These anecdotes originally came from a thread on Something Awful, and were distilled down to this pastebin, but I’m copying them here to make them a little more readable. Enjoy the differences between the US health care system and those in countries that offer universal health care.

I live in Victoria, BC, Canada, and when I was twenty years old I fell down a flight of forty stairs at a local night club, cleanly breaking my ulna and nigh-shattering my radius. It was bad enough that I required steel plates and pins which remain in my forearm to this day. I broke it on the Friday night, stayed in a small but comfortable ward in the hospital with four other patients until my surgery on the Sunday morning. I stayed in the hospital the Sunday night, then asked if I could stay the Monday as well and talk to a physiotherapist about what I should do to have the bones heal as quickly as possible with minimal muscle damage/loss. They obliged. I wasn’t feeling so hot after talking to physio, so I was offered a further night’s stay at the hospital, which I accepted. So in all, I was in hospital from Friday night until Tuesday morning.

Total cost to me for a three day hospital stay, surgery, and eventual rehabilitation: if I recall correctly, I paid $50 for my full-arm cast.

I live in Massachusetts, where health care is mandatory. Since I run a start-up business and don’t make a ton of money, I was able to sign up for the state health care plan.My doctor works 3 minutes from my office, I was able to pick her myself. I have a $10 co-pay, and since I’m a healthy male, my visits are infrequent. I love my state run health plan.

On the other hand, I impaled my knee during a boating accident, and spent 11 hours in the ER to receive 3 stitches, a cast, and crutches. This was in a hospital that is run by a privately held business.

Two weeks ago I went in and waited four hours for a sprained knee, but at least I got in and had x-rays done cause I could barely walk and they thought it’d been [messed] up badly. Then again, four years ago they [messed] up my gallbladder surgery and kept kicking me out of ER every three days afterward because I would go in screaming in agony, and one ER doc told me I was making it up for attention.

It’s good and bad. At least I don’t have to pay thousands of dollars for it.

I live in the UK, and for me the best part of the National Health Service here is the flat-rate prescription charging system. If you go to a doctor (which is free) and they prescribe you some sort of medicine, it costs you 13 to get it, no matter what it is. This means that my mother gets 1000 worth of injections for her rheumatoid arthritis every month for the low, low price of 13.

[United States] My wife went in for cancer and they fixed her up pretty quickly. They cut her thyroid and the cancer out shortly after discovery. Only charged us $37,500 and counting for its removal. Well that includes the the routine bloodwork that costs $65 a pop. The scripts that run 35$ a month for the rest of her life. The extra surgery cause a lymph node swelled up and they had to make sure it hadn’t spread, the colonoscopy cause she was having problems in that area, and they had to make sure it hadn’t spread.

Really don’t know what everyones always complaining about. I mean whats wrong with paying $400-$500 a month in copays to nuclear meds, radiologists, ob’s, ear nose and throat, endo’s, general, etc as they play ping-poss with your ass.

I’m in the US and I have health care through my employer. My primary care physician has a 3 hour wait no matter what time of the day you go. In the waiting room, there’s about 50 of the newest drug pamphlets sitting on a table for you to look at, so you can ask him about them, and he can prescribe them to you if they fit your illness. I have to get a referral to go to any special doctor. At most of those doctors, I have a 2 week wait from when I make my appointment. I am actually considered by most to have “excellent” health care.

I’m a Canadian, and I have a few very serious food allergies that send me into immediate anaphylactic shock. It’s only occurred a few times in my life, but each time an ambulance was at my house in 5-10 min and I was immediately taken care of properly at the nearest hospital. No brutal waiting times, nothing like that, just zipped in and treated. Most of the people experiencing long wait times are sitting there with a broken arm feeling all angry because they keep treating newly arriving heart attack patients or something. It’s not like the doctors are smoking joints in the bathroom while people wait, they just constantly re-organize the waiting list according the medical priority of the incoming patients.

A few years ago there was something wrong with my back where I was in constant pain all the time, so I made an apointment with my family doctor for the following week. He sent me off to get an X-ray at the x-ray clinic – it’s a walk-in clinic where you just hand them the doctor’s form and wait for the couple of people before you.

My Doctor made another appointment for me to come in the next week to tell me the results of the x-ray; turns out I had a compression fracture on my L2 vertabrae. I got scheduled for a bone scan the following week to get some more information since I didn’t remember any sort of trauma that would cause that. Luckily there was a place on my university campus that could do the bone scan, so I ended up going there between classes.

