As an American I’m curious what it’s like if you need to go to the doctor and how much you pay from say a broken arm to general checkup. Also list what country please
Norway - I think the basic way you and me think about anything health related are so vastly different, its hard for each of us to comprehend the others mindset.
Spain. I have private health insurance (it’s quite affordable here).
If you are dying, use the public services. They will do whatever it takes (under their material resources) to save you.
If you want comfort and probably reduce waiting times, go private. Public hospitals have long waits for anything that’s not immediately disabling/life threatening.
Example. My dad had a fall at home alone and broke his femur. He used his telemedicine device to call for help. When I got at his home, the paramedics were already there. They stabilised him, put him in ambulance and brought him to a public hospital. The same evening he had a titanium inserted. After five days in the hospital he was transferred to a recovery center.
Guess the cost?
Zero euros.
I hope your dad is doing better now.
Well, he passed five years after that so… no. But thanks anyway.
Canada here. I’m very thankful for it. I don’t think I’d survive if I had to individually pay.
Should not have opened this today. Was already depressed.
UK here.
Its better then America, but many fail to see that our NHS wasn’t given freely, we struggled for it, and year by year we loose more of it to privatisation. I am currently witnessing one hospital closure in my county, and this is happening across the board. Nhs Waiting lists are a hot topic across the country due in part to years of austerity measures.
UK
If you need urgent care, you get it and it’s almost always high-quality. If non-urgent, you might wait several months for an appointment. I’ve never personally had a problem with quality of care, only wait times. That’s one of the reasons the government is trying to reform the way we do cancer screening and prevention, because it’s hard to catch it early when it takes so long to be seen. The NHS is not in a great state currently, but it’s getting better and we’re definitely better off with it than without it.
Sweden. Doctor’s appointments cost ~€30, normally capped at ~€150 per year. There’s a cost ceiling for drugs at ~€300 per year. Urgent care is free. Dental is subsidized but only free up to age 19. The care itself is fine, there are multiple research hospitals and if you’re in a real bind one of the best research hospitals in the world.
I’d gladly pay higher taxes for better healthcare.
Aus.
I’m waiting for minor surgery. Basically every 6 months or so they make me come to the hospital to talk to a nurse or doctor or whatever, it’s pretty pointless. Ends with them saying “yep you need surgery” then I go back to waiting. No idea when I’ll actually get it done, should be any year now.
If I got private insurance I’d have to wait a year before cashing out, so I’m fine not paying anything and waiting a bit longer. If I had known I’d be waiting as long as I have I might have opted for private, but there isn’t any solid timeline given for waiting times.
Everything outside of that is quick and easy. Go to gp, get referral, see specialist. No roadblocks at all, but the specialists likely cost a couple hundred bucks. Medication is pretty cheap, usually $10-20 for a month’s supply of anything you need.
Mate, It took them 4.5 years to get my hernia done, then another year to do it again cos they fucked it up. Basically if it’s not going to kill you soon they’re not super interested.
But yeah, everything else is pretty accessible and affordable. I reckon there’s a lot of hypochondriacs who take up too much of the systems time though.
I’m in the US and a common thing detractors will point to is that socialized medicine means having to wait.
I respect your privacy but if you feel willing to share I’d be curious as to the nature of the surgery. Seems the doctors think you need surgery and you have to wait, I’m mostly curious what impact the waiting has for you. I’m assuming it’s some amount of hardship, because you went to the doctor for it in the first place, but on a scale from “my shoulder hurts when I do X” to “I’m completely incapacitated” where do you feel like you land?
Does the system prioritize in some way? Are more minor surgeries further out than more serious stuff? I would imagine, but I’ve only ever been in this system so I’m curious how they decide who has to wait another few months.
In my limited experience here in the US, my entire adult life ive had what would normally be referred to as “Cadillac insurance” (this is the highest level of insurance paid for by an employer) I’ve also had to wait months for procedures and then pay thousands out of pocket along with the $20k or so we pay every year in monthly premiums.
But waiting 6 months then told to wait another 6 and another and another, does seem dreadful. I think the longest me or my spouse have needed to wait for a procedure is on the order of 6 months but it would be scheduled within that window. Although for some reason just getting in to see a doctor can take month or two (always quite frustrating when you are ill and they will see you next month, let’s hope it doesn’t last that long) but then you have expensive supplemental care like urgent care.
In any event, I’m more curious than anything having only had experience with US healthcare, fun stuff like fighting with insurance to pay for anesthesia for surgery because, yes Doris, it is a medical necessity.
Thanks for reading, hope you get the care you need soon and that you aren’t in too bad shape in the meanwhile.
I couldn’t say how it works because public health insurance is basically invisible when you’re using it. When I see the hospital it’s for them to assess when I should be booked into surgery.
I have a hernia affecting my upper gi. Negative symptoms are easily treatable with medication, however over a long time (like 10+ years) it may cause other issues in the surrounding area, some that could be precursors to cancer, disease, etc.
That’s all I know tbh, I haven’t really cared enough about it to find out what the deal is. Maybe they have a quota for how many of these types of surgeries they can perform in a year based on their budget, and more life threatening stuff eats away from that quota. This would make sense as to why they aren’t able to give me a timeframe until I’m high enough on the waiting list that more serious injuries aren’t likely to push me back.
i live in Canada and it’s a constant struggle to keep it afloat, we have our own brand of braindead morons we call maple maga that actively try to sabotage it at every possible opportunity…
what we do have is pretty good for basic coverage, but it excludes mental and *most *dental, and you still need insurance through work for costs of medicine etc. that being said, all hospital visits, stays, and treatments receive no billings.
just ‘getting’ universal healthcare isn’t enough, you have to fight for it, and you have to fight to keep it.
