The emergency room bill I can’t stop thinking about.
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.
I think I hope the right wing political parties where I live don't manage to dismantle what little functioning public healthcare we do still have.
A friend of mine recently moved to the USA from NZ and was saying the healthcare is generally better if you're employed and get decent insurance. And while that's true for non emergency stuff at least in an emergency you don't need to stress about whether the ambulance takes you to an in network hospital in NZ.
Your friend just hasn't gotten bitten yet. You could have a million in the bank, cash, get sick and burn it up in no time. I blow basically every dollar I make because I think you'd have to be an idiot to grind and save up, unless you're really wealthy, it can all go poof in an instant thru no fault of your own.
I ain't suffering for the chance I might get to stop working now. I'll enjoy my scraps now, and when it gets too be too much, I'll paint the ceiling red.
Ok well, it's my life and it works for me, I have health issues that make living to a high age an unlikely proposition, and the chances I'd lose everything to medical costs anyways extremely likely.