4 ms·

That is most certainly not the experience I've had with nationalized health care in Europe. Sounds like an implementation problem more than anything.

dbg31415 8y ago
Happy you've been happy. I'll add another thing to my experience in Australia. As an immigrant, I'm not covered by national health care. Taxed at a higher rate, plus paying for a visa, and a small fortune if I apply for a PR... and they do nothing to cover me during this time period. Employers don't cover people here, so all I can get is private insurance. But... private insurance doesn't really cover anything for a year after you pay for the tier you want. So you can get like just emergency coverage -- things like simple ER visits, but things like minor surgery, or anything they can deem is a "pre-existing" condition will take a least a year of paying premiums before you're eligible for benefits. Things like an appendicitis are not covered, there's a cap of like $5k or something on everything in the first year. Luckily I didn't need much coverage... but I'm the best plan I can find here, and if you get seriously ill the first year you're over here you're really just fucked. There's medical screening before your visa can be accepted, but they don't at all cover you if you get in trouble here. An American friend needed hernia surgery, and he had to pay entirely out of pocket because his insurance wouldn't cover it. Health care... not like it's a regular service you can price compare when you need treatment. You just say, "Fix it!" and I think it cost him something like $18k to have the surgery. Mind you he had health insurance, but, again, it doesn't cover anything the first year you have it. And it's next to impossible to get anything around mental health covered, even with the top tier private insurance here. Want to maintain your prescription of Adderall? Good luck finding a doctor here who will give you a script. It's all pretty shitty. On top of that... it's all a digitized system, where the government gets full access to your records. There's a question on the visa applications if you've ever seen a psychiatrist. The lawyers strongly caution you not to answer yes on it, as it supposedly makes it harder to get a visa approved... but since it's all data the state has access too... pretty hard to keep any of it a secret. Anyway look, is the US perfect? No, and I've never been through immigration in the US. But the Australian system is pretty far from perfect. Take people, put them a billion miles away from their friend and family, and then penalize them for getting homesick and seeking mental health... that's insane. (= I've ranted enough, but a lot of this strikes home for me. I've come to the other side of the world so I can score my long-term medication, medication that something like 10% of the people in the US are on, illegally from prep school kids. That's my experience with the Australian system.
sisu2019 8y ago
thats kind of the issue though. If or when the implementation goes wrong you wont have any other options. In one case the UK's NHS even prevented parents from going abroad for treatments for their terminally ill child. And there won't be any transparency because the people administering the system have all the power and don't like being embarrassed. Meanwhile then public schools and public broadcasts will bang the drum for that system on a daily basis making sure most citizens feel dependent on it, no matter how bad it really is. And just to make it real, I personally know someone who was told to wait half a year for an appointment. They personally knew a doctor who told them "you can't wait that long, I am going to pull some strings". Turns out it was cancer. This is in Germany, btw, and it's not an isolated case.

dbg31415 8y ago

Happy you've been happy. I'll add another thing to my experience in Australia. As an immigrant, I'm not covered by national health care. Taxed at a higher rate, plus paying for a visa, and a small fortune if I apply for a PR... and they do nothing to cover me during this time period. Employers don't cover people here, so all I can get is private insurance. But... private insurance doesn't really cover anything for a year after you pay for the tier you want. So you can get like just emergency coverage -- things like simple ER visits, but things like minor surgery, or anything they can deem is a "pre-existing" condition will take a least a year of paying premiums before you're eligible for benefits. Things like an appendicitis are not covered, there's a cap of like $5k or something on everything in the first year. Luckily I didn't need much coverage... but I'm the best plan I can find here, and if you get seriously ill the first year you're over here you're really just fucked. There's medical screening before your visa can be accepted, but they don't at all cover you if you get in trouble here. An American friend needed hernia surgery, and he had to pay entirely out of pocket because his insurance wouldn't cover it. Health care... not like it's a regular service you can price compare when you need treatment. You just say, "Fix it!" and I think it cost him something like $18k to have the surgery. Mind you he had health insurance, but, again, it doesn't cover anything the first year you have it. And it's next to impossible to get anything around mental health covered, even with the top tier private insurance here. Want to maintain your prescription of Adderall? Good luck finding a doctor here who will give you a script. It's all pretty shitty. On top of that... it's all a digitized system, where the government gets full access to your records. There's a question on the visa applications if you've ever seen a psychiatrist. The lawyers strongly caution you not to answer yes on it, as it supposedly makes it harder to get a visa approved... but since it's all data the state has access too... pretty hard to keep any of it a secret. Anyway look, is the US perfect? No, and I've never been through immigration in the US. But the Australian system is pretty far from perfect. Take people, put them a billion miles away from their friend and family, and then penalize them for getting homesick and seeking mental health... that's insane. (= I've ranted enough, but a lot of this strikes home for me. I've come to the other side of the world so I can score my long-term medication, medication that something like 10% of the people in the US are on, illegally from prep school kids. That's my experience with the Australian system.

sisu2019 8y ago

thats kind of the issue though. If or when the implementation goes wrong you wont have any other options. In one case the UK's NHS even prevented parents from going abroad for treatments for their terminally ill child. And there won't be any transparency because the people administering the system have all the power and don't like being embarrassed. Meanwhile then public schools and public broadcasts will bang the drum for that system on a daily basis making sure most citizens feel dependent on it, no matter how bad it really is. And just to make it real, I personally know someone who was told to wait half a year for an appointment. They personally knew a doctor who told them "you can't wait that long, I am going to pull some strings". Turns out it was cancer. This is in Germany, btw, and it's not an isolated case.