After getting the bone scan back, he scheduled me for a CT scan, which I had to wait about 3 weeks for. It was a bit of a longer of a wait than I would have liked but since I couldn’t do anything about it I just ended up being a good Canadian and put up with it. I get the CT scan in the morning, and in the afternoon I get a call from my doctor “We need you to go in for an MRI tomorrow”. None of this waiting for the next available spot, they saw something serious and got me in the next day (made me feel OK about wait times…in my case anyway).

The MRI shows a tumor on my vertabrae, so they schedule me to come in for a biopsy the next day. I also got referred to an orthopedist who I saw later that week and scheduled a surgery about a month later to get the tumor out and fuse my spine up. I could have put the surgery sooner, but the school term was just about done and I wanted to get my finals over with.

I get my surgery and it turns out the tumor was a little more malignant that hoped so I get referred to an oncologist and the Cross Cancer Institute (the local cancer hospital). I start on chemo the next week which continues for the summer, and then just to be sure they killed all the cancer cells they decide to give me radiation therapy too.

I’ve since moved to a smaller town which means it takes me a full day (including travel) to go in for my 6-month “your cancer is still gone” checkup. Happily, travel and expenses (such as food and an overnight hotel room) for medical appointments are tax deductible.

So overall it was pretty much a year if medical “fun”. I did have to wait a little longer for some things than I would have liked (mainly the CT scan), but there wasn’t anything that I found unreasonable. Not to mention the only costs that I (my parents) had to pay for were some anti-nausea pills for the chemo, some morphene after the surgery, and getting the TV in the hospital room turned on.

About a decade ago my mom had a life-threatening blood clot form in her brain. I no longer specifically recall what made this particular clotting special, but it differed from a stroke in some key fashion, was the second case of it’s type in the country, and was later featured in some journal.

From the time she was admitted, she was transferred to Winnipeg (about three hours away), MRIed three times (MRI wait-times are often touted as an issue here for some reason), diagnosed, and had the specialist that had dealt with the only other recorded case of this type of blood clotting in Canadian medical history flown in from Calgary to perform the surgery, it was less than three days.

So, from admission to brain surgery by the best-suited doctor in the nation in less than three days. Cost-wise, the only thing that needed paying for was the three-hour ambulance trip (about $1k), and even that was later reimbursed because of her workplace Blue Cross.

These days she has some pills (because the cost of her drugs exceed x amount per year, they’re covered) she needs to take to prevent reduce the chance of any clotting from reoccurring. She manages her diet, and every month checks in with her doctor for some blood-work, the same doctor who originally had her admitted and sent to Winnipeg all those years ago.

I recently had a kidney stone. I kind of knew what it was, but if you’ve ever had one you know that it can be excruciatingly painful. Against my better judgment and influenced by extreme pain, I went to the emergency room without insurance. Just as the conservatives like to point out, I was able to receive care despite my lack of insurance. My bill for the three hours I spent in the emergency room was around $13,000. I had to laugh because it was just so obscenely expensive.

Incidentally, I had a kidney stone once before in Italy. I went to a hospital, received excellent care with less waiting, and when I had passed the stone I walked out of the hospital without even filling out any additional paperwork.

[United States] My fiancée is in a real bind; she left her last job and her new job doesn’t offer insurance: she’s paying month to month on a private plan and I think it costs her about $200 a month. She decided to up herself to the better plan – $40 more a month, I think – to reduce her deductible from $1,000 to $200. She had to go to the eye doctor last month and I think it cost her something like $180; she had to beg the doctor to give her sample eye-drops for the infection because her insurance wouldn’t cover the prescription drops and they were around $150. She’s scared to death of something really bad happening to her.

Portuguese posting here. The only time I had to stay in a hospital was for an emergency appendicitis surgery. I had to wait about 2 hours for a doctor to see me, but I wasn’t too bad yet, it was in the middle of a bad heat wave (40C every day for a week) and there were a lot of old people with dehydration there. A few hours later I was cut open and set right, stayed there for 2 nights, and then they kicked me out, fully healed, with a pat on the back and a bill for 0, which is about $0 USD.

