Universal Healthcare Doesn't Mean Waiting Longer to See A Doctor

A new report from the Commonwealth Fund shows that people in other industrialized nations get doctors' appointments faster than Americans do.

Opponents of healthcare reform have, historically, argued that we should be wary of imitating foreign healthcare systems because people in other countries have to wait longer to see the doctor. Cheaper, more universal care, the argument seems to be, comes with the tradeoff of slower care.

This is not necessarily true, according to new numbers from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan organization that studies industrialized healthcare systems around the world.

The organization surveyed between 1,000 and 5,400 people in 11 industrialized nations. The first thing they found is fairly well-known: American healthcare is mind-bogglingly expensive, as compared to that of other Western democracies: