> A true poor healthcare nation would be somewhere where no amount of money could buy you any effective treatment.
That's precisely the worry here! If we don't keep COVID-19 spread low enough to stay within hospital capacity, no amount of money will be able to buy you treatment. Non-critical surgeries are already being postponed everywhere, even surgeries for earlier-stage cancers [1] – no matter how much you're willing to pay. Granted, not the normal case, but I'd consider ability to respond to pandemics part of the quality of a nation's healthcare system.
Hate to break it to you but even with COVID-19 people will still have to go to doctors and hospitals for other things completely unrelated to coronavirus.
Yea if you have coronavirus it may be hard to get treatment specifically for that but if you break an arm or crack a skull you can still go in for an X-Ray and cast.
If it's something that requires a hospital, it's very likely that you won't be able to. You'll be triaged in a tent outside the hospital. If it's something your family physician can do in his/her office, you might be ok there.
That's precisely the worry here! If we don't keep COVID-19 spread low enough to stay within hospital capacity, no amount of money will be able to buy you treatment. Non-critical surgeries are already being postponed everywhere, even surgeries for earlier-stage cancers [1] – no matter how much you're willing to pay. Granted, not the normal case, but I'd consider ability to respond to pandemics part of the quality of a nation's healthcare system.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/us/coronavirus-covid-surg...