I find alot of people have a go at the NHS, but we are pretty lucky to have a really good system. If it means paying slightly more in tax, then I'd rather do that then have to pay hundreds if I needed medical attention.

I heard that the British health system's basically gone to shit?

Not really, just wankers complaining that the global MRSA bug could of been avoided and its entirely the NHS's fault, and stupid tabloids with nothing better to print.

Ah, fair enough then.

Here in Western Australia our system is in a state of perpetual crisis, yet still somehow better than most of the world in theory. There's always this hype that it's going to completely collapse within months, and they've been saying that my whole life. How exactly you'd define a collapse I'm not sure.

Going bankrupt very soon I assume. Our plan is to get a lot of immigrants in here to work hard to pay taxes so we can keep it going as the baby boomers go into retirement.

I can't wait to see this idea play out in the next 5 years.

Have you heard anything of Russian HCS if it might be called so? It's all fucking corrupted, especially in the country. In Russia they used to name Moscow as 'civilization' and anything outside as 'a village'. It is true. When living in a small town I felt the attitude on my own skin. Fucking queues everywhere, 'doctors' incapable to help you. Lay and die

oh shit is it really going bankrupt?

here in NZ the systems usually been pretty generous - based on British initiatives, and somewhat akin to the Scandanavian welfare stare approach to some social issues. sure - 70's and 80's era innifiencies needed to be changed - but neo liberalism has largely failed to correct the mass inefficiencies to the system. over here, you get a lot of subsideies etc - but the system is pretty inefficient. money isnt channeled in the right way, and tonnes of jobs are pointless and overlapping. we need some Germnas over here to give it a shake up

there's a good youth health service here which is totally free, and prescriptioins from there are incredibly subsidized. its for people up to 25 years old and has served me well. thing is im over 25 now, so can't really use it - luckily ihavent had to for anything in a year.

Generally the health care system in Germany is pretty solid. We have a bunch of good specialists and also outside the big cities nearly all kinds of specialists are not far away.

Now the bad sides. You have sometimes to wait several weeks or months for an appointment with a specialist.
The system is extremely expensive, I need to pay around $500 per month and my company needs to pay another $500 per month, so only myself is bringing appx. $1000 per month into the system (this also depends on your monthly earnings as Health Insurance is a fixed percentage of your income). There are special rates for students and family members (wife + unlimited kids) are included as long as they are below the age of 26.
But thats not all, this only covers certain services. If you go to the dentalist, only an annual check up and the standard service is for free, everything else costs additionally. You additionally have to pay $15 per quarter for visiting your local doctor (dentist is additional $15). If he sends you to a specialist this is free but if you go directly to the specialist without having been at your house-doctor before this costs another $15. Very complicated system. Medication also costs extra, the Health Insurance covers most of the costs but depending on which medication you need you need to pay up to 50% of the value by yourself.
It is possible to make additional private dental or other insurances that cover up most of the costs in case needed but they are really expensive.

Apart from this there is a separated "Private health care system". Only self-employed people, state officials and employees with earnings of more than appx. $70.000 per year are allowed to enter this system. This private system is very good, all doctors and specialists prefer this "customers" as they can charge triple or more to these insurance companies than to the state system so if you are insured privately you get a doctors appointment latest the next day (in 99% of all cases), as no doctor will lose the benefit of a privat insured person, so all "state insured people" are partially considered "2nd class" patients.
We had various reforms of the system, the last one with beginning of 2009 but the costs are always increasing and the service included in the insurance is more and more reduced to an absolute minimum.

The healthcare system in India is decent but nothing world class.
Government hospitals are good for most common stuff and emergencies. These are extremely cheap and many people come here for treatment. Complicated surgeries and such need to be done in specialist private hospitals which are a little bit expensive but much much cheaper than other countries.
So overall I am happy with the state of healthcare but I feel a little more money and better trained doctors/nurses would be good.

These are the conditions in cities. As far as the rural areas are concerned its not so great. There is just 1 doctor for 3-4 villages in some areas. The tribal areas are even worse. The cities though are ok.

Yeah I completely agree. Using the word "India" instead of my city was somewhat elitist of me.

The rural people are in bad shape, really. Most people only see the cities and stuff (Including me, apparently) and forget that 90% of india is poor!

The health care system in America works, if you are able to afford the expensive good insurance, Blue Cross Blue Shield. I am currently on Blue Cross Blue Shield, but only because my parents are able to cover me until I am 22 (so 1 more year). After that I will have to probably convert my insurance to an individual plan.

The problem is, tens of millions of americans (46 million in 2007) can't afford quality health insurance. Sometimes even if they can they get rejected due to past health problems. Since the insurance companies are private...they can reject you if they want.

The United States really should have a universal health plan for those who can't afford or won't be accepted by insurance companies. For fuck sake, we are one of the richest countries in the world, and yet we have tens of millions of people without any healthcare. It's ludicrous.

Yes, and this does concern me. The Conservatives believe that too much money has been pumped into the NHS and say that there is little to show for it. This is typical of them though. They always cut back spending on public services in the guise of tax cuts and thus these services are worse off for it.

In Croatia, the health care system is great, at least doctors are. I have a "friend" who is from Germany, although he is some kind of mix of Serb, Croat, and Rusin (not sure how to write the last one), and he always criticizes our system, but not counting him, the only complains are for the long waiting-lists and a bit of coruption: However, there were actions versus it, and I think it's fine now.

