Celiac occurs in 1/100 people. It is horrendously underdiagnosed in the US.

Symptomatic patients are the -minority- of people with celiac. It can silently cause cancer, among other problems. Symptoms vary wildly (from “awful” to “none”), and damage occurs whether or not there are any symptoms at all.

Please don’t wave your hand and dismiss what I wrote. I have CD, was undiagnosed for 20 years, and am now dealing with the aftereffects. A test is painless and can prevent many health effects. I wish someone had suggested it to me.

On the other hand, socialist health care systems are groaning under the cost of giving everyone free health care.

The solution is to recognize that there are no free lunches. Get government out of the health care system. Stop giving doctors a franchise so they are the richest people around. Stop forcing pill makers to test their products, and put the burden on the pill sellers. You want an effective pill? Buy it from somebody who stands behind it. Stop allowing pill makers to patent their pills (patents are for machines, not substances).

In other words, move to a REAL free market system, not one where every politically powerful entity gets a franchise to extract money from the citizenry. But oh, what am I thinking?? Free markets don’t work, because whenever you have a free market, government steps in to protect privileged powerful parties from ACTUALLY HAVING TO COMPETE for our business.

What we really need is separation of state and market. Hey, it works for religion!

You will find different answers.

But there are some native duties for the executive of a country. To provide healthcare for every citizen is one of it.
There are some trends in Germany to dismiss the caring society from being responsible for the healthcare of everyone but to exceed the individual liabilty.

This will lead to a strong, money-making high end healthcare for people which can afford such luxury.
And it will lead to inefficient medical care for the poor, with a lack of (profit-cutting) precautional healthcare for all.
As you can see in the USA.

It is worth to think about it.

Greetings from Lower Saxony,

Bernd

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386032/

Our daughter got a second degree burn on her arm from some hot tea. So far we’ve seen three doctors, two of who are specialists. We’re continually seeing a doctor and a nurse twice a week until it is healed. The point is that if there is an infection or it does not heal properly you have to operate which is much more expensive.

Total (11 visits) time spent in waiting rooms: 45 minutes
Total cost (in Sweden): $16

Well, that’s an interesting question, actually. Why would that be the case? It’s not because the US system is private, I don’t think (despite what you say). The UK system is not entirely public. Everyone must pay the cost of the public healthcare system (it’s funded out of general taxation), but private options are entirely legal. You can live in the UK and use entirely private healthcare: buy insurance from a private company and be treated by private clinics and hospitals. There are multiple companies that offer such services, and some of them do in fact provide treatments the public system (the NHS) does not offer. The fact that the UK also provides a public system would not in any way restrain any of the private health providers from offering the treatment in question.

So, why would you conclude that it’s the fact that the US system is private that means it sometimes provides treatments other systems do not? Your evidence doesn’t seem to support it.

In Australia, the government takes care of the majority of health expenses and you end up paying a ‘gap’ which is usually about 10%. Doctors can elect whether to ‘bulk bill’ and be paid by the government although they are usually not as qualified. Private doctors charge you directly and will take private health insurance.

There is a different mentality towards healthcare here. It isn’t some luxury that only the rich can have and that people must cheat you out of – rather it’s about providing the best possible coverage to ensure people stay on the higher tiers.

Private health insurance organizations don’t have a key objective to try and deny you coverage or overcharge you because they know they are competing with the baseline the government has set. Rather they try to offer you an even better service than what the government can provide to keep you on their plan.

I spent two weeks in a German hospital, including two surgeries (originally for an operation that would have been outpatient in the US), and had the best care of my life. I felt fine for most of the stay, but the German doctors were very insistent that I just relax – so I ended up just taking walks around the hospital and reading a lot. It ended up being quite nice.

The most ridiculous part was that my hospital nights were billed at 75 Euro/night, and the total cost of my two weeks stay, including the operation, was right under 10k Euro. I just paid out of pocket and billed my US insurance company, who seemed more than happy to pay the relatively cheap bill.

Even visits to a general practitioner in Germany was cheap – around 20/euro a visit (before any insurance).

Whatever Germany is doing, the US should emulate.

After 15 minutes the doctor came, checked my situation and told that I need small operation. He toke me to operation room and nurse prepared the table and bed and doctor went to get local anaesthesia bottle. He said that he use the cold anaesthesia and not needle because on my situation it would not affect so well. The operation toke about 5 minutes. It was just a small cutting, cleaning and parsing. After that I got first treatmen and painkillers and prescription for medicines for one week (7 pills).

Then I drove to the pharmacy to get the medicines. I paid 41 euros for them (7 pills) and I got back from that littlebit under 50%. So the medicines was for me littlebit over 20 euros. Then a week later I got a bill from the ER, it was 24 euros, what is the standard payment.

I do not have insurance because I do not need such until I travel outside of the EU.

Now I need to go to my own personal doctor for who I have called meeting about this and other situation, it will come to cost for me 11 euros. If I still need other operation, it will cost me again extra 24 euros for that 11 euros. So together it would be 35 euros.

I just can not understand how the US people will fall to that propaganda that social healtcare is so bad. You can choose your own doctor, you get treatment right when needed, it is cheap for first three times to see a doctor (11 euros) (after three times doctor visit is free, but the policlinic visit is always 24 euros) and you do not need insurances if you do not travel outside of your own country (in this case, outside EU).
And how much I pay about this in taxes? Nothing at all in the end when even considering that everyone can get the treatment when needed. And even if you do not have money to pay these small feeds, example if you are unemployed, you can always go to social office with the bills and the government pays it for you…. Because faster you are cured, faster you are back in normal life and faster you product more to whole country and everyone are more happy.

Only thing what is missing is that big corporations are not gaining money. The bad thing is that Finland is slipping to same situation as in US. and some officials are trying to force people to privat hospitals and doctors, what is very expensive and slows down whole healtcare system. But big corporations are driving that idea because they get much more money from that.

A few years before that, my son dented his head and also needed stitches. My other son broke his arm. In neither case did we wait long at all for care. I guess you can always find someone somewhere who has problems, and it depends on where you are, I can only assume, but I don’t see any of the issues wherever I’ve gone in my life time.

And that’s my point. The squeaky wheel gets the oil and I’m sure the complaints about health care at hospitals is far less of a problem with the hospital than it is with the squeaky wheels. Not that I am not aware of issues with them but I know there are issues with German hospitals, too. And Belgium and France and England and Canada and….

I forgot my point: It happens but I don’t think they are allowed to do that.

I might consider hopping a last minute flight to Germany the next time I need to visit the emergency room…

I have insurance. It pays 80% of emergency room visits.

I had to visit an American emergency room a few months ago. The doctor saw me for five minutes, total, after I waited for two and a half hours, I was billed something like $2000 (and received separate bills from the hospital and doctor, because that’s the way these things work) and my share, after insurance, was around $400.