I Was Treated to a Foreign First World Public Health Care System
Last Friday I learned what it was like to be part of a civilized, first world health system.
I was in England, staying at my godmother's house, when I got slammed by one of my chronic migraines. When I get migraines I usually resign myself to a dark room, take my medication and wait for the nauseating pain and blurry vision in my left eye to dissipate.
As I rummaged around my suitcase to find my salvation, high doses of Trexamet and Naprosyn, I discovered that I had forgot to pack them in my rush to the airport. Not having my medication doesn't mean enduring one bad headache. It means enduring about three days of completely crippling head pain. Instead of panicking over my fate, I picked up the phone and called my doctor in NY. I thought she'd be able to call in a prescription. No dice. She actually didn't even call me back. Plus, as my godmother reminded me, she wouldn't be able to call in a prescription because she's not part of the British health system.
So I resigned myself back to my dark room, put a cloth over my head and tried to do what my mother always tells me: "go to another place." Well, my godmother came upstairs shortly afterward and suggested that she could take me to that other place... a National Health office.
Since I thought getting an appointment there would require a referral, at least a day's wait and an exorbitant amount of money, I told her not to bother. She called anyways, got me an appointment for the next hour and we were off to the neighborhood clinic.
It was amazing. I filled out paperwork with my New York address, waited five minutes, met with the doctor, got a prescription, walked downstairs to the pharmacy under the clinic and was back at my godmother's house an hour later. Believe it or not, I didn't have to pay a cent for the visit. I did, however, pay a "private" prescription price for the medication that added up to about $30 dollars.
I'm not denying that there are problems with the British system. My problem wasn't life threatening, but it was temporarily crippling. For people with deadly diseases like cancer there are documented frustrations over access to certain treatment. My great-uncle actually got sent home from a British hospital because there weren't enough beds that day. He was scheduled for open heart surgery... an operation he endured the following week.
There will always be problems in a system that takes care of millions, but that shouldn't preclude us from not giving millions their rights to proper health care. What Obama said about energy applies to health care: "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." From my experience the British system was good. It was also good to my great-uncle. Even though he was sent home, he was treated. His immediate family didn't have to haggle with insurers or cut costs. His country took care of him. America should be able to do the same.
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Why is this so hard to believe?
Sheep!!!!!
I love all the stories on this post. Everyone has a story. What is that saying about the U.S. policies concerning their citizens? It is a doggone shame.
My spouse was bent over with back pain. They tried to call the doctor affiliated with their health "plan" and the first question was, what kind of insurance do you have? Not even, what is your name?
My daughter finally had to leave this country (?) to go to S. Korea for a job because she could never find a job in the U.S. that also "provided" health insurance. I miss her terribly.
Part three of three: We should revert back to the DRG (Diagnostic Related Groups) system of paying for procedures and let hospitals pay for the infections they cause. Even the system in place to monitor hospital administration is corrupt. There is so much wrong with the current system and how providers are reimbursed (a National Injustice) that any change would be an improvement. How about all that money we gave to the banks and to the Federal Reserve fore which they are unable to account for? One of the $7.5 trillion would help. Lastly, our country has no threatening borders or neighbors and yet we spend more on the military machine that the rest of the world – if we were to use just 25% of the current military budget on universal health care all would access to health care. I actual fact it would also be good for our economy. If anyone reading this has any power in Washington please pass this comment on – the answer is simple unfortunately we are blinded by greed and the power of corporate America. A two phase system (commercial and government) can work and I can prove it!
Part two of three: Did you know that many deaths in the US could be avoided if procedures that were needed were not either held up or denied by insurance companies? Did you know the US has one of the worst mortality records in the western world? Its amazing, if you don’t have health insurance a visit to the ER could cost you $5k but if you have insurance the charge would be about $2k So, if you are poor and unable to afford the extortionate insurance premiums you have a $5k charge but if you have insurance but had to pay the full amount it would only cost you$2k – but because you have insurance you only pay a percentage of what the health plan pays (and that is only your ER deductible and most are only $50 to $100) – a big difference from some poor person who can’t afford health insurance and is asked to pay the full $5k cost of the ER visit. Now you tell me where the ethics is in this scenario. If we had a controlled system and I have written how that could be possible we could cut our healthcare cost in half while providing health insurance for everyone including illegal aliens.
