Outpouring of Support
November 21st, 2006Three Cryptogon readers have sent donations since the big upgrade:
AP $20
JG $25
MW $20 <--- Core supporter, multiple donations over several years.
Thanks to all of you! These funds will be used to go toward paying for my New Zealand immigration medical screening, which I did yesterday.
You know you're not in the U.S. anymore when you visit a medical doctor and have a friendly conversation about various alternative medicine topics and Noam Chomsky. The next indication is when the bill for a full physical, the doctor filling out 16 pages of pure bureaucratic red tape, a urine test, several different blood tests, and a chest X-ray, with interpretation from a radiologist, costs about US$170.
Only US$170, for all of that! And that's the full out of pocket cost, because I'm technically a visitor here and don't have access to the national medical coverage yet! Can you believe it!? I was pleasantly shocked. I thought it was going to cost... I just didn't know how much. I knew it wouldn't be as bad as in the U.S., but the horror of the U.S. medical system is so ingrained in me that I just assume that any contact with a doctor means potential for bankruptcy. Nope. Not here.
And if Dr. B is reading, thanks so much to you too! I'll see you again once the blood tests and radiology report are finished.
Your amazement at the more sensible nature of medical care in other parts of the world rings a bell here in the Eifel:
On 01 May 2001, the year before my wife and I relocated to the rural forests & fields of her native Germany full-time, I broke my wrist during a day-trip to the reknown Mosel wine towns of Bernkastel-Kues. That is, of course, a worldwide holiday nearly everywhere — except the U.S.S.A.
The hospital right there in Bernkastel-Kues was nearly abandoned. I saw a grand total of four staffers the entire time I was in the building, which wasn’t very long. The woman at the front desk, the nurse who took the x-ray, the intern that set a temporary cast and the duty physician from deepest, darkest Eastern Europe.
Generally speaking, the process would have been familiar to anyone from a developed nation, with a few key exceptions.
The nurse/tech who took the x-ray actually fit all three views (vert/horiz/oblique) on a single sheet of film, rather than the standard two view I’d always seen stateside. She accomplished the same empirical end as an American tech, saving a sheet of film and cutting that cost right in half.
The doc, who was apparently the only one in the building at the moment, was highly competent and communicative, and when he discovered we had both a doctor (sister-in-law) and a trained ski patroller (yours truly) standing there, gave us an explanation of his diagnosis right there on the spot. Yeah, I know, it’s only a broken wrist, but his open attitude and lack of liability-driven fear was refreshing to this westerner.
Then came the real kicker. The pain. “What can you give me for the pain?” cries the wounded guy (it bloody hurt).
I will never forget his reply: “take a couple aspirin for the swelling now and a nice bottle of wine should be enough to handle the pain later.”
Not your standard approach on Planet Pharma. Admittedly, his coming from an area of the industrial world where herbology and other such “witchcraft” is still respected in the less “civilized” areas probably contributed to his prescriptive advice.
But wait, the story gets even better. We get home a week later, where I invoke my health insurance and visit a gregarious orthopedic who wants to know all about ski patrolling and spends way too much time talking to me, frustrating his nurses.
After the x-rays were completed (three views on two sheets of film) he replaces the ‘temporary cast’ — basically a full plaster splint for the lower arm and wrist — with a shiny black resin club good perhaps for security work at a concert, but not for typing (I’m a writer by trade).
Some weeks later a pair of bills arrive. The first, from Bernkastel, for a full-service holiday visit to the ER: $90 US. The orthopedic’s bill: over $400 US. That got my attention.
Better still, the stateside bill was “Paid in Full” by my insurer (Blue ******) without flinching. They contested the first bill, despite my following their reporting procedures for overseas service down to the last tiny letter.
In the end, they agreed to pay an “adjusted” $81 US, since their convoluted policies didn’t permit 100% coverage for such claims. Un-f’ing-believable, no?