USA. Others have covered cost but I’d like to add how long it takes to see a doctor.
I have an established primary care physician that I’ve seen for years. Now though if I want an appointment I have to wait at least two months. So I have a membership with an urgent care near me that puts a $180 cap on visits to their chain of urgent cares. There is obviously no on going care with them but most of the time that’s okay.
A friend of mine doesn’t have an established PCP and to get one he must wait at least a calendar year….
I haven’t seen my pcp in like 3 years. $200 to go in for no reason and have them tell me I’m fat? No thanks.
I should probably diy bloodwork though just to make sure I don’t have elevated white blood cell counts or sth
Edit: the wait for pcps is structural bc they don’t earn the same exorbitant salaries as specialists but still have to pay backbreaking med school costs, so there’s a shortage.
I had an appointment for my annual physical in June that I had to reschedule. I called a couple of days beforehand, and the first time they could see me was in November.
We really are lucky as Americans not to have the crazy long wait times that other countries do, right?
Holy shit, that’s crazy. So if you have like, a really bad cold or something and need to see the doctor, you’ll be recovered by the time you get an appointment??
Makes me pretty grateful to be able to get same-day appointments, or at worst, the day after.
If you’ve recovered from your cold before you can get to a doctor, then you didn’t need to see a doctor. It’s almost as if humans have some kind of immune system to deal with common viral infections
If you are wondering why it takes months to see a GP it’s because fully 50% of my consults are healthy people with self limiting viral illnesses.
Each one of those appointments makes me unavailable to see someone else who may or may not have offensive vaginal discharge.
If people just got out of the mindset of “my kid has a cold, I need to see a doctor to get checked out” or even worse " I have a cold, I need antibiotics" then maybe I can spend my day treating actual medical problems instead of telling people to go home, have some vitamin C and drink plenty of fluids.
Where do you live that makes you wait a year for an appointment with a PCP? I’ve only ever waited a month or more for a particular set of specialists where I’m at.
Define slow. I have to wait months or more for an appointment in the US. Is it that slow? Emergency visits take hours, sometimes charging people who wait but don’t get service. Is it that slow?
Not the other poster but a Canadian too. It varies. To see my GP I can get an appointment within the week, usually same day, though most people here need to wait a couple weeks. Then there GP refers me to specialists, that’s usually between 1-6 months wait.
Emergency yeah you are usually looking at 4 hours wait absolute minimum. Though you don’t get charged for it at least. Though I guess it depends on severity, they will prioritize by how serious it is not by first arrival.
The other thing the other poster didn’t mention is that medication is not covered so you have to pay full for that unless you have insurance. Also for some reason dental isn’t covered at all without insurance (or I think recently for low income families but I’m not 100% sure if that’s implemented yet or not)
Depends. I have had a bunch of specialist appointments for cardiologists, endocrinologists, reproductive health specialists and pulmonologists. The average wait for an appointment is about three months.
We are very fond of calling the Canadian system slow but my understanding is it’s decently comparable to a lot of the States and is actually pretty impressive considering how spread out and small our population is.
Not only province, but doctor/hospital but mostly urgency.
If you’ve got something critical, it’s super fast, otherwise it can be pretty slow.
Examples:
went to the emergency for something stuck in my eye, 3am. Went in, waited 3 minutes to be checked, saw a doctor 15 minutes later, by the 1h mark I was out with 1 nurse and 1 doctor who had seen me and removed what I had and another nurse who had given me a vaccine shot.
On my way out, I talked to someone in the waiting room I had seen at 8PM getting a softball to the side of the eye, she finally saw someone around 11h after getting to the E.R. (they quickly evaluate the urgency when you arrive).
Almost 4 years later, I’m still waiting for my vasectomy appointment.
In Mexico the government has their own health care system, if you are a Mexican citizen you have access to it for free (if you are a student or you work legally), it’s sustained by taxes that employers pay to the government, there are two health care systems IMSS and ISSSTE, depending on if you work for the government you get one or another.
These institutions will give you the treatment that you need and surgerys as well, except cosmetic stuff. Since these institutions aren’t optimal (usually takes a long time to get attention) you might prefer to use a private health care, and you just pay a private company for what you need or pay monthly for an insurance plan, which will cover certain hospitals and specific diseases
Healthcare is all free to the patient (the one caveat being a small, fixed charge for prescription medication - which is free for some groups), all paid for via national taxes based on wealth. UK.
