands, minimize some of these problems by standardizing basic benefit packages, which can both reduce administrative burden for providers and ensure that patients face predictable copayments,” the Commonwealth Fund reports.

Lastly, we have underperforming primary care in the US. “We have a very disorganized, fragmented, inefficient and under-resourced primary care system,” Blumenthal explained. “Many primary-care physicians struggle to receive relevant clinical information from specialists and hospitals. We don’t invest in social services, which are important determinants of health.”

In other words, if the US improves in these 3 key areas, it can solve the problem at its source and help millions of Americans get the care they deserve.