A.J. Button@AJButton2
The vast majority of Asian healthcare systems are better than those in the West.
I have seen it first hand in Thailand 🇹🇭.
In the West you have either “free” healthcare with 10 month wait lists like in Canada, or $1,000 monthly insurance and $100,000 medical debts like the U.S.
In Bangkok you pay 50 bucks a month for *GOOD* insurance. If you don’t want the monthly cost, you’ll pay a few bucks out of pocket for doctor visits, or $100-ish to see a specialist. Scale tops out at a few thousand for the most complex surgeries.
Despite the low cost, you sacrifice nothing in terms of quality of care or wait times in Thailand. Thai doctors and nurses are world class, and many Thai hospitals are like luxury resorts. You can walk into a doctor’s office and be seen by a general practitioner in minutes. If you book a specialist (e.g. psychiatrist, dermatologist) you’ll be seen in a few days.
Consider this contrast:
In the part of Canada I’m from, the wait time for psychiatrists is about 1 year. In Thailand you can see one less than a week after calling. The Thai psychiatrist will in many cases be just as well educated as the Canadian one.
The advantages of the Thai healthcare system are so immense that a whole cottage industry of medical tourism has emerged here. People literally MOVE to Thailand for YEARS at a time, just to get good affordable healthcare!
It’s no wonder why. You can come to Thailand and get your braces, physiotherapy or surgery more quickly than you would in Canada or Europe, and more cheaply than in the USA. In fact, I’d argue that healthcare in Thailand is also cheaper than in countries with “free” heath care, because a health insurance plan that covers all procedures you can think of here, of costs about the same as the plans that covers just drugs in Canada.
It’s a night and day difference.