Part One of three: I wrote a long letter to the AMA and Obama with my idea for a universal health plan (no reply as of yet). The sooner we take this equation away from greedy corporations the better. And please, you skeptics don't tell me the country will go bankrupt – of course we don’t have enough to pay for Medicare because the fund is continually raided to pay for other projects. Today, 35 percent of all procedures carried out (in-patient and out-patient) are unnecessary and 20 percent of all hospital charges are caused by the hospital; 15 percent of all charges to Insurance companies are fraudulent and there are some medical offices that bill for services not performed - under Medicare you are blacklisted if you are caught doing this? (which means if there is universal health care you would be out of a job).
Is there anyone here who lives in Holland.Ho
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My Wife's kidney's are failing. Her GFR is 12. We are hoping for a kidney transplant. I am her living donor. Last have past perhaps as many as a dozen tests already to be a donor. Last week I underwent the last of of these numerous tests to see if I can do this. It was a spiral CT scan of my kidneys. We are hoping to know the results shortly.
We are Canadians, and shudder every time we thing where we would be, financially as well as other metrics - were we Americans.
There is NOTHING so wrong with the Canadian system that any Canadian would want to change back to the way it was. Tommy Douglas is my hero, and the hero of all Canadians who have though about what is important in life.
In case anyone is interested we learned today that I am disqualified from donating a kidney to my Wife.
I passed everything I needed to. I have normal blood pressure. No heart disease, or cancer. I am the right blood type. There is no antibody incompatibility. Nevertheless I was eliminated at the last stage of the process. Spiral CT scanning revealed that I have bilateral kidney stones, meaning kidney stones in both my kidneys.
Despite myself being still willing to donate the medical advice we are getting is not allowing me to do this for my Wife. Unless I can change their mind. Which despite my large ego, I think rather remote.
I was her last chance for a living donor. Her options now are to go on the donor registry.
Currently, the average time on the registry is upwards of ten years before a cadaver donor may become available. Ten years on dialysis is an unpleasant prospect. As at 5 years the mortality rate is 50%.
Wish us luck.
While staying in France at a hotel, my husband came down with a bug that facilitated calling the hotel's doctor. The doctor arrived within 1 hour, saw my husband, prescribed a medication, and there was no charge for his visit!
Can you imagine this happening in the good old US?? It's time to wake up and realize we have all been taken for a ride!!
Many years ago my girlfriend and I scheduled a scuba vacation to the Bahamas. Shortly before the trip she was in an accident that required stitches above her eye and she was scheduled to have them removed the day after we left. Instead of re-scheduling, we decided to go and have them removed by a doctor once we got there. The day after we arrived, we located the local hospital and went to the emergency room to see what they would do. Two hours later we walked out and she said the doctor who removed the stitches was "more gentle and concerned" than the American doctor who put them there. Total cost - 0.00 dollars. Absolutely inconceivable in the American system.
And that's The Bahamas - an impoverished nation.
Geez - it's also:
Just REMOVING STITCHES! I went to a friend's house because my stiches were on my back and I couldn't reach - and she removed mine in less than 1 minute.
Get real. Two hours to wait for removal of stitches appears to be par for the course. Go Bahamas!
Having travelled extensively in the Caribbean, I have come to the conclusion that people who think of places like the Bahamas as 'impoverished' are ignorant and have clearly never visited them. Yes, there are poor people there, just like there are here, but there are wealthy people and middle class people just like there are here as well. The majority of folk are much happier and less stressed than you and me because unlike where we live, the sun shines every day, they are surrounded by breathtaking beauty and people are less apt to call perfectly happy, relaxed people 'impoverished' out of a misguided sense of superiority.
The question at the end of many of these posts are "When will it ever change?" The answer is that as long as big business is allowed to run the medical system and reap huge profits from the health of Americans, it never will. Big pharma, insurance companies and private hospitals love this system. It's been custom tailored for them over the decades. As the population increases and a larger percentage reaches the later years of life, they are hitting the jackpot. Their lobbiest are going all out to make sure this latest attempt to change the current system will result in nothing more than a watered down version of the promise of health care reform we so desperately need. And the greedy politicans, especially the Republicans who are the champions of big business, are lining up at the trough as usual just like the medical industry knew they would. They saw this coming and have been preparing for it since the Clinton era, they're ready. The question should be "Why would we trust the health of our nation to the Wall Street bankers of the medical world?"
