What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by tokyodude on Thursday December 20, 2018 @12:46AM (#18722767)

I've had different experiences from you. My experience in the UK was wait 90 minutes in a waiting room and when it was finally close to my turn I was told I could only see a nurse and she wasn't allowed to proscribe any medicine so if I wanted to see a doctor I should go down the street to the private doctor. This was in London near Soho.

In Japan the first time I went to a doctor it was for stomach pain. He gave me on ultrasound and declared I had hepatitis. My personel department at my company decided to take me to another doctor. Had to weight 2.5 hours in a room with around 250 other sick people. Was finally told I had food poisoning.

I am not defending the USA system but both the UK system and the Japanese system have issues as well. I've spent the most time in the Japanese system. What I like is it's easy to see a doctor and relatively cheap. Prices are apparently set by the government. Conversely a large percentage of Japanese doctors are quacks and would be unqualified to practice in the USA. It's a common topic of conversation for foreigners here to tell their horror stories of all the crazy experiences they've had with doctors here. Also, top doctors, or rather surgeons are known to require bribes in the $XXXX-$XXXXX range beyond the decided on fees.

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by taurath on Thursday December 20, 2018 @01:44AM (#18722963)

I’ve had to wait 3 hours in an ER in America - also have had to drop providers because they only had appointments weeks out.

The decision to go to a doctor is a financial one in the US, sometimes superceding a health one. Our life expectancy is dropping as well. It’s a broken system and adding more of what is broken about it won’t work, if the goal is for society to be healthy.

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by wastedhours on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:48AM (#18723857)

The UK system isn't amazing, unless you're evidently having an "emergency", you can be waiting for hours (once waited for 4 hours with a broken wrist for example) - that being said, the triage is pretty solid and you'll cycle through intermediate steps in the meantime.

I think the best part is not having the mental burden of potentially going bankrupt afterwards...

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by DanBC on Thursday December 20, 2018 @12:09PM (#18726719)

There are severe problems with the English NHS, but we need to remember that it costs the tax payer a lot less than the US system.

That's the thing I don't understand: they pay more in tax, and they pay more in insurance, and they don't get universal coverage and have worse outcomes across a range of measures.

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by C1sc0cat on Thursday December 20, 2018 @07:39AM (#18724380)

Was this with your GP or did you just turn up at the A&E with minor ailments - turning up at the A&E with something you should be seeing a GP with will mean you got the back of the queue.

I have never had a problem getting a appointment to see my GP.

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by thisisit on Thursday December 20, 2018 @02:24AM (#18723085)

> In Japan the first time I went to a doctor it was for stomach pain. He gave me on ultrasound and declared I had hepatitis.

Ultrasound? That is absurd.

I can't speak for UK/US/Japan but in India situation is quite similar. Opaque pricing along with quacks (or maybe genuine doctors) out to milk as much as they can, especially if they know that you have insurance.

A colleague of mine who had stomach pain was told that he had to get his appendix removed. When he refused the doctor actually threatened him with a write-up to ensure that he doesn't receive any insurance money. After the company got involved he was moved to another hospital, only to be told that he had stomach gas.

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by pasabagi on Thursday December 20, 2018 @08:28AM (#18724686)

When were you in the UK system? I've noticed a lot of variance between people's opinions based on the fact that there's been a sort of sabotage campaign against the NHS in recent years (it's dropped ten places in the worldwide healthcare rankings in the last five years). So people that had experiences with the UK system in the early 2000's generally had a good time, whereas later, it became a lot more mixed.

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by arethuza on Thursday December 20, 2018 @04:33AM (#18723544)

Are you a UK/EU citizen and were you registered where at the GPs you went to?

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by willyt on Thursday December 20, 2018 @04:40AM (#18723578)

Assuming you are not an EU citizen, you are don't get free healthcare in the UK anyway. They probably told you to go to the private doctor because if you are non-EU you would have health insurance which would cover this no?

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by gambiting on Thursday December 20, 2018 @06:49AM (#18724101)

That's not how this works. If you are from outside of EU you are not limited to private doctors and hospitals - you can still go and be seen by any NHS doctor, but you have to disclose the fact that you are not covered by national insurance - they will simply ask you for personal details and send you the bill few weeks later(well, if it's worth if - if you're only seeing a doctor about a cold or a broken wrist they will not even bill you anything because it's not worth the time spent filling out documentation, and pretty much no hospital even has a billing department).

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