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.
Which is actually not that much, based on my January payslip, 680 EUR have been removed from my paycheck to fund the government health/retirement/unemployment system (Which is based on my income, and I have a decent salary). There is also a part which is paid directly by the employer (and not visible on my payslip) so let’s say 1000 EUR a month. However, I keep coverage if I loose my job, and my highest left to pay was around 70 EUR for some imaging test (If I remember well total cost of the scan was 700 EUR with a 10% copay, and to answer the other question, got an appointment within 2 weeks). Note that the coverage would be the same (but way cheaper) for a minimal wage worker, and that I could get a private insurance to cover the deductible.
US conservative are right when say that Universal healthcare is expensive but I am rather having 700 EUR out of my pay check every month and not worry about getting medical care when I need it.