DrEvil wrote:A friend of the family had a visitor from the US a few years ago. The visitor fell and broke her ankle, and then insisted for several days that she'd only twisted it and that she was fine and didn't need to see a doctor. It soon became pretty obvious that she wasn't fine and her friend eventually forced her to see a doctor.
Turned out she'd been pretty sure it was broken all along, but she was terrified of the medical bill (she didn't have travel insurance) and decided to just "tough it out" and walk around on a broken ankle until she got back to the US. She started crying when her friend finally managed to convince her that it wouldn't cost her a dime to get it fixed here.
When people are more afraid of the financial cost than the medical condition itself something is seriously fucked up. The health insurance industry needs to die in a fire.
norton ash wrote:Hey, I ALWAYS get out-of-country coverage when I go to the States. Too many tales of Canucks getting bankrupted because of a bad accident in the USA.
These posts nicely illustrate the barbarity of the U.S. health care system.
I was
blind with cataracts and it took me about 18 months of serious trying to finally get my eyesight back. In an examination room, one private-practice opthalmologist actually
laughed as he told me that if I "won the lottery or something" I should get the $16,000 surgery done. He accepted Medicare patients at the roughly 50% reimbusement rate—$8k instead of $16K—but never offered me any discount. His accountant offered me Chase Bank financing. The offhand laugh btw cost him $70, the balance on his $180 fee to look through his fundus camera and laugh at me.
Finally I was directed by an alert and conscientious state worker to an obscure program for cases like mine, and I had the cataract surgery done at no cost. However, I had to rush the process because the Republican legislature had already de-funded most of the program and scheduled it for shutdown.
(Another interesting thing about that doctor visit was his amazement that I wasn't on any prescription medicines for anything. He asked three times, "and no medications?" with a look of surprise and wonder.)
More recently, my state's administration of the ACA (the 'gold standard' they say) made it possible for me to get new teeth that I couldn't otherwise afford as a Murkin living in Murka. That turned me around to a degree regarding 'Obamacare'—I see it now more as the 'baby step' to properly socialized health care. A good friend was despairing over his teeth, and I told him to hurry and do what I did, because the barbarians will soon be pulling the rug out.