I’m here in the UK, and I love socialised medicine, I was a very sickly child, and would probably be deaf now if it wasn’t for the NHS. I had 2 operations on my ears when I was about 5, when my parents were young. I can’t imagine how different my upbringing would have been if every extra penny my parents were earning was going on paying medical bills from 20 years ago.

Last year I was diagnosed with cancer. The total amount of time between the first ultrasound and my stay in the hospital for surgery was about three weeks. In between I got x-rays, a CT scan, more ultrasounds, and saw an oncologist. After surgery, I had multiple rounds of preventative chemotherapy to lower the chances of recurrence from 15% to 5%. I’ve since been back to the cancer agency repeatedly for screening. In total, I paid about fifty bucks to fill a prescription for anti-nausea medication. I am damn glad I live in Canada where healthcare is there regardless.

I broke my collarbone three days ago riding my bike. I went to the E.R, didn’t wait a minute, and got sent to a bed. There, a doctor looked at it and said I would probably need surgery because it ran the risk of poking through my skin. The next morning I got the surgery done, and after 4 hours in the O.R. had a metal plate on my clavicle. I stayed the night because IV drugs were needed after the surgery so I didn’t get any infections. I paid only about 10$ for the T3s for pain relief.

I’m in Canada. In 2005 I had a breast reduction totally covered by OHIP, as I was having related back problems (which only would have become a more expensive problem). I started the process in late April/early May, and had it done in July – that time included choosing a surgeon, preliminary appointments, getting documentation from my family doctor, etc. My life has been a lot easier since then. I know that this can cost thousands elsewhere, and I definitely did not have that kind of money.

I’ve moved around in recent years, and haven’t had a family doctor during that time. I’ve been getting my annual pap smears, breast exams, birth control prescriptions etc through local health unit clinics. These clinics book appointments in advance if you have a health card (and run walk-ins for those who don’t), and are staffed by women I actually like a lot better than my old family doctor anyway. The check-ups and tests are free, birth control can be had at reduced costs.

For some reason my mother in law was almost denied a new hip because she is 65 years old. I was pretty shocked since her and her husband paid into the system for so long and she was in overall good health. Once she was able to find a doctor that would operate and give her the type of replacement she wanted the waiting time was 8 months. After searching online I was able to find a doctor with only a two month wait. Four weeks ago she had her first replacement.
I am glad we have all have health insurance. It is not perfect but I know those two would never have coverage if they lived in the US.

I went in to a BC hospital 2 years ago for a life-saving surgery. Well, I say life-saving because untreated, I would have had an internal infection etc. You guys know Testicular Tortion? Well I had it on a Fallopian tube. Dean Venture compared it to being kicked in the genitals and the kicker never removed his foot. Waited 1.5 days and got it all taken care of. It sucked for those days, but afterwards the relief was..indescribable.

[United States] Right now, I’m in college because the $5K a semester for tuition is cheaper than what paying for insurance myself would cost (I use about a humalog insulin pen every week, and a box of 5 costs $250, I also take Lantus, use about a pen every week and a half, costs $250, use strips which cost $25 for a box of 25, and I take Paxil for $100 a month, so all in all, over $8,000 a year if I bought everything out of pocket even before factoring doctors appointments or emergency care into it) (never mind the fact I’d get laughed off the phone when trying to apply for private insurance)

I’m a Canadian, Albertan to be specific. I don’t pay any provincial health care premiums, because we just got rid of those this year here in Alberta (used to be something like $52 a month for me). So doctor visits and the like would be free. But extended benefits (prescriptions, dental, vision) you would need to purchase a plan. I pay $245 for 1 year, and that covers 80% of the price of prescriptions instantly and gives me up $5,000 dollars in such claims.

My mum had a scan and turns out she had bowel cancer, had surgery within the week, then some more a month later, and has a scan every 3 months to make sure it truely has gone. Cost – nothing

I had my nose flattened after I got mugged and after straightening it myself in the mirror went to hospital. Waited for 30mins, saw a nurse who said it was a bit wonky still and asked if I wanted it straightened. I said ok and they booked me in for 2 weeks time. Then I had it straightened and when I woke up the doctor said he also enlarged the passageway a bit since it was a bit narrow. Cost – nothing Both these were in the UK.

[United Kingdom] I am type1 diabetic, and, for me, *everything* is free, even scripts. Even if the medication is not directly associated with the disease. Why? Because it would cost more in admin, overall and in general, to differentiate. There are other diseases where everything is paid for, I think CF is another one. It’s things that require lifelong maintenance, that require lots of different stuff. We make more money alive than dead. The system is not perfect, but I’d take it over the system in the USA anytime, where ill health is a major cause of personal bankruptcy.

