• fiercekitten@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Facing a long wait for top surgery through New Zealand’s public health care system, a transgender teenager desperate to transition attempted a life-threatening mastectomy on himself.

    A lack of funds for private gender-affirming care combined with the “significant psychological stress of having breasts at an upcoming pool party, pushed him to try the surgery himself,”

    If you have to wait a year or more for medical care, and you cannot afford to jump the queue by going to a private practice, then I would argue that he is, in fact, being denied care.

    Delayed care can absolutely be denied care, even if the delays aren’t intentionally weaponized against the patient.

    • sudneo@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Unfortunately healthcare is expensive and delays are not unusual. Italy has decent public healthcare overall, but my mom was still required to wait 9 months for a cat scan after a suspected stroke. It is the reality of many public facilities where funds get continuously slashed. If people wait for months and months for procedures needed for life-threatening conditions, I don’t see how other procedures (which are lower priority I would say) could not be delayed until much more funding is allocated to healthcare (which unfortunately is not very likely…).

        • sudneo@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          True, but 10 years doesn’t seem to be a “queue” problem, I bet there are obstacles of different nature (like hoops to jump, additional agreements to get etc.), which all together lead to 10 years waiting. 9 months it was instead literally just the queue for a single test.

          That said, someone who might have had a stroke might be dead in 9 months.