I've noticed how expensive it is to live in the US, especially if you need surgery or other medical care. I guess I must be living in one of the best countries in the world when it comes to patient fees and cost of healthcare. Here in Sweden, these are the standard prices for ANY patient:

A normal doctors appointment: 21.40 USD
To see a specialist: 36 USD

Any care received in hospital: 11.45 USD per 24 hours of care, no matter if it is a broken leg, giving birth, radiation, open heart surgery or removing a brain tumour.

The actual cost is of course much higher, but the remaining part is paid for by the tax. We don't have private health insurances. Everyone is entitled to medical care. Medicines for terminal illnesses are free of charge. Sex change operations are paid for by the state so the price for the patient is 11.45 dollars per 24 hours in hospital. Swedish TS people are lucky. However, it takes years to get approved though, by psychologists and specialists as in many other countries. It breaks my heart to read about all those in other countries who can never afford to have the corrective surgery. :-(

Plastic surgery for beauty purposes are not included in the tax paid system so silicone boobs and facelifts cost as much as anywhere else and is done in private clinics.

Here in Canada we have universal health care too. It's not perfect yet,But It works well.
I'm not sure how they deal with transgender issues,But I just for the heck of it I might check into it.
We too are better off than they are in the U.S

Oh, let me tell you..

You can't see a doctor in America unless you have insurance.
They will NOT take cash.

A few years ago I had cut my finger, it got seriously infected, it was bad enough that I was worried that I was going to lose my fingertip. But it wasn't bad enough to go to the emergency room.
I knew that all I needed was some simple anti-biotics to clear it up. A simple matter right?

So I called a doctor that's a few miles from my home, he had treated my son a few times in the past when he was little for minor things.

So I called down there to get an appointment. The first thing they asked me was who is my insurance company.
I told them I have none that I would be paying CASH. They told me "Sorry, we only see insured people"
So I ask "You mean to tell me that you won't see me and take my GREEN CASH MONEY?"
She said "That's correct. We will only see you if you have insurance, you will need to go to a hospital emergency room."

Of course I flipped out and cursed them then hung up.

I ended up excising the infected flesh from my finger and soaked it in alcohol and peroxide for several days and it FINALLY cleared up.

Had I gone to the emergency room, they would have billed me around $2,000 then sent collection agencies to hound me for years over it.

Insurance in America is EXPENSIVE.. Unless you have a very good job, it's very hard to afford it.
There are more people in America without insurance than with it and we have no socialized medicine.
If you are totally poor there are certain hospitals you can go to (via a LOOOONG drive) that will take you for free but the care is extremely substandard and you can DIE waiting your turn.

Some years back I had a very, very serious medical problem, it was life threatening.
I was without insurance and flat broke, I was going through divorce. So I made the long trip to the free hospital for the poor.
They looked me over and told me to go home and wait for them to contact me, they would call me to come in when my turn came up. So I went home and waited. I waited. And I waited. I waited over ONE YEAR and they never called me.
I was getting worse and worse and was afraid I would die if I didn't get help soon.
So I asked my parents to loan me the money and I found a private doctor that would take cash.
The doctor was amazed that I hadn't already died a long time back, he said he had seen people die that were a fraction of where I was.. Anyway, the doctor took care of me and all is well now however I am physically scarred for life.
Not to mention the time, over a year, that I spent in excruciating pain, you can't imagine the pain I was in and all that time, no medication to help.

Oh, and that's another scam here. Medicine. The price of medicine is so outrageous that most people can't afford it.
Old people chop their pills into quarters to make them last longer but they are just hurting themselves.
Poor people just can't afford medicine.

