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.

  • Baccata@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The US healthcare system has provided me with lots of entertainment value via John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. I like it for that

    For real though, despite being a software engineer who could find a very lucrative job in the US in a heartbeat, there’s no way in hell I’ll ever even remotely consider it, and the healthcare system is one of the reasons.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      As a software engineer, you’d likely get a well paying job that included better health insurance than most people get. Also you’d be more likely to be able to afford the gaps that would still exist. You would not be affected by half these horror stories

      • silly goose meekah@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Not OP, but living in the system is supporting the system so I prefer to just live somewhere else. Going to the States for vacation is plenty to experience the cool things

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          That’s a pretty good take. US has good healthcare coverage for those who can afford it, but those who can are very profitable

      • Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz
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        9 months ago

        If this person doesn’t have white skin, isn’t christian or gender conforming there’s a whole host of other horror stories that apply tho.