What made the hospital not particularly great? I've heard of people complaining about the food, or the fact they had to share a room, or the luxury of the seats etc, but to me those don't matter unless you're in hospital a lot.
I'm American, living in Sydney. I have medical conditions which are controlled by daily medication, so I've had to visit doctors and chemists here in Australia. I also had a bad allergic reaction shortly after I got here, which led to spending about eight hours in hospital - of course my reaction started at about 8:00 PM, so I got the best part of being in a hospital anywhere, the overnight shift
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Thanks a lot for sharing! Your last paragraph, I'm a little confused with the 'except we paid ...' section- was that here or in the US?
Do you think it's true that people 'expect' a higher level of medical care in the US than people here would get? Like, attention paid to them by nurses, being able to see a doctor in a hospital for something trivial, noise, sharing a room, etc? I personally don't see how the actual medical treatment can be worse in either country, once you get the treatment. How about things like picking doctors? Here, we can pick doctors, there is a choice, unless you're just coming in off the street, but maybe we can't pick and choose as much as in the US. And apparently in the UK you are supposed to go to the local ones. But that makes sense to me. It's like how you can't send kids off to a random public school 30 minutes away when there's a few nearby your house, and still expect to get in automatically.
We paid $62 here - it would be more without insurance in the US.
With insurance in the US, you can pick your doctor from a list the insurance company will cover. Not all insurance covers all doctors. My last doctor in the US I picked because she was close to my home, but I picked a specialist because they were close to my work, and I expected to usually be making appointments for after work.
As for what I 'expect'.. I don't know how it would differ between countries, really. I expect to be treated with dignity and respect, I expect my doctors to know enough to treat me effectively, I expect modern, up to date treatments. As for noise and room sharing.. not such a concern, really. My concerns are more for the US system, where I'm very concerned I would not get newer, more expensive treatments if I don't have good insurance or enough insurance. At many emergency rooms, they check your insurance status when they take your complaint.
I'm very interested in reading the responses to this...one of the major reasons we're thinking of emigrating from the US is that healthcare here has become unaffordable.
Hopefully there'll be lots of responses. Lots of these people's arguments against what I was saying sounded completely disbelieving, and were more to do with their own current systems not what we have here which could possibly work over there. They were also saying it wouldn't possibly work, because apparently we 'ration' medical treatment, and also were implying that our treatments weren't good, that our hospitals were bad, basically. *sigh* Yeah some are better than others but it's hardly 'horrible'.
I have multiple friends here in the US who are, or have spouses in, high-paying tech jobs and who are not getting treated for cancer because they can't afford insurance or their insurance won't cover it. I have friends with parents not being treated for life-threatening diseases because the actuarial tables say, "They'll probably die within a few years anyway; why bother?" We just got private insurance (expensive!) because an increasing number of contract jobs here weren't providing insurance at all and we couldn't afford to turn down jobs based on ever-dwindling benefits.
I won't even go into the hospital horror stories that I know of firsthand. Suffice it to say that I want to stay out of hospitals.
Many individual providers are so hog-tied by the system that they are electing not to have insurance contracts...but are still charging insurance-high rates.
Despite the fact that it's possible to get outstanding treatment here, as a system goes, it'd be hard to do worse.
Yeah. When I told my English friend that 'these republican girls are saying that well, medicare/nhs won't pay for everything, people will get turned down sometimes' he said 'And don't you think the insurance companies in the US are doing *exactly the same thing
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I have a chronic disease which, well, sucks, and requires a lot of medical attention. I know some people in Europe and America who have the same thing (or at least they're very sure they do, due to small tests such as blood tests etc) but can't have the final test because it involves invasive surgery and with their system, they just can't pay.
I've also recently been tested for cancer, the first test cost $400, and the gap was only $100. I got in for this test four days after I requested it (because that's the only day the doctor worked there). The $300 went back into our account instantly due to a new system at that clinic.
We could have it a LOT worse. ...does that help? ;)
In my (admittedly very little) experience with Medicare it's very good. A quick appointment with the doctor (who was at one of those semi-urgent surgeries you call up a day ahead for an appointment) cost about $50, course of antibiotics was $30ish and I got about $39 back from Medicare. My only problems came about more with the individual doctor I saw.
He was very abrupt and literally five minutes after I walked through the door I went back out again. However: it was only a cough, and after listening to me breathe he prescribed antibiotics. I don't think they helped much, but it's not a horror story.
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I've heard of people complaining about the food, or the fact they had to share a room, or the luxury of the seats etc, but to me those don't matter unless you're in hospital a lot.
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Your last paragraph, I'm a little confused with the 'except we paid ...' section- was that here or in the US?
Do you think it's true that people 'expect' a higher level of medical care in the US than people here would get? Like, attention paid to them by nurses, being able to see a doctor in a hospital for something trivial, noise, sharing a room, etc? I personally don't see how the actual medical treatment can be worse in either country, once you get the treatment. How about things like picking doctors? Here, we can pick doctors, there is a choice, unless you're just coming in off the street, but maybe we can't pick and choose as much as in the US. And apparently in the UK you are supposed to go to the local ones. But that makes sense to me. It's like how you can't send kids off to a random public school 30 minutes away when there's a few nearby your house, and still expect to get in automatically.
Reply
With insurance in the US, you can pick your doctor from a list the insurance company will cover. Not all insurance covers all doctors. My last doctor in the US I picked because she was close to my home, but I picked a specialist because they were close to my work, and I expected to usually be making appointments for after work.
As for what I 'expect'.. I don't know how it would differ between countries, really. I expect to be treated with dignity and respect, I expect my doctors to know enough to treat me effectively, I expect modern, up to date treatments. As for noise and room sharing.. not such a concern, really. My concerns are more for the US system, where I'm very concerned I would not get newer, more expensive treatments if I don't have good insurance or enough insurance. At many emergency rooms, they check your insurance status when they take your complaint.
Reply
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Lots of these people's arguments against what I was saying sounded completely disbelieving, and were more to do with their own current systems not what we have here which could possibly work over there. They were also saying it wouldn't possibly work, because apparently we 'ration' medical treatment, and also were implying that our treatments weren't good, that our hospitals were bad, basically. *sigh* Yeah some are better than others but it's hardly 'horrible'.
Reply
I won't even go into the hospital horror stories that I know of firsthand. Suffice it to say that I want to stay out of hospitals.
Many individual providers are so hog-tied by the system that they are electing not to have insurance contracts...but are still charging insurance-high rates.
Despite the fact that it's possible to get outstanding treatment here, as a system goes, it'd be hard to do worse.
Reply
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I've also recently been tested for cancer, the first test cost $400, and the gap was only $100. I got in for this test four days after I requested it (because that's the only day the doctor worked there). The $300 went back into our account instantly due to a new system at that clinic.
We could have it a LOT worse.
...does that help? ;)
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Or was it more just chance.
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