The insurance scam is obscene. Go to the hospital and they charge you $40 each per aspirin. Simple Band-aids? $25 each.
It's insane. The back surgery I had cost me $100,000. I had to borrow $100,000 from my parents to pay for it because I don't have insurance and there was NO WAY IN HELL I was going to wait in line for the free indigent surgery.
They wanted to put cadaver parts in me! I told them no way in hell was that going to happen. So they took bone and tissue from the broken bones and used that to make a "mortar" like paste for the fusion, the broken vertebrae were replaced with titanium bolts and rods. So I was my own donor. Damn good thing too because about 6 months later it came out that the nations biggest supplier of cadaver parts was busted for KNOWINGLY supplying TAINTED tissue to hospitals, tainted with AIDS and all sorts of other nasty and fatal diseases. They KNEW the tissue was tainted and should have been destroyed but they sold it anyway as good, sterile and certified safe and it was used in the surgeries of hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even as many a million people. And the number one group of patients to receive this tainted tissue? BACK SURGERY PATIENTS!

Good thing I refused to accept their "plan" for me. The doctor I paid told me that's what they wanted to do and I refused.
Since I was paying, I could call the shots. Had I gone into the free hospital, you can not choose or select anything. You walk in and you turn your life over to them. They own your body and they do anything they want to you, including UNAUTHORIZED MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS! Google for unauthorized medical experiments in America. It's not only legal, they passed a law specifically allowing doctors to experiment on you without your consent, any doctor, anywhere, anytime you are under a doctors care you are a lab rat.

Well. I could go on and on. This subject really pisses me off badly and I rant and rave about it, it brings out the worst of me.

What flips me out is how inexpensive it is in Thailand for health care.
I was talking to a girl that had her SRS over there. It cost her $5,800 for SRS. That's everything!
She said they treated her like royalty and that everything went exceptionally well and that she was extremely pleased with the entire experience. Of course prices have gone up a little since then and I can understand that but still, the prices are extremely affordable.

I'm playing the lottery twice a week. I don't have to win millions, I figure if I won maybe $30,000 (which would be much more than I would really need) I could fly over and have FFS first, wait about a year and go back for SRS and still have money to burn after...

Sigh.........

_______________________________________

http://transhouston.com/members/blog/morticia
_______________________________________

Any society where people are left to die because of lack of funds or where serious medical conditions don't get treated because someone is poor, is inhumane. A rich country shouldn't let it's citizens die because they are refused medical care - That is outrageous. I'm glad that I am where I am.

In ameriKa they worship the dollar. Money is GOD.
Profit first, above and beyond all things, profit first.

If one must crush the skull of a million babies to make a profit, then one must get busy crushing baby skulls.
Capitalism, profit, greed, materialism. THAT is the true ameriKan way of life.



_______________________________________

http://transhouston.com/members/blog/morticia
_______________________________________

What a horrible place to live.
Capitalism sucks.

Wow Moonstruck,
Sorry to hear of your medical woes.

But there is more than one story in America. I have no insurance, but my doc lets me pay cash and she even gives me a discount. So does my dentist. I don't bat an eye about the cost of medicine. I work to stay healthy through exercise, nutrition and positive thinking.

If I have a minor emergency I can go to a minor emergency care center and pay a reasonable rate. After all this is a capitolist system and demand creates supply. If I have a major emergency I can go to the hospital and yes, I will have to wait but they will take care of me. And if I don't have the money to pay -they will do it for free - and the indigent hospital is considered the best trauma center in my city.

If I need routine medical care and my income is low I have the option of several medical centers that take income into account and will lower their fees. I can also use the dental schools, chiropractic schools and medical school teaching clinics for low cost care.

Moonstruck - yours is an unfortunate story, but hardly the most common one. Either you need to shop around your city for the kind of care that is there - or you need to move to a city that has the great care mine does.

And another thing - the medical care in the US is top notch - why else would everyone travel here to get care... and much of the care is donated to those unfortunate souls who cannot afford it.