Very much agreed on this last point. My grandfather, who passed away last year, was forced to retire because he simply couldn't afford medical malpractice insurance premiums anymore. And as far as I know, he had never been sued or had ethics charges brought against him.

As for the legal profession in the USA, the situation is similar. The general public doesn't know this, but part of the reason hiring a lawyer is so expensive is because legal malpractice/errors & omissions insurance is very expensive. Even for solo practitioners (who make far less in salary than attorneys at large firms, or even government departments), it makes up a significant portion of the overhead costs of a law practice. A big part of the reason I am leaving the legal profession and going back to grad school is because after I lost my job, I came to the realization that I could not afford to practice on my own. Because I am relatively young and inexperienced, there is no way in hell that I can afford malpractice insurance rates. (That, and the fact that the finance/housing crisis has brought demand for legal work to a screeching halt.)

Anyway, my point is that if Obama and Pelosi expect to reform the U.S. healthcare system, they need to create some sort of limitation of liability for medical malpractice. The trial lawyers' lobby won't like it, and the insurance companies will be pissed that business is being taken away from them, but too fucking bad, it is ridiculous that tens of millions of people in this country cannot even afford routine checkups and dental visits.

What city do you live in? My firm hired 2 new associates in March and April. If you work for a firm for which a large portion of business is focused on insurance defense, you should be fine.

I live in northern New Jersey. Here, even the low-level insurance defense firms aren't hiring. (And it's pretty hard to make a living doing pure insurance defense, the rates of pay are quite low compared to most of the rest of the industry.)

In one word... useless.



Everyone here who can afford hiring a private healthcare insurance do it, because the public healthcare system has just failed, plain and simple.

What the hell? You still pay for visits, checkups and prescription drugs with (ridiculously expensive) insurance?

All forms of insurance are good for absolutely nothing in the United States.

Pretty much unless you live on public assistance then everything is free for you and hell of expensive for the taxpayers.

Medi-Cal in California or MediCare for senior and disabled citizens.

Im EMT here in Mexico, and you have to believe me, if you don't have a lot (and I really mean A LOT) of money to afford a private hospital you cannot expect anything from healthcare system provided by the government... I mean, this is a fucking joke... a lot of bureaucratic shit to get some MD to attend you, i dont blame the MD but the fucking system its a very very big crap... so sad

What is EMT?


On topic, he situation in your country isn't too different from the situation here in Brazil. Our public healthcare system is nearly nonexistent.

This is misinformation; there are some people who simply choose not to pay for health insurance even when they can because they feel it is not important for a while (this is especially true of young people still stuck in the "can't-happen-to-me" mindset).



As for U.S. health care, it's not too good and looking like it's about to get a hell of a lot worse.

Yeah, and if one of these "invincible" young people gets into a car accident or overdoses on drugs, they have to go to their local emergency room...and guess who picks up the tab? The taxpayers of the state, via charity care or some similar arrangement. At least that's how it works here in New Jersey.

fuck the healthcare here. I had a extreme asthma attack a month ago and I just resist the pain and punishment for 4 days because of expensive hospital bills. The public hospitals? You'll be lying in a bed with another person. You're like a sardine, 10 people in a room, wtf. I just blame our fuckin government for this, fuckin corrupt officials.

On the bright side, our country have some precautions on A(H1N1). Gladly, I did'nt get infected yet (schools have extreme panics that our classes were suspended for 3 days, and a week for other schools).

Emergency Medical Technician a.k.a. Paramedic

No offense meant at all, but I just found it funny that you don't know how to type "Russian" but your English is better than 95% of the "English" written by Americans on the internet.

Anyway, the health care system in America is complete shit. I'm one of those 46 million already cited; I'm young and healthy and insurance is just too bloody expensive. At my new job starting in August I'll get basic insurance through my employer, but I'll have spent several years uninsured.

Fpqxz: that's not exactly how it works. You can have emergency medical bills covered but you have to qualify for Medicaid. If you don't (and trust me, many don't) qualify, you're stuck with the bill. Since hospitals aren't banks, they aren't too generous about setting up payment plans and the like. If you end up with a big bill from a hospital and you're uninsured and don't qualify for Medicaid but also don't have thousands and thousands of dollars laying around, you're likely going to have your bill handed over to a collections agency. When you're unable to pay your bill to them (along with the hefty collections fee they'll throw on top) you're going to get your wages garnished and your tax refund check sent straight to the collections agency. So basically, you're fucked.

In my case, a series of events led me to believe that I was suffering from appendicitis. After doing a bunch of research online, I discovered that even if everything goes smooth as silk I was likely looking at a hospital bill of at least $10,000. Eventually, I was one click away from buying round trip tickets to Toronto and a week's worth of traveler's insurance for Canada which would grant me access to their public health care system for the duration of my visit. The plane ticket (~$500) and the insurance ($25.42) would have been a hell of a lot cheaper than getting it done here in the states.

Luck was on my side and it turned out to be a false alarm, but nonetheless the whole situation made me realize just how shitty our system really is.

Lol, thanks, no, I don't mean Russian like a person from Russia. The "Rusins" (Rusini in Croatian) are people who emigrated from Ukraine, and to a lesser extent from Russia, to other countries (Croatia, Hungary, ...) in the distant past (I think 17th century, but I'm not sure at all).

I've always dreaded going to the ER because of the waiting lines and cost. I've only had to go once when I accidently cut my finger pretty deep at work. My co-workers were too drunk to drive me so I had to dial up a relative to take me. I was lucky though as I got in really quick because it wasn't busy that night and it was covered by workman's comp.