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
Worse than it used to be. Better than it will be. Not free because we pay it through taxes and medicines aren’t cheap.
Its nice. Paramedics and the hospital saved my life so im grateful.
UK.
Visit to doctor: free
Ambulance trip to hospital: free
Broken arm: free
Pregnancy care, maternity, birth, etc: free
Cancer treatment, including multiple rounds of Chemotherapy, surgery, post-op care, etc etc: freePrescription: about £10, but I get an annual fixed price unlimited pass which pays for itself in a month or three all the stuff I’m on.
Parking at the hospital: not free.Dentist: not free.
The dentist is still heavily discounted though
Very much so, yes.
They broke your arm for free. Next time it’ll be a leg. /s
And, how long is the wait for any of the free services for a typical UK resident?
Depends. My annual checkup needed to be booked weeks in advance, whereas when I rang them about a mole that started bleeding, they wanted a picture and when they saw it, they referred me urgently to the dermatology department. I had an appointment that Saturday and they froze it off, but the dermatologist didn’t think it was skin cancer. Since I was there anyway and it was annoying, it was bye bye mole. The NHS can move fast when it needs to. My aunt waited quite a while for her hip replacement but when my other uncle fell and broke his they did it straight away.
If you turn up at A&E (emergency room) at the weekend after pub closing time you’ll be waiting hours and hours, but they deal with the most urgent stuff first.
It used to be better before the conservatives underfunded it for a decade and a half, and having an anti-immigrant policy and restricting placed on UK training hasn’t helped the recruitment crisis any, but it’s still good and I didn’t have to mortgage my house to pay for my relative’s cancer treatment.
Privatisation ruins everything for everyone except the CEOs and shareholders.
If you’re going where I think you’re going with this I’d like to point out that wait times in the US aren’t exactly zero.
Better to have a wait then to not go at all because you can’t afford it.
I used to live there and the NHS wait times were lower than any I had in the U.S. with insurance. Probably depends on the area, and I’ve heard it’s worse than it used to be because the conservatives keep expecting them to do more with less.
There’s also no wasted time. If your appointment was at 9:30, you’d be called in almost right at 9:30. If you’re called into a room, you’re not going to sit there waiting for a nurse to come take your blood pressure and ask what’s happening so they can relay it to the doctor. When you’re done with the doctor, you leave. You don’t have to go pay or wait for someone to check your finances or any of that.
And their health insurance is better because it has to at least offer something the NHS doesn’t.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Japan. MRI $40. Basic doctor visit $5. Basic antibiotics $5. Almost all hospitals and clinics in the country are in-zone or whatever… There is no annual deductible.
$40?! Damn my last MRI was $250 out of pocket and that’s with typical employee health benefits. Hate this stupid country.
But we do pay about 9% of our salaries into the health system, which is mandatory. Just another tax.
Monthly visit for me costs ¥1,420 (9 USD). When I had a wisdom tooth removed at a big hospital it cost ¥7,040 (45 USD).
Basically, we pay 30% of the actual cost. But if you reach a predetermined amount (about ¥90,000) in a month, then you don’t pay any more (or something like that, there is a system, but you have to apply at the time or retrospectively and get a refund)
Also, prices are less for kids (depends on prefecture). A week in hospital for a preschool child costs about ¥4,000. Doctor visits and medicine are often free until elementary school, where each may go up to about ¥500.
Oh, and ambulances are free.
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.
Should not have opened this today. Was already depressed.
Canada here. I’m very thankful for it. I don’t think I’d survive if I had to individually pay.
I live in Germany. It can be a bit complicated…
I was encouraged to sign a “contract” with my GP saying I should always go to them first with any non-emergency issue and they’ll refer me to a specialized doctor. The idea is to have all my medical info in one place, which makes sense.So I was at work, pulling open a desk to wire up all the IT stuff, when something in my finger snapped.
I reported it to my team leader. He gave me an ice pack and told a colleague to drive me to the doctor.
The colleague asked me where to drive to, and I honestly had no idea. This is the first issue. I was expected to decide: Is this an emergency? It’s not life-threatening, but it hurt and started to swell quickly. How time-critical is it, in order not to lose use of the finger? Should I go to the hospital? Do I need an X-Ray? How the fuck should I know before a doctor looked at it?So I googled “X-Ray clinic” in my home town and found a big one. I waited in the phone queue while we started driving. Eventually I got through and they told me they only accept patients with referrals from a doctor.
So we re-routed to my GP, which is half an hour drive. When we got there and had found a parking spot, a sign at the door said that the doctor’s practice had moved to a new address the week before.
We drove to the new address. I talked to the receptionist. She told us that since this is a work accident, I need to visit my workplace’s approved doctor. She asked which one that is, and which insurance is responsible. I had no idea.So I called my team leader. He also didn’t know. He said he’d find out and call back. We waited.