When I lived in England, MRSA infections were common, poor sanitation procedures rampant, and there were many people who could not go to a NHS dentist because he was assigned over 2,000 patients. That’s not a system operating at a high degree of efficiency or to anyone’s satisfaction.

In the last year of highschool, I got diagnosed with a really really bad case of ITP (idiopathic thrombocyclic pupura. Low platelet count). It resulted in several trips to ER, and I have a specialist doctor to deal with it. I also have to get weekly blood tests done. In the 4 years since I’ve been diagnosed, I have yet to pay a cent for my treatment, and honestly, while it’s a chronic condition, I still have a relatively high platelet count now. So, yes, competent, personalized treatment, and best of all free.

I live in the United States. I’m 27 years old and I owe a hospital over 30,000 dollars because I fell down some stairs and collapsed one of my lungs. I stayed in the hospital for eleven days. I don’t know how Ill ever pay it off. I’ll probably be paying it for the rest of my life.

[United States] I broke my radius at the wrist when I was 19 but didn’t have insurance and was scared to go to a doctor because I didn’t have any money. I went to the drugstore and bought a wrist brace and wore it for six weeks until it healed. It healed all [messed]ed up, but what does that matter?

Fifteen years later, I saw my orthopedist for an ulnar nerve problem that required a cortisone shot to fix. I said on the form that I’d been having symptoms for about six weeks, which was before my insurance kicked in at my new job. While I was there for the ulnar nerve problem my doctor noticed that I had reduced blood flow to my hand. An MRI later, and it was shown that the malformed healing on my radius was repeatedly tearing up the cartilage in my wrist, which was restricting blood flow and I needed to have it fixed soon or I was going to lose the hand. I had one surgery to break the radius and put in two screws, a plate, and a bone graft, along with two pins to put my carpal bones back where they should be. Second surgery to take out the pins. Third surgery to repair a fistula in the scar tissue from the pin-removal incision because it was weeping fluid all over the place.

My insurance company decided, after pre-approving the surgeries, that they weren’t going to pay for anything after all because on the initial form for the ulnar nerve problem, I said that the symptoms had existed from before my insurance kicked in. They paid for the goddamned cortisone shot, but disallowed the surgery. I now owe $40,000 in various medical debts from that and a few other minor medical issues here and there over the years. This was WITH what is generally considered to be very good private insurance.

My dad was diagnosed with bowel cancer. He went through the public system in Australia.

He was proactive sent a test kit by the government because he reached a certain age. He just had to use the kit and send it back and they sent him results. He then saw doctors for confirmation (including a colonoscopy. He had it removed surgically, with all of the standard drugs (including anaesthetics). He then spent a few days in hospital (6 bed room with curtains), with food provided. He’s since had a follow up colonoscopy which has confirmed the operation was a “surgical cure” in that they are as certain as they can be that the whole thing has been removed.

Total cost to him: $0.

Diabetic treatment requiring medication is completely free in the UK on the NHS regardless of income. Additionally,any other medical treatment you require is completely free, because you’re a diabetic. I mentioned this in another post but yours is asking the question directly, so I’m replying here too. I’m like you, type 1. All the stuff you describe is free, including checkups at hospital and at the GP. It’s been this way for years and years. I take lantus and novorapid (here we call it insulin glargine and insulin aspart) and use pens that take cartridges. I can phone or email the surgery for renewals, drop the script off at the chemist and it’s done. My regular, local pharmacist knows me (I’m registered on their system which serves all branches and is nationwide) but if I were to go into another pharmacist (different company) all I’d need to bring apart from my script is the exemption certificate which is a plastic thing the size of a credit card, renewed every 5 years.

I’ve remembered another reason why we have this system for diabetes in particular. It is relatively cheap and easy to maintain a diabetic. However, the consequenses of having badly-controlled diabetes are horrific and expensive. Most amputations are a result of this. Charcot foot, leg ulcers, retinopathy and blindness, sclerotic arteries, kidney disease, neuropathy, premature death. Aside from humanistic principles, an economy doesn’t want this to happen to its workers – it wants them still working so it can tax them. A great way to have lots of poorly controlled diabetics is to charge them all for everything.

