No. of Recommendations: 13
If, Dope1, am asking about the wait time difference between the US (no socialized medicine) and the UK (has the NHS) in cardiac bypass surgery wait times…what might you deduce the answer is?
You can't deduce an answer. With only two items in the comparison, there's a very good chance - indeed a likelihood - that the reason for the difference is not due to the general category of health care systems in the country, but instead may be due to the particulars of the UK specifically.
If you wanted to deduce an answer, you'd have to compare several single-payer systems around the globe to see if the increased cardiac bypass surgery wait times was caused by the type of health care system (single-payer vs. non). Also, you probably wouldn't limit your U.S. analysis just to the wait times experienced by a person who has adequate private-party insurance (or independent means) to pay for cardiac bypass surgery - because while that's a lot of people, it's not everyone. So if someone who has a good employer policy can get cardiac bypass surgery quickly, but people who are uninsured have to wait a very long time in order to solve for their funding problems, the average wait time for cardiac surgery will be different than just looking at the former person.
Etc. These are not questions whose answers can be deduced by a simple "anecdote to anecdote" comparison.
