You say that sarcastically but isn't that obviously good? If this turns a terrible healthcare system into a merely quite bad healthcare system then that could help millions of people.
I'm sure you didn't miss the point on purpose - the parent made a silly claim implying US healthcare was uniquely bad when the truth is both approaches have huge problems. In the US you can get care any time, as long as you can afford it. You might die if you are poor. In many other countries care is free or cheap but you may die waiting.
> In many other countries care is free or cheap but you may die waiting
This is a common criticism I hear from the US of other countries, but it comes with the assumptions that a) all care is equally necessary or first come first served, and b) that paid care is not available. Both of these are false.
In my experience with the UK and Australian healthcare systems, waiting times can be an issue, but in most cases urgent issues are dealt with urgently. I've experienced this personally, and also seen family members get fast cancer care when it was truly necessary. We as individuals are hard at triaging ourselves because it's a sample size of 1 and we're deeply invested, and in that it's not nice to wait for care, but zooming out, healthcare waiting periods are part of a complex triage process and tend to work.
But of course if you've got the money you can also just go and get private care. This has advantages (for you) and disadvantages (for society), but probably improves the experience, even if medical outcomes aren't necessarily any better. The existence of free public healthcare acts as a fairly strong competitive force on private healthcare (US/AU), meaning that prices aren't too bad and service quality is generally very good (because they're competing on experience, not outcome).
In summary, yes there are wait times, and there are a few awful cases of people dying while waiting, but the system is overall far better and it's not really a useful criticism made from the standpoint of the US healthcare system.
One approach has huge systemic problems and the other has problems that seem exaggerated to prop up public opinion regarding the first system, but even if the criticisms of system 2 are entirely accurate, it seems like you can pretty much throw a tiny portion of the money required to run system 1 at the problem to fix it.
I was about to make that argument. Functioning but almost to the brink of death. They are overburdened, and the new staff coming from immigrants isn’t as good. It is a huge concern nowadays.
