I’d like to know other non-US citizen’s opinions on your health care system are when you read a story like this. I know there are worse places in the world to receive health care, and better. What runs through your heads when you have a medical emergency?
A little background on my question:
My son was having trouble breathing after having a cold for a couple of days and we needed to stop and take the time to see if our insurance would be accepted at the closest emergency room so we didn’t end up with a huge bill (like 2000$-5000$). This was a pretty involved ~10 minute process of logging into our insurance carrier, and unsuccessfully finding the answer there. Then calling the hospital and having them tell us to look it up by scrolling through some links using the local search tool on their website. This gave me some serious pause, what if it was a real emergency, like the kind where you have no time to call and see if the closest hospital takes your insurance.
I didn’t read the article, but I read your story, OP. Your situation sounds shitty. As a Canadian, we take our kid to the doc when we feel it’s necessary. We live in a rural community and we don’t have a family doctor, so that usually means a trip to the ER, but we consider the cost in time (ie, how many hours will I have I take off work), rather than money.
I think it would be fair to say that we take our kids to the doc too often. I’m not proud of that, but I’ll happily pay taxes for other parents to do the same.
Having to think about price when your boy is having difficulty breathing sounds dystopian.
If you feel you need to take them, it’s not too often.
I agree wholeheartedly. That’s why I’m happy my taxes pay for me (and others) to hit up their doc.
Same story here in Australia.
That said our hospitals are in a bad state post covid and needs a lot of TLC