No Stupid Questions

I saw a tiktok recently with an american explaining that people just don't finish the course of antibiotics so they have an emergency stash. FACEPALM.

The emotional reaction I get to these stories is hard to put into words. It's a mix of deep sadness and incandescent rage. I just can't imagine being in that position and not wanting to firebomb a politician's house.

My little girl had a very high fever the other night and we were really worried about her, so we called the nurse on call hotline who advised us to wait and go to the urgent care centre in the morning unless she got suddenly worse overnight, then to head to emergency. It was all stressful enough just worrying about how sick she was. I can't imagine how much worse it would be having to worry about paying for any of those services on top of that.

It's dystopian as can be, the health care system in my country was one of the best in the world but has taken a major hit recently because of stupid ass politicians. Still it's miles better than in the US and if I'm ill I just go to a doctor I don't think twice about it.

Man, I live in shit country where opposition is killed every february and ruling party of oligarchs have been destroying my country's healthcare system for last 20 years, but I'm glad commies built it tough.

I've heard you even pay for ambulance.

Most of the time we don't think about it, because anything medical often comes with its own stress, so just thinking about that is front of mind.

It's only after the dust settles and we're all back home and safe that we might say something like "whew glad that's over! Can you imagine if we had to worry about money on top of that?"

Truly once you're used to single payer, the American alternative seems like lunacy. I cannot imagine the stress of combining some if life's biggest medical decisions with financial considerations

I'd go on but my socials timer is about to go

We wonder if that could happen to our healthcare services and what steps we can take to prevent it.

"Voting out Tory scum" is about what I'm left with.

I'm from the US, and I moved to Canada for 4 years for work. As a young adults, my partner and I had revolving medical debt. Not a ton, but enough to make it annoying. A couple thousand here and there. It felt like I was always had a hospital bill that we were trying to pay off. When we moved to Canada it was weird for us because, just as another person in here stated, you just didn't have to think about going to the doctor. I had major stomach surgery, we had a kid, we got monetary support for our other kid who's on the spectrum to take them to therapy... We got gtube supplies, meds for infections.... Anything we needed was covered. Not once did I think oh man, this is going to wreck us. Well, that's not true, I thought that the first time I took my oldest to the doctor to get an xray because we thought they might have broken a bone, but that was just a thought and it didn't actually cost us a penny.

Every time we went to our PCP, a specialist, or emergency, the only thing we had to pay for was parking and maybe a few bucks for pain meds. But each time we had to get pills it was less than $5 to fill the prescription. One of the kids fell and hit their head? Straight to the doctor. A cold that's been taking too long to go away on its own? To the doctor!

Now we are back in the US, and I just paid off another medical bill because my insurance only covered a small amount of an ECG, because they wanted to check make sure my kids heart was strong enough to put her on medication, and that the meds wouldn't kill her.

We should move to a single payer medical system.

that your country is the actual shit hole. The worst part is when people who do work, and have insurance get denied care or endebted because something is "out of range" or whatever the fuck it is you yankees call it.

I live in LATAM, and healthcare is good. I had ... "worker contribution" (mutualista) tier healthcare and private medical. Mutualista worked adequately, got my needs met, but the centers were a bit spaced out, ironically due to market competition. Similar problem with the private medical insurance, but it comes with lots of fancy bells and whistles (telemedicine, medical history app, wide variety of specialists to resolve issues etc).

I pay about $100 (monthly) and it covers everything. I never have to think about going to hospital, except "Let me see if I can avoid it by doing a quick video call"

There's also universal healthcare that covers everyone not in mutualistas or private medicine. It's not as well regarded, but at least it's there. If you are making tax contributions, you're on mutualista tier healthcare anyway. I don't think anyone hesitates to call ambulances or react properly in the case of a medical emergency.

What use is having 8 different burger chains when you get squashed by a train and you yell at people to not call an ambulance so you don't go bankrupt?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3P4LgpgLrA

Some experience of the UK system, I've called for an ambulance twice in the UK recently for what I consider (and any reasonable person would) to be an emergency. Both times I was told it would be about 4 hours wait and could I get someone to drive me to the hospital. My partner has been phoning her GP to try and get an appointment for over two weeks and keeps getting told to phone back 'in a few days' because they have nothing available for over a month, including phone consultation. I've experienced dangerous ineptitude from multiple NHS doctors. I've also seen corruption in that if you know someone who works in the right department you can jump queues. So I've learned from experience to go private if I actually need medical aid.

You know what I just fucking love?

People in the U.S. who say that it's fine if poor people don't have insurance because they can just go to the emergency room.

Not just because of stories like this, but because you can't go to the ER for chemotherapy.

Meanwhile, I have supposedly good insurance and have well over $10,000 in medical debt. I'm going to the Mayo Clinic in March, so that's going to soar.

Please invade us, Canada. Or Mexico. I'm easy.

Been in both the healthcare systems of the US and several European healthcare systems for many years.

I honestly don't know why Americans accept their healthcare system. It's insane. Everyone's worried about healthcare all the time. People pay excessively out of pocket for almost no coverage. And God forbid you get sick. Not only will you have to deal with the illness, you're also staring down a possible bankruptcy.

Edit: In Europe, you just go to the emergency room or the doc or the hospital. No need to look up anything. In most places you have a small healthcare ID card that you show when you check in. Many systems don't have any co-pays or deductibles. You just go and done. Some systems have a small co-pay for hospital stays or other services. In Germany, the co-pay for a hospital stay is €10 per day with a max of €280 per calendar year. In Denmark, there are no co-pays or deductibles for any healthcare service except dental. In Germany, most dental services are included without co-pays.

If you're an EU citizen and you need medical care in a different EU country than where you reside, you have a special EU health card that gives you the right to the same healthcare services as a citizen of the country where you are seeking treatment.

I'm getting the impression that a lot of foreigners think the American public generally supports the current healthcare system. We don't.

Complaining about our healthcare is practically a National pass time. We all want something better, but it's also one more problem in a burning pile of problems, which we have few tools to fix.

Some good news, is that we're making some small progress on that front. We're finally begging to rebuild our unions, which were dismantled decades ago, and the American public is becoming more politically engaged. Hopefully, these trends continuing a positive direction, and are resilient to being torn down again.

I remember an other US post of a guy who had done everything he was supposed to. Had insurance, had savings, had a well paid job.

Nonetheless, his whole family was in financial ruins when his wife got cancer. They had to move from the house and everything!

The fact that you don't think a $2-5k bil is a lot, just proves that this system does not work, especially because some people would not even be able to pay that back for years!

To me, this is hopeless. I'd much rather pay half of my salary in taxes and be sure that if something happens, it will be the only thing that happens and that I'll be taken good care of (and even my family will be offered help to cope). And in topnof that I get free education, 5 weeks free with pay, over 20 weeks paid maternity leave and pension. To me that sounds like a much better deal. The fact that others get the same by paying less does IMO not make it a worse deal.

The fact that you feel like the