If we need a specialist Doctor, we are referred to one. There’s no money involved for the patient whatsoever.
Attaching an unaffordable fee to healthcare would be a clear barrier for anyone who is not upper class, and this would be seen as deeply discriminatory and thus unacceptable.
There is also a private health care sector, with its own hospitals. A lot of consultants work in both the public (NHS) and private sectors, e.g., one day a week they will have a private clinic at a private hospital. The private sector is funded by insurance, and this is often a perk offered by employers. Waiting lists are generally shorter in the private sector, but, in my experience, the expertise and level of care is no better than the NHS.
In the US with private insurance. I basically just go online, search for providers in my insurance’s network, and then check a different list of different procedures and their costs according to my insurance. Sometimes it’s $30 if I’m seeing my main doctor, $30 for a specialist, $40 for urgent care, $0 for a specific telehealth provider, 20% for an ER visit etc. The main thing I genuinely like about my plan is that the monthly out-of-pocket price cap for generic medications is pretty low. That being said, I know a few people who pay $0 for 90% of what they need with everything else being cheap
Late but USA, wanted to share a personal experience. While at work I collapsed and had to take an ambulance to the hospital. I got sent the bills for everything. Including the ambulance ride. I stayed in the hospital overnight for observation. They couldn’t figure out what happened and I didn’t have symptoms anymore so I was discharged. Whole event cost maybe $500.
Here’s the kicker, I work(ed) as a paramedic for the ambulance company that transported me. I had insurance that was not from the company so prices were reasonable relative to what one would expect in the country. Had I been insured through work, well, the insurance provided by the company doesn’t cover transport by that company’s ambulance.
Concurrunt public and private system, it’s obviously busier with less doctors in the public system, and it’s free. Specialists too. Expect to wait six to twelve months for a specialist.
Private system is affordableish but on the expensive end, especially with complex issues. Also expect to wait six months for a specialist, in complex cases twelve months is not unheard of.
Medications get capped at $30, unless the government doesn’t agree it’s a useful med, then you pay full price.
Rural Guatemala and it’s mostly done through mobile doctors because it’s so remote. We have universal healthcare on paper but the government spends so little on it that the resources are awful and private care tends to be a lot better and trustworthy.
I have been told that Guatemala is private insurance. I provide care in rural Guatemala (Huehuetenango) and was told that the natives have in reality no insurance. If they need medical care they have to travel to Guatemala City and pay privately. Is that incorrect?
I guess I’ll give a non-horror story account from the US. My wife and I are fortunate to be on a good insurance plan though my work, we pay about $200/month total for the both of us out of pocket, and my work covers the rest.
Were on an HMO plan, so basically we have a fair bit of restrictions on which doctors we can see, and finding a new primary is always a pain.
On the brightside, medical care for us genuinely is cheap as hell (besides the insurance cost, ofc). My wife recently cut her hand in the kitchen and we had to rush her to urgent care to get stitches. We didn’t pay anything at the time, and got a bill in the mail for $20 the next month, and that was pretty much it.
We’ve never (thankfully) had any major medical issues that need treating though, so hard to say how something like that would play out in reality.
All that being said, if I lost my job, or if my job decided they wanted to cheap out I health insurance and I was - for some reason or another - unable to get a better job, then I’d be fucked. So don’t misconstrue any of this as an argument against universal Healthcare, just because it works well for me personally
Sounds pretty terrible though. Paying $200 monthly to pay $20 for a simple visit is insane to me. I’m an expat living in Europe (so I don’t have the full privileges of locals), yet I pay about $200 per year for private medical insurance which makes doctor visits pretty much free for me. There is also an extended health insurance from the company (costs me about $20 monthly), which covers drugs, dental health an profilactical visits for free
It’s so interesting that the main point against universal healthcare is that it’s cheaper because you don’t pay in your taxes. Yet the US have taxes and you still have to pay 200$/month, and your employee is paying even more money that would go in your check.
Also, you lose your job and you are fucked, that seems like a horror story to me, how do you not live in axiety?
I walk into the emergency ward, take a number, give my id to a clerk, sit down and browse reddit Lemmy for a couple hours, see a doc, get some treatment if needed, and leave with a prescription, maybe a referral, and probably a parking ticket.
I open Google, search “am I gonna die”, and if it says probably not, then I ignore whatever it is and hope it goes away. And if it says I am, then I wait for the end to come.
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