I don't think what you say is remotely true, though. Sure if you plan to live in high-cost areas in Europe, healthcare would be expensive, but taking Turkey as an example, the healthcare is very reasonably priced even in top private institutions, compared to what they would be in the US.
I do not have first hand experience for critical surgeries, but i have a recent experiences and learned what the price would be in Turkey.
Labor: US: $40K, Turkey: ~$2K. Dental implant: US: $6K, Turkey: $660
They are both pre-insurance, though.
The same should follow for critical surgeries like healthcare, cancer, etc.
I think you exactly confirmed what I said.
If anyone want to move to Vietnam, pick Saigon/Danang/Hue/Nhatrang and stay away from the north until they fix their air pollution problem. It's pretty bad up there. (source: I'm a Hanoian)
Let us see...
My partner got what looked liked food poisoning when we arrived to Hue. Local hospital refused to take us, sent to a special hospital "for foreigners". She was put on a bed and kept waiting in pain for hours. The doctor didn't bother to do anything for her for hours, despite not too many other patients. We felt hungry, yet they refused to let us go. After several hours waiting and feeling more stomach pain from hunger, I said, we absolutely have to go and eat something. Yet the doctor told us to keep waiting, refusing to let us go. I started looking around for food and found a cafeteria on premises that was luckily still open (it was already late). After a verbal fight with the doctor, he finally allowed us to go to eat in that cafeteria. It was already late and dark and I had told the doctor, we would be leaving now unless he does something. After more verbal fights and repeated insistence, the doctor wrote a quick prescription without even checking and sent us to pay about USD 100! However, by the time he gave it to us, the hospital pharmacy was already closed. And no other pharmacy on the street would have that medicine. So we came back around midnight, with no medicine, wasted many hours, spent USD 100 on nothing.
Would I call it "not too bad"? Well, if it was any more serious, we would have to fear for our lives is all I can say.
I'm a native VNmese in HCMCity. My wife is a doctor, we also have lots of friends/relatives working as doctors, pharmacists,... so I hope my sharing is not quite irrelevant.
In VN, you can get medical service with the same quality as US, if you know the right place to go. Sometimes you can find doctors with excellent proficiency, since VN is a good evironment for doctors to practice their skill and knowledge (rare cases, severe cases due to bad sanitary & healthcare mindset).
But again, the biggest challenge is that "right place". Not all great doctors work in the biggest hospitals, and not all well-known doctors are great.
> Local hospital refused to take us, sent to a special hospital "for foreigners".
This was the red light, Hue central hospital is actually very good (I have been there myself). It would be better if you had a local to guide you, maybe I should develop a website to help expats in Vietnam... Still what was the name of that hospital 'for foreigner' you mentioned?
Do you know about the quality of VinMec? For VinSchool I've heard from friends who attended that they have incredible teachers and from advertisements that they have professors from ivies helping them out, so I was wondering if VinMec is also top tier. They claim to have equipment "equivalent to leading hospitals in the US, UK, Germany, Japan and Singapore" so I wonder if they also have the skills to use it effectively.
You guys are criticizing me for calling Asia a monolith but I can assure you the difference between Tokyo and Myanmar is smaller than NYU and the Midwest
One could make an argument that living in rural areas is worse than urban ones when it comes to access to top medical care, but that has nothing to do with the NYC/LA vs. the rest of the country.
There’s some confused thinking in this thread I think.
How about the ambulances in Detroit which take 45 mins, or the south Chicago hospitals who refuse to treat gunshot wounds?
The services are there but the density is low and the sprawl is wide in the midwest, and your only option is the car or to be entirely dependent on a relative to shuttle you to your appointments as public transit is anemic to non existent outside of chicago.
Costs are fractions of U.S. costs. For an extraordinary number of medical situations, one could fly to Korea, get treated, stay in hotels or nice recovery centers (medical hotels), and fly back and still spend less money than in the U.S. with very competitive medical outcomes.
For developing countries, you can have very capable doctors, but limited access to technologies.
That's not at all what I said and is exactly the opposite.
Real estate agent who told me retirees were coming down out of west-side Santa Cruz cabins as "the medical problems start."
There's also a desire to try to make daily costs of living stretch more and many retired people will find themselves retiring to rural environments. However, those places may also be very far away from the kind of emergency medical care that's likely to be needed.
The intersection of decent cost of living, close to medical facilities, high quality medical establishment, and affordable medical care leaves not too many places in the world.
At the moment, my wife and I are considering retiring to South Korea (not Seoul) or Japan (not Tokyo) since those seem to be places with that rare intersection. I'm sure some places in Western Europe may also qualify.