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.
Yeah, I keep hearing the “you don’t get how big it is” thing, too.
I get how big it is.
European agriculture workers just reversed EU-wide policy as recently as last week by blocking major roads throughout the continent with tractors. They didn’t even agree with each other (half those guys are pissed at the other guys for being too competitive), and the regulations they opposed were climate protection regulations, among other more reasonable things, so this isn’t necessarily a feel-good story.
But they won.
They didn’t even have to try that hard, honestly. Besides mild traffic jams and some tense standoffs with police it was all pretty mild. And yet politicians across the entire continent, over multiple countries, were terrified of the optics of working class people protesting in loose coordination, especially with right wing parties trying to co-opt their anger.
I get how big it is. The size is not the reason.