I'm a US citizen, people in other countries, what do you think when you read stories like these about the US health care system?

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.

someguy3,

Canada here: Unbelievable. It’s so foreign to me to pay for medical care.

And I always post this:

Frame Canada

Wendell Potter spent decades scaring Americans. About Canada. He worked for the health insurance industry, and he knew that if Americans understood Canadian-style health care, they might… like it. So he helped deploy an industry playbook for protecting the health insurance agency.

www.npr.org/2020/10/19/925354134/frame-canada

SwingingKoala,
@SwingingKoala@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Yeah, no, I don’t think about you.

Flumpkin,

what do you think when you read stories like these

Honestly they are so fucking sad I try to avoid reading them. Another example is this one: She Was Denied an Abortion After Roe Fell. This Is a Year in Her Family’s Life.

The monsters have been trying to do the same things in Europe though, UK has underfunded the NHS and healthcare in Germany is in deliberate decline too.

PoliticallyIncorrect, (edited )

Definitely, people health it’s a big business, big pharma sell a remedy they don’t sell the cure. There isn’t a better business than big pharma and privatized health care.

RememberTheApollo_,

Texas. She probably votes for people telling her she needs to vote against affordable anything, much less single payer health care.

monobot,

First thought is that you need to do that research aa soon as you move to the new house, change your insurance or job.

Second is obvious, strange county you have over there. But I guess most of the people are satisfied with that, as with paying for school.

wavebeam,
@wavebeam@lemmy.world avatar

i don’t think it’s reasonable to say “most of the people are happy with that”. Most people in the US are definitely NOT happy with how the medical industry or insurance works. But i do think it’s fair to say that most people don’t understand that voting for the guy that says they will prevent higher taxes is also working to keep the insurance system in place OR they would rather have lower taxes than better insurance (and are too dumb to realize that would be a net gain) OR they don’t vote at all.

PeckerBrown,

When you don’t have viable choices, that is most certainly NOT ‘being satisfied with that’.

Tinks,

The problem here is that hospitals do not remain under the same management consistently. Apparently I am responsible for knowing when each of the local hospitals changes administrations (because capitalism and they get bought out) and stops or begins accepting my insurance. When I first moved into my house the closest hospital did NOT accept my insurance, last I checked they do, but that was a few years ago, so who knows now. The hospital closest to me has changed names 3 times in the last 15 years.

It’s ridiculous that in an emergency that “when was the last time we checked to make sure that hospital takes our insurance” is even a question.

ferralcat,

We moved from America to see Asia years ago. We were just talking last week about how racist we still catch ourselves being. We have a sick relative at home who we talked about moving here. They’d be close to us so we could help. And healthcare here is cheap/free often and pretty good.

But there’s part of me that just thinks American = superior. No matter how long I live here I’m not sure it will ever go away. It’s been psychopathically programmed into me. “Yeah it’s expensive, but at least you’re getting a good doctor”. (I’ve had awful and great doctors in both countries) It’s infuriating to realize.

Baggie,

Good on you for realising though. I mean from an outsiders perspective America tends to push the exceptionalism narrative pretty hard, live there long enough and it’ll get into you sooner or later.

TheFriar,

You were conditioned, you’re not being racist. It would be racist if, say, you lived in the US and had an Asian doctor and demanded a white one.

Also:

it’s been psychopathically programmed into me

This really made me laugh. It’s hard to describe what I’m imagining, but, remember in the first matrix where they “download” information via needle in the back of the head? And you know how a video game character looks when the game is glitching? Like, one character is just freaking out, all of their animations happening at once? Kinda like two cartoon characters fighting in a cloud of smoke and limbs and heads just flying out random places? Well, I imagined a mixture of those two (three?) things. And dammit if I didn’t get a hearty chuckle out of it.

yeah,

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.

neomachino,

Back in the day I had a friend who ran essentially a fish dispensary and had a good connection on quality fish antibiotics. I would stock up on a bunch of stuff whenever they were making an order.

My numbers are surely off but I was paying something like $5 for ~500 amoxacillan, where at a rite aid or CVS you’d be paying, what $50 for 14 pills. The same ingredients, the same markings, the same thing. Just a lot cheaper for fish.

fne8w2ah,

Isn’t that how antibiotic resistance develops?

