I got my gallbladder out recently. This came as a bit of a surprise, as it started with a day of what I (incorrectly) assumed was norovirus back in February, and ended with surgery at the beginning of June. All together it was about a 3.5 month process: about a week before I decided to go see my doctor, a week before I could get all the testing to rule out other things, 7 weeks for a surgical consult, a few days to coordinate the surgical date and then about 5 weeks to surgery. I was feeling pretty miserable by the end there, but I was able to squeeze an eye surgery in to the wait time so it wasn’t all wasted.

Since I had some time to ponder what I was doing, I decided to peruse Reddit to see what other people in my situation had done. For those of you who haven’t been on Reddit for various health conditions, it can be an experience. There a lot of useful information, some really not useful information, and some unexpected information. One of the more interesting things I’ve found over the years is that because most subreddits are in English, they can give you a really good sense about how medical care for specific conditions differs between English speaking countries. We are constantly told that the US healthcare system is broken, and maybe it is. But I think there’s some really interesting information when you stop looking at healthcare in general and switch to looking at a specific condition, so you can see how you in particular would do under the Canadian or British healthcare systems vs the US.

For gallbladders, I quickly discovered the wait times in the NHS are over a year once you’ve been recommended for surgery, and in some places they won’t even put you on the list until your liver or pancreas start to go. The wait times got so bad post COVID that they published a paper on how to help clear the queue, which started at around 452 day wait time. It got so bad the general recommendation was to pay an extra $7,000 out of pocket to get it done privately. Someone who had almost my exact surgery date had been waiting over a year and then got theirs cancelled randomly with no reschedule. I can say I would not have been able to keep working if I had to wait over a year, and I was considered a mild case. It reminds me of the iron triangle: you can have something that’s good, fast or cheap, but you can’t have all three.

This is not the first time I’ve discovered I would have been substantively worse off in the UK. Back in 2020 my migraines were wildly out of control, and my doctor suggested a newly approved medication called Nurtec. This worked wonderfully for me, and still does. I found out recently it took almost 4 extra years to be approved in the UK for treatment of acute migraines. People were paying privately for years (at about $100 a pill) because it was working so well for others around the world, but was completely unavailable through the NHS. Finally, I’m in a Facebook group for those with my eye condition, and they routinely say it takes a year+ to get a cornea specialist appointment in England. I got mine in 3 weeks.

I will not draw grand conclusions from solely my own experience, but it is notable to me that of my three major health problems, all would have required me to spend a lot of money on private care if I wanted the level of service I got here in the US. If you also have health conditions and are dealing with health insurance, it’s a fun exercise to see how that would go in other countries. I recommend it as a data gathering exercise.

Happy 4th everyone!