Toronto resident here. My dad has been diagnosed with liver cancer(hepatocellular carcinoma) and has been in and out of hospitals for the last year. Prior to being diagnosed, a load of tests were run, ranging from ultrasounds, CT scans biopsies and colonoscopies. All these tests were scheduled about a month apart, from October of last year until June. It’s only been more frequent (weeks apart) now that he’s been diagnosed. My aunt from Los Angeles lost her husband last year to liver cancer. One of the reasons was her husband was reluctant to get checked because the procedures mentioned above were anywhere from $200-600 a piece. Their family spent upwards of $50,000 for treatment and hospital fees, and finally hit a brick wall when the prospect of a liver transplant was $250,000. The doctor prescribed my dad these pills that cost about $6,500 CDN. And even then, we’re able to apply for a program where some of the expenses will be covered, or written off completely.

I pay $118 a paycheck for my family’s healthcare premiums. I get paid weekly meaning I pay a little more than $6000 a year just in premiums. When my wife has a baby this December I’ll owe somewhere in the range of $4000 out of pocket anyway. Assuming she doesn’t have to get a C-section again or there’s any other sort of complications.

My wife and I combined gross around $50000 a year. We are going to spend 20% of our gross income on healthcare this year. And I can’t wait until January when my premiums go up because I add a second child.

Went to the walk-in centre on Sunday morning at 10am. Out by 11am with some penicillin for my tonsillitis. Total cost: 7.20 ($11.89 USD) Went to Doctor on Monday morning. Rang for an appointment at 8.30am, in the door at 9.45am, out again at 10.30am. Total cost: nothing. Going to doctor again today. Rang for an appointment yesterday at 8.30am. Offered a 9am but couldn’t go due to work until this morning. Going to cost me: nothing.

I’m 26 years old and I owe doctors over $60k because of diabetes-related expenses that my insurance company refuses to pay since type I diabetes is a “pre-existing condition.” I have to forgo food sometimes, which is [really] dangerous, to buy testing supplies. I let my car insurance/inspection lapse because I can’t pay for them and my health’s more important. Insulin’s not an option.

This has pretty much wrecked my self-esteem and made me feel like a burden on my family. I hate having to ask for money and I feel like the most useless person in the world because I can’t even afford to take care of myself. I know that’s stupid, but years of fighting with doctors and insurance companies has left me feeling like nobody gives a [darn] and that I brought this on myself somehow. So now, on top of feeling sick and horrible because of diabetes, I get panic attacks constantly because I don’t know how to [fracking] pay for it.

One of our neighbors was a professional craftsman and woodworker, then one day his wife went up to talk to him, and he blankly stared at her and said “who are you? who am I? where am I?” He’s 32 years old. She took him to the hospital. They discovered a large brain tumor, of a type of cancer I can’t recall but it’s incredibly aggressive and he’s going to die very fast. To get treatment, they had to sell their house and most of their possessions and move in with his wife’s parents, and now he’s just volunteering to be a guinea pig for random potential treatments because he’s doomed anyways. I think they’re something like 500,000 dollars in debt because of the surgeries and treatments he had to go through initially. He’s a very nice person and to see him not only get cancer, but then have so much taken in exchange for treatment just makes it so much worse.

I want the current US healthcare system to burn. I want the people running these huge scams to pay. The amount of pain and suffering caused by them, due to the simply outrageous costs attributed to sometimes trivial treatments is simply monstrous. Inhuman.

We live in Toronto, and earlier this year my fiance was diagnosed with melanoma (skin cancer). It wasn’t life-threatening, but the problem with melanoma is that A) If you don’t get all of it there are zero treatments to get the rest and B) It comes back.

So she saw a doctor, who recommended a dermatologist, who recommended she go to the cancer clinic. We went there and saw another 2 experts who passed us on to a surgeon. Surgeon said she should have some skin removed, appt. was booked and a week later she had it removed.
She was on some pills for a little while and has made a complete recovery, although she still has to keep an eye out for anything that looks ‘wrong’, and get checked out every six months.

Grand total for all of that, including surgery? About $20.

Both of my parents had cancer – dad in the prostate and mum in the bowel. My dads cancer was quite advanced, but my mums was found earlier. She discovered she had it and was scheduled for surgery in two months. Two months! For cancer! This is obviously disgraceful. The NHS doctor explained that they wait as long as possible for surgery on non-life threatening cancer (but not too long) so they can conduct as many tests as possible to find out exactly how advanced it is, what they need to do, and which drugs they need to give her in the run up to surgery to ensure her body is ready for it.