Coreidan,

Not really. Antibiotic resistance is mostly a thing due to how over prescribed it is, not from an extreme minority of idiots not finishing their dose

yeah,

exactly. :(

Adalast,

It is that pesky 99.9% effectiveness. That 0.1% that survived did so because they had some minor resistance. Rinse and repeat a few hundred thousand times and you have forced evolution. It doesn’t even take that long to happen in a population with the over-prescription rate we have had here. Something about the people in charge being undereducated religious ideologs who see expertise as a threat or fraud because experts make mistakes and learn from them.

whoisearth,
@whoisearth@lemmy.ca avatar

You think this is fucked. My son is type 1 diabetic here (Canada). In America people routinely ration insulin because of the cost

For those not in the know, a diabetic needs insulin constantly to survive. Failure to meet this requirement introduces a laundry list of complications that all end in death.

Despite this, they play Russian roulette with their lives not because they want to but because their government does not care about them.

It’s infuriating.

Also, worth noting that if you’re in the know, red Cross has deployed in America multiple times in recent memory. Something that used to be for “3rd world” countries deployed in the richest country in the world.

America is a failed state. People continue argue over the semantics of that definition but I will continue to argue it’s justified.

CurlyWurlies4All,
@CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net avatar

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.

clemdemort, (edited )
@clemdemort@lemmy.world avatar

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.

uis,

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.

maniclucky,

You do. And not a small amount, like an Uber. Hundreds of dollars, regardless of how far it goes. I’m sure there are markups for care received, but I’ve not been in one to know.

uis,

*out of pocket

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In,

Why doesn’t uber (or equivalent) do ambulances?

maniclucky,

Liability and drivers don’t want to clean up blood to start.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In,

For a higher fair, some may be happy to do so.

maniclucky,

I’m pretty sure the amount you’d have to increase it to break even with the new insurance you’d need and all the cleaning would rather defeat the purpose.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In,

That’s probably why uber ambulance doesn’t exist.

uis,

They don’t have doctors. Ambulance is not a glorified taxi.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In,

An ambulance is a very specific type of taxi.

Yes, you need an EMT and some equipment so the cost is higher than a taxi, but not the $500+ a ride currently charged.

uis,

How about 0 charged?

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In,

At that price some (particularly old) people use ambulances as a medical taxi service.

How about a fully refunded deposit on A&E admittance?

petrescatraian,

As a Romanian, I can say that at least you don't need to bribe the medics themselves and your kid is more likely not going to get any nosocomial infections after getting to the hospital.

Also, your medics don't leave the country for a better pay.

So it's a plus overall.

UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT,

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

Blackmist,

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.

AngryCommieKender,

It absolutely could happen on that side of the pond, and yeah. Globally we should be voting out anyone that wants to privatize healthcare. The US experiment has clearly been a failure for 99.99999999% of us.

Volume, (edited )
@Volume@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Drivebyhaiku,

I regularly fear for the Americans I have connected to since the days of covid stretched my group of friends more into online spaces.

One got beaten to shit by a bad boss when he tried to retrieve his tips. All at once he had injuries that kept him out of work, mental trauma and legitimate fear for his safety that meant he couldn’t return to his job but also because work and insurance are tied down there he was in an immediate precarity. He couldn’t return to work, the cops showed active disinterest in helping him press charges and his hospital bills blew through his savings… And because he had technically quit there was no EI safety net either.

I was struck so hard by the dystopian nature of it all. There is so much under the Canadian system which is just never a factor. I didn’t realize how free I actually was because I had never tied my considerations of my health to what job I chose or whether I was unemployed. I was used to my medical services bill just being this tiny expense I had set to autopay that was so small I didn’t even have to think about. They don’t even charge that any more.

All I ever had to do to get help was ask and it was freely given. I had no cause to ever question exactly how much of a blessing… How much of a privilege… that actually was.

rtxn,

Living in Europe, it’s easy to forget how much is covered by the national health insurance. I just had one tooth fixed, another pulled a few months ago, and getting a dental X-ray done in a few weeks. All 100% covered. My whole family got their COVID vaccines for free. My grandmother has issues with mobility, so the hospital sent a car to our house with her vaccines for free. I can just take a bike to the doctor and get a diagnosis or papers for further examination for free.

This is why I’m happy to pay taxes. I know that crooked politicians take their unfair share, but it also funds public services like healthcare.

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