You are right about that question. I'm not sure that this will ever change in the next several decades. As long as many people are able to get healthcare (that percentage could vary and even be a minority), the fact that the rest will live shorter lives and/or lose their life savings trying to get treatment, will be tolerable within the system.
And why will this be tolerable? I think that at its core it is because far too many people care far too little about their fellow man. It's that old 'what would Jesus do?' question. Most assume that if they work hard, and have reasonably affordable insurance, that they and their immediate family will be OK. There is also that puritanical element that allows people to assume that if one leads a virtuous life, they will be spared some of the miseries that befall others of less moral fiber. So the obese, the smokers, the druggies, the sexually promiscuous, etc, will suffer health problems due to their own bad choices. Of course the problem with this thinking is that almost every American makes bad health choices daily, but simply refuse to acknowledge their own situations. We are a nation of Mark Sanfords.
I wish I knew the solution to this problem.
I think that as long as we allow the health care problem to be linked solely to economics we are doomed to see failure.Th
Johnagain,
Sadly, I think you hit the nail on the head...a large part of the USA is "I got mine..peri
If I were younger...
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Politicians rail against a single payer system because they say it puts a bureaucrat between the doctor and the patient. Let's put this lie to rest. It doesn't I am an American living in Canada. The government hasn't interfered with me and my doctor. I have never felt like my health care has been compromised. What the anti-single payer camp IS actually arguing for is a system where a third party is allowed to make decisions on what health care is covered purely based on the basis of PROFIT. It's disgraceful. Granted, no system is perfect. However, given what I've experienced in Canada over what I experienced in all my years in the States, I'll take single payer, thank you. Let those politicians who want third party financially motivated insurers cover their health care. If politicians had to worry about whether or not a condition would be covered, whether coverage will be dropped because they get sick or whether they will have to endure financially devastating medical, they would not be trying to deny a single payer plan. Instead, they get fantastic taxpayer financed health care plan. That should be immediately taken away from them while this is being debated. Why should taxpayers fund this for legislators who are unwilling to let taxpayers have the same kind and quality of coverage? Take it way from them now. Don't give it back until the citizenry has the same plan.
I've spent most of my life living in the US, but retaining my CDN citizenship for that "rainy day"
as my parents wisely warned me about. And that rainy day came in 2004 and I dread to think
what situation I would be if I were still in the US. I've traveled the world making my living
in a biz that lends itself to injury, as well as being a migrainer (fortunately have grown out
of them with age). I've been treated for just about everything in hospitals in Japan, Italy,
Middle East., and have never had to pay for any treatment, and perhaps a bit for prescriptions.
The other big problem in the US is the Opiate Phobia that is leaving thousands of people
untreated in severe pain, at the whim of the DEA and Insurance Co's., just insanity!!
Wise up US, you're a third world country when it comes to taking care of your own!
lb.
My husband was in France several years ago and was hit with a brand new affliction - an anxiety attack. He went to a clinic, was properly diagnosed, given a fairly inexpensive script, and went back to his hotel room satisfied.
I have friend whose sister lives in Germany. She and her family enjoy a quality of life we would all love to have. Fresh food daily from a nearby market carrying local goods. They enjoy beautiful surroundings, high quality schools, great parks, and a national health care system in place that benefits all.
We lived in Germany, Italy, Spain for a total of 10 years. Two of our children were born in Europe. We used the public system. When we were not happy with our doctor (once), we simply changed docs. We used emergency rooms in small islands, small and large hospitals, clinics ... you name it, we used it. The myths are incredible ... a few stories here and there and it becomes fact. What about the countless Americans who cannot get the treatment they need and die. We all should have basic care and if you want more, then you should be able to buy it. We have a tiered system now ... but the tiers are two: healthcare and nothing (except, perhaps an emergency room). Come on, people ... do not fall for the B S.
A "bureaucrat " between you and the doctor is the favorite catchphrase of the republicans. No one mentions a worse, evil "bureaucrat" called the "insurance company" in between us and the doctors in the US. The insurance company bureaucrat gets a raise for every claim he/she denies.
Wonder if god would approve of this practice and jesus loving GOP doing something completely unethical for greed and profit is mind boggling.
Funny, all those GOP people on TV have lot of money and good insurance while the common man suffers. Yet the common mass of republicans support their leaders. I wonder if anyone of them went to a doctor and was denied treatment because of insurance company thugs. And if they were,will they think the same?
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