All this and my taxes are reasonable too (yeah I hate paying them but they are low compared to other countries)

I love living in the US. It is great!

waxingmoon
(p.s. yeah, America bashing really gets my dander up)

Yes waxingmoon, In the US the some of the medical care is top notch. Some of the people up here do go to the states for treatment because some of the waiting lists are so long.
that is one of the things that needs to be fixed with our system. It's not perfect, But our system works.It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, everyone is entitled to the same medical treatments. You don't have to go and find where you can get the price.
Now ! this isn't bashing you guys, But I know that you, in the US, have been trying to get universal healthcare for years,But it,s not passing.I believe that it has something to do with someone not being able to profit from it.EG: The big fat insurance companys! The rest of us in the world have no problem with MOST of you. I have several relatives in the U.S.. It's your Government that's causing all the bashing that's going on!
Sorry! but I guess you have to be on the outside of the U.S to see it.

Blue-jay,
No, really I hear you. The system here is not perfect by any means, but it is not the sad state of affairs that was portrayed by Moonstruck.

The biggest problem with the US healthcare system is insurance and lawyers.

Insurance drives the high cost of medical care by paying the outrageous demands of the doctors/hospitals. Remove the insurance and the capitolist system of healthcare works great. Health costs would plummet because the docs could only charge what the patient's would pay. The relationship between patient and doctor could go back to what it was before the insurance middle man got in the way. Why should the health care system be any different from any other service. If my car breaks down and I don't like the price or the ability of my mechanic, I find one I like.

It just burns me up when people propose legislation to bring everyone affordable health insurance. We don't need health insurance to be affordable if the HEALTH CARE is affordable... and the health care will never be affordable if it is not subject to the laws of supply and demand.

Of course the other reason our healthcare is so high is the lawyer side of the business. A doctor is always under the threat of a malpractice lawsuit -he or she could be the best doctor ever, but people have found a way to milk the system by filing suits regardless of merit. The doctor has to suffer the costs of malpractice insurance which deals with the frivolous lawsuits by settling for a smaller sum out of court. This of course keeps the frivolous suits coming full force. Also in order to cover their asses, the docs have to do a whole bunch of tests to make sure 'everything medically relavant' has been covered - or else, you guessed it they may be at greater risk in a lawsuit. This drives the cost of routine medical care sky high.

Remove the insurance and doctors and hospitals can only charge what the patients can afford.... costs of healthcare plummet.

Remove the frivolous lawsuits... curb the over-zealous lawyers and demand that suits found unworthy are charged back to the petitioner.... doctors costs of doing business plummet which allows them to charge the patient less.

Will these changes happen in my lifetime --probably not. As it is I live outside the system. I do not have insurance and I go to doctors who do not accept insurance. I know of several people I can barter with if I need a service I do not already have.

I have had insurance in the past. I was assigned a healthcare center as part of my insurance and had to see the doctors at this center only. I hated it. If they ever get a nationalized health care here in the US, I fear that is what it will be like.

The system in other countries just does not interest me. I am not happy with what we have here, but at least more of my income stays in my pocket and I have complete control of who is my doctor.

(okay, I am stepping away from my soapbox... lol)

waxingmoon

I live in a country where everyone can afford medical care and there are no private insurances. The tax is pretty high, but the average income is high too so it's no big deal. I too can choose which doctor I want to see if I want to. I don't mind if my tax money goes to medical care, homes for the elderly, social security for the poor and school lunches. In fact, I am happy to pay for that.

Yes fennel! our system is pretty much the same as yours.We can choose our doctors like any one else And those who can afford it(the Rich) can seek their own treatment where ever they please. They're still able to get treatment through our healthcare system.(Emergancy and so on if they choose.) Our taxes are high too but it's worth it.

I'm English so technically we have free healthcare but the doctors know the costs of the tests they are performing so you really have to push if you want anything expensive done. However I have had a couple of experiences of private healthcare which were great however the second time (when I wasn't insured) I paid £180 for an appointment and £260 for a blood test - I think that'd be double the amount in USD.....well worth it if you can afford to keep going....sadly if I want anything further I'll probably have to go NHS so may be a long wait and I'm out of the country so will just have to put it off

p.s. my NHS dentist however is great and she always sorts me out in terms of price