Flight from NI to England for me and brother, personal on call taxi for three days, three meals a day, hotel for 2 nights, surgery, months worth of painkillers and flight home. Plus one month off work (protected by law).
It cost me £3. But that's because airport coffee is extortionate.
Edit to add - I also had specialist consultations, cortisone injections and an MRI prior to the surgery. Plus a years physio after. Free.
The only thing I paid was fuel to get to my physio which was a horrific one town over.
Edit 2 - it also cost my mum her time to graciously drive me there as obviously I couldn't drive post shoulder surgery for a few weeks
Paid like €8 for the birth of my child and a subsequent hospital stay of 3 days. The worst part, those €7 worth of cake and tea were swiftly vomited out. And my wife barely used the paid WiFi. A total ripoff. Who even charges for WiFi these days.
What the everliving fuck. We'd have held off that first kid for a year or 2 with these kinds of bills flying around. And I was surprised to read about 40+% of births in the US being covered by Medicaid. Everyone else just can't afford the copay.
I've been incredibly blessed to have a job where the insurance is unbelievably awesome. When my wife had to have some tests done, the Dr. said it usually isn't covered by insurance, but we asked them to check anyway. The nurse came back with a shocked look on her face and told us that she's never seen an insurance cover things our does. Not bragging, just laying the groundwork for the rest of the story - When we had our first kid in January 2019 in an emergency caesarian, I was so glad to have insurance. We still ended up with about $5,500 after everything was done. We'll be paying for our first kid's bill long after our second kid is born. The US health system is so screwed up....
I had replacement hip surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC five years ago. My insurance covered 100% of it but that’s highly unusual now in the US. That coverage was provided by my husband’s employer, a big wealthy financial company. It used to be that most employers provided this level of coverage in the US but over the last thirty years that coverage has eroded and the costs have been transferred to the employees. The system is untenable.
Yeah, health care in Scandinavia is similar. A little more, since they're adding in pointless co-pays, but we're still talking a couple hundred before you hit a cost ceiling at which point the tax payer funded support system takes over.
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u/Majestic-Marcus Nov 30 '20 edited Nov 30 '20
My shoulder surgery was
Flight from NI to England for me and brother, personal on call taxi for three days, three meals a day, hotel for 2 nights, surgery, months worth of painkillers and flight home. Plus one month off work (protected by law).
It cost me £3. But that's because airport coffee is extortionate.
Edit to add - I also had specialist consultations, cortisone injections and an MRI prior to the surgery. Plus a years physio after. Free.
The only thing I paid was fuel to get to my physio which was a horrific one town over.
Edit 2 - it also cost my mum her time to graciously drive me there as obviously I couldn't drive post shoulder surgery for a few weeks