"Am I a bad person?" Why one mom didn’t take her kid to the ER — even after poison control said to.
www.vox.com
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.

  • ladicius@lemmy.world
    61·
    9 months ago

    That system is shit and a danger to the people and to the unity a nation needs.

    In Germany we don’t even think about this system when we are ill - we simply go to the doctor whatever it is, and we call an ambulance if it’s necessary. Not a single thought.

    • Miaou
      4·
      9 months ago

      Unless you’re a woman though :)

        • lucullus@discuss.tchncs.de
          5·
          9 months ago

          Maybe Miaou meant the gender gap in medicine. The big difference in studies looking at the medical details (for example of drugs) in female bodies vs in male bodies

          • Miaou
            2·
            9 months ago

            Also general conservatism. Is there any western European country where abortions are still illegal besides Germany?

            Edit: just checked, Italy and Portugal are not doing well either. But those countries don’t pretend to be progressive so no surprise

              • Miaou
                1·
                9 months ago

                Up until 2 years ago it was illegal for doctors to advertise they performed abortions.

                And there’s a difference between abortion being legal, and it being decriminalised (as if the case in Germany)

            • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
              3·
              9 months ago

              The only western European country where abortion is illegal is Malta.

              Only 2 countries legalised it in the last 34 years (Ireland and Northern Ireland)

              Everyone else has had abortion legalised before 1990

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
              2·
              9 months ago

              Portugal doesn’t pretend to be progressive? They legalized all drugs. They’ve also allowed people of the same gender to marry since 2010.