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When my wife gave birth in Europe the 11 hour procedure, which apart from the traditional medical stuff, included massage and acupunture for relaxation, involve
by flexie 14y ago
When my wife gave birth in Europe the 11 hour procedure, which apart from the traditional medical stuff, included massage and acupunture for relaxation, involved a handful of nurses, 3 midwives, 2 doctors, an anesthesiologist etc. After the birth our little family stayed in the 300 square foot private room at the hospital for two days. We never saw any papers except the booklets the hospital gave us about having an infant. It was great and it was free.
Two years later my wife's sister gave birth in a top notch Manhattan hospital and my wife was there for support. Man, the stories she tells about how every part of the procedure was initiated with waivers being signed and questions asked about insurance to her sister who was squirming in pain and was several hours into labour. And how the impatient doctors tried to upsell her sister to a C-section... After that her sister shared a tiny room for a night with some other woman and was then sent home. Luckily, most of the 40,000 dollar bill was covered by her insurance.
- newbie12 14y agoThis is an indictment of the U.S. legal system, not the U.S. healthcare system.
- flexie 14y agoYes, it's kind of related, though, isn't it?
- carsongross 14y agoIt was not free. You didn't pay for it. There's a difference.
- flexie 14y agoSure we paid. Little by little, over our taxes. Our European income taxes are not higher than NYC's combined taxes, though, and European healthcare is vastly cheaper than American healthcare.
- carsongross 14y agoHow could you possibly know?
- flexie 14y agohttp://epianalysis.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/usversuseurope/ http://epianalysis.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/usversuseurope/
- carsongross 14y agoNo, I mean how could you possibly know if you paid for the service? I'm not going to defend the US healthcare system, which is a charming mixture of the worst aspects of monopoly markets and socialism.
- flexie 14y agoOK. It is a quick guess based on the taxes we have paid. Of course our taxes also went for other things like welfare, education, administration and defense, and as we all know many European governments have run deficits for years.
- jimbokun 14y agoI can't resist pasting this verbatim: "This leaves the last theory: do we pay higher prices for the same care? Among prescription drug costs, we pay far more than any other country, at least 20% more than Canada and over 60% more than New Zealand. For the same MRI’s and CT scans, we also pay more: $1,080 is the commercial average cost for an MRI in the U.S. as compared to $599 in Germany; at CT of the head costs $510 on average in the U.S. versus $272 in Germany. For a hip replacement, we again pay the most: $1,634 among public payers and $3,996 among private payers, versus $1,046 and $1,943 respectively in Australia. And physicians’ incomes are the highest: $187,000 on average among primary care doctors in the U.S. versus $93,000 in Australia; and $442,000 among orthopedic surgeons in the U.S. versus $154,000 in France." Here in the U.S. we pay roughly double FOR THE EXACT SAME PROCEDURES AND SERVICES. And, probably not coincidentally, doctors make roughly twice as much here as other countries. It seems we keep going round and round trying to attribute the differences between the U.S. and other systems to some philosophical differences, but the bottom line is we are simple being price gouged by an entire industry.