Latvia, a country where 1000 EUR after tax is considered a decent salary, but realistically you need to earn above that to live comfortably. There is a certain budget and quotas for government-funded procedures and appointments. For in-demand things it runs very fast. It’s normal to have to get an appointment for non-urgent things 3-6 months in advance to get a partially funded price, then it usually costs less than 10 EUR per. Non-subsidized appointment slots are generally available very fast, but can cost anywhere form 25 to 90 EUR depending on the doctor, clinic and so on. Blood test subsidies are also very few and far between. I think I can only get one subsidized TSH test a year. There are private health insurance plans that generally cost triple digit sums per year. Not worth taking it privately as they will not cover existing chronic health conditions, but can be great if arranged through and partially covered by the employer. These insurances return part of the costs that patients pay out of pocket for these non-subsidized expenses. I think the rising popularity of these plans are partially to blame for 2-3x increase in medical appointment costs over the past 10 years.
Every now and then I see old people trying to register for appointments at the clinics and being astonished that they’ll have to either wait for half a year or to pay 1/10th of their pension to see the doc in a couple of weeks.
I don’t know that much about urgent procedures. I believe the ambulance rides are covered if the medical emergency is deemed serious enough. Surgeries and hospital stays are also partially covered for a time, especially in serious cases.
Austrian here: medical debt does not exist.
Both my boys broke their arms snowboarding (a couple of years between each accident), costs for the first one were none because we went to a regular hospital (including everything from setting the bone to cast to regular checkups, cast removal and clean bill of health report). Son #2 had to go to a private clinic. Which was still subsidized by our national healthcare provider, so I only paid 65€ for x-ray, setting the bone and the cast. Checkup and removal back home were free.
GP visits are fully covered. Some medication is subsidized, but not everything. I rarely pay more than 10€ for a box of pills of any kind, even if I get them without a subscription (for instance sea sickness in my case). Our docs recommend various exams the older you get to catch any budding cancer cells before they can cause too much damage (Prostate exam, Mammogram, Colonoscopy, …). All covered.
Dental depends. Fillings are covered, if you go for the cheap (bad) ones. Anything beyond that will cost you. Orthodontics depends on age. For kids up to 18yo it’s completely free. Adults have to pay. Don’t ask me for prices though.
Pregnancy/birth: all covered, including all necessary exams.
If a parent is insured (i.e. employed), their kids are covered as well automatically.
Never in my 45+ years have I ever had to wonder if I could afford a medical procedure. Sure, there’s a big lump of money removed from my paycheck every month (minimum employment period is a month, you can’t fire people with shorter notice except when they messed up royally). But it’s the same for everyone in the same salary bracket (more income = higher share; does not change level of care), and it is a guarantee for social peace.
UK
I have never paid anything for any kind of medical care. I do pay for my medicine prescriptions, which coat about £10 when I need them, which is infrequent.
They are essentially capped at something like £120 per year if you did need a lot.
I’m never sure how to answer this because the concept of universal healthcare being a debate is strange to me, often it seems to coincide with “free” healthcare debates but the two seem quite different to me. Isn’t healthcare universal in countries like the US too? The problem being rather that it will bankrupt your family for 3 generations if you have to actually use it unless your employer values you staying alive instead of using the threat of death and disease as leverage to make you work harder for less pay. But that’s more a problem of universal insurance rather than universal healthcare itself, right? Anyone could still get treated if they accept the financial consequences. The system sucks, but still seems universal to me (again, universal insurance is the problem).
It’s not free over here, but everyone needs to have health insurance, and you get some subsidies to pay for it if you have a very low income. After a few decades of neoliberalism the subsidies are not sufficient, there’s an amount each year that you have to pay yourself, and hospitals are permanently nearly overwhelmed. But the financial amounts are much smaller compared to what someone in the US would be faced with (150-200 euros/month insurance, max 450 euros/year you have to pay yourself). There are waiting lists but despite memes I’ve seen of “yeah it’s more affordable in Europe but they never get treatment due to waiting lists”, I’ve never had to wait for actually urgent care, stuff I could do any time had some wait time but nothing crazy (few weeks, rarely 1-2 months for very in-demand optional stuff), and I believe overworked hospitals with crazy waiting lists are still much worse in (some) American hospitals compared to here. But I’m basing that off tv shows and movies where people have to wait for hours in the emergency department, not sure how realistic that is. By the way visits to the GP are free and I’ve never had to wait more than a day for an appointment. When I had something more serious I could stop by the GP instantly regardless of the appointment schedule.
Basically if you compare it to the situation a few decades before it’s worse, and some other European countries have better systems IMO. Compared to the US, which is the only country I know of where universal VS non-universal health care is a topic of debate, i can’t think of a single dimension in which it is not an upgrade, perhaps with the exception of shareholder profits (but even then a full economic argument wouldn’t work based on that, because sick or dead citizens don’t work very well).
Netherlands
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I have nothing meaningful to add here about the discussion, but I wanted to say I got an opportunity to cycle around Belgium last year through several towns and the countryside and it was such a great experience. Everyone was nice, and it was a wonderful time. As someone from the USA, I’m envious.
Brazilian here. You just go to the nearest UPA (many general clinics around town) and get your arm patched up. Sure, there will be a line.
Onde I cracked my head and went to one, they didn’t let me wait, in 30 min I had the stitches already