After 15 minutes, we had the right address. It was a 30 minute drive in the other direction.
When we got there and had found a parking spot, a sign at the door informed us that the practice had recently moved.
We drove to the new address, which was another 30 minute drive, but within walking distance of my workplace. I was finally admitted to get looked at.By then the ice pack had long melted, my finger was swollen, hurting and throbbing, and the receptionist told me she can’t give me a new ice pack, only a doctor can. She then handed me a 4 page document in small print to fill out.
So I sat there, with a swollen, throbbing hand, filling out all kinds of info about me, my medical history, allergies, my work place info, insurance number, whether I had reported the injury, etc.Then I had to wait an hour, was given an X-Ray, and 10 minutes of a doctor’s time, who told me they can’t see what it is. I should come back in a week if it doesn’t get better, and then they’d give me a CT scan.
A week later, it was much better but not fully healed, so I didn’t go back. That was 6 months ago. I can use the finger normally and have no pain, but I can still feel it a little.I can’t decide if I am intensely jealous because your standard of health care and worker protection is so high that you and the people you work with, as working adults, don’t already know all of the forms of emergency care and which one is likely the least worst option for a given injury type.
Or am I more jealous of the idea that you went to emergency services for a minor injury like a sprained ligament in your hand, and your biggest irritation is that you didn’t know where to go to get it treated and not at being stressed out of your mind fighting with providers and insurance over who has to pay this massive debt.That’s genuinely the thing I’m most thankful for.
No matter where I go to get treated, I just scan my insurance card and all the financial stuff is taken care of.
Netherlands: 2x stage 4 cancer with 10 years difference, so constant checkups, and of course the 2 treatments. we have “eigen risico” (own contribution) here (385 eur per year), and due to the many checkups I always max this out, but that’s pretty much where it ends, everything else is covered by the state (well, my state health insurance). the treatments were of course FoC, incl all the scans, the chemo, an operation, etc. i can not imagine the stress somebody without health insurance must have, when facing something like this. there are things that health insurance doesn’t cover or not fully: dentist i bought extra coverage for, fysiotherapy is only covered max 10x per year.
Canada - All of that would be covered, prescriptions aren’t.
Seemingly more and more people want the American system.
That’s restarted. None of that is covered and we still have to pay for prescriptions. Who would WANT that?
It’s the near-culmination of a decades-long project to privatize healthcare. Governments defund and mismanage the public system to manufacture consent for privatization.
Simply wrong.
I suspect they’re sold on the idea that the public system costs them lots of money through taxes to cover people who abuse the system. Clearly, the solution is the American system where you save all that money on taxes, spend 3x as much on employer-sourced insurance tied to your employment while for-profit Healthcare services abuse the system.
It’s very difficult to understand what something actually is like until you’ve experienced it yourself. To anyone Canadians who want the insurance-driven racket they have down south, I’d would suggest you move there.
GER. I barely go to the doctor so I mostly pay for others and I love to. I earn enough to choose to get private insurance but honestly that juet goes against my ideas of public and collective insurance.
And in the other side I had to get an MRT some time ago. It seemed urgent so I got an appointment right away and the whole process has cost me 0 extra.
Canada
I stayed with my parents for a few days when my grandmother died. I was sleeping on the couch and mom my noticed I wasn’t breathing at regular intervals. She said I should get a sleep test when I flew home on Sunday.
I called my doctor on Monday, had an appointment on Wednesday, he sent a referral and I got called on Friday that there was a cancellation that night if I could make to the sleep lab for a sleep test. I had no plans so I paid for parking outside the sleep lab for the night.
I got a call Monday that my test results were back, went to an appointment a few weeks later. Paid for parking again. Was given a trial CPAP to use until a got another sleep test with the machine to get a proper pressure level. I was told not to drive until that test. I paid for subways and busses until that test a week later.
I went for another sleep test, I paid for a taxi since I wasn’t allowed to drive.
I got a machine, a paid $700 dollars and a portion was covered by the govt and then my extended benefits covered the majority. I paid maybe $150 in the end for my machine because I didn’t get the basic model that would have been completely covered.
In all I paid less than 200 for the CPAP and for parking. Everything else was covered.
In the years since I have had about 6 more sleep tests and that is only because my sleep apnea is complex central sleep apnea not obstructive. I have paid nothing for any of those tests or heart and brain scans that were involved. Just the occasional parking near a hospital.
I’ve paid for CPAP machines and masks but had them reimbursed by my extended benefits through work. If I wasn’t covered through work they would still be covered to a certain amount through provincial medical coverage.
Germany, due to politicians gutting it more and more and it needing reforms its going down hill systemicly.
But its better than having none!
