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.
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.