This clearly sounded like a pile of bull[crap], so she went to BUPA, her private health insurer, and got an appointment with one of their doctors. He told her, um, the exact same thing. And she wouldn’t be able to get the operation for three months because it wasn’t life threatening and they didn’t have enough doctors available to do it. They did offer her a private hospital room though, which wasn’t much of a payout for paying into this plan for 20 years.

All in all, she spent the next two months getting several blood tests and CAT scans, counselling from the NHS and information from a nutritionist on how to modify her diet to prepare her bowel for the fact that 30% of it was about to be ripped out. The operation went perfectly and she was put on chemotherapy immediately after. Total cost? 0.00.

My dads story was a bit less happy, but he had his operation in 3 weeks (he was in hospital EVERY DAY for the two weeks before that getting various tests done). BUPA refused to pay for his operation – why? Private health insurers pride themselves on people not dying, and when their “patients” (customers) actually do decide to die half way through surgery it affects their ratings. So they just don’t pay out if they think you won’t make it. And that’s what they did with him. He did make it and went on intensive radiotherapy and a cocktail of drugs, which he is still on. Total cost? 0.00.

[Calgary] I broke my arm skateboarding a few years ago, waited for maybe 20 minutes in the ER (I was there at 5am, when the busses here start running… Couldn’t get down there the previous night and just dealt with the pain for a few hours) and paid $0 for it after hanging out in the waiting room for 20 minutes.

I have a friend who has been waiting for minor surgery for about 3 months now. Every couple of weeks, he gets a call letting him know that they need to reschedule the appointment. He’s not upset about it because he understands that people who are about to die take precedence over his abscessed tooth here in the real world. Likewise, he is paying $0 for this surgery out of his pocket.

The only bad story about Canadian health care system is once when I was kid and ill, my mother took me to outpatients to get treated. After taking a number and the nurse giving me a once over we sat down to wait for 5+ hours. We sat in chairs behind a pillar, they couldn’t see us and thought we left . After they saw us, they apologized and we were into see the next available doctor in minutes.

I was very ill in my early teens, and in a period of 1 week I went from our family doctor, to a specialist at the regional hospital to a specialist at the massive children’s hospital in Halifax. My Mother was diagnosed with cancer, less than two weeks later she was in surgery, and not long after that she started chemo. All this happened without breaking the bank.

I also had a kidney abscess when I was 20 that almost killed me (it would have if my brother hadn’t shown up at my apartment, found me naked and screaming about being on fire, and called 911). The hospital gave me IV fluids and took blood, and because I didn’t have medical insurance, they wouldn’t do the more expensive tests like a CAT scan that would have given them a conclusive answer as to what was wrong with me. They knew I had a raging infection somewhere in my body, but didn’t know where because they wouldn’t do the more expensive tests. They gave me some nausea medication and some high-test antibiotics and sent me home.

The next day, I was back to a 106 fever and hallucinating about being on fire, so back to the ER. I drove halfway across Houston to make sure I got back to the same hospital so I wouldn’t have to have tests repeated (and have to pay for them). They finally ran a CAT scan and found that I had a golf-ball-sized abscess in my left kidney and another one that was a bit smaller. Because I didn’t have insurance, they didn’t want to admit me but none of the public hospitals had any room, so they had to because otherwise I’ll die. The doctor who was assigned to me was a private practice guy, and really wanted to help me so he was willing to do stuff for free.

I spent two weeks in the hospital, and after the first few days, they were going to move me to a public hospital, but fortunately my mom colluded with her HR department to figure out how to get me eligible for COBRA coverage because I had only stopped being a student less than six months before. We paid the COBRA premiums retroactively, because they’re required by federal law to allow you to do that for six months after you become ineligible for an employer’s plan, and I got to stay at the private hospital and have IV treatment instead of having the abscesses cut out, which is what the public hospital would have done to get me out the door faster.

End result? I’m totally fine, and only had $27,000 in debt at the age of 20 because of the parts of my care that my insurance wouldn’t cover, even though they had negotiated with the hospital to have my costs reduced to what they would pay. the hospital welshed on that agreement and stuck me with the balance.

Just pointing out its not always sunshine in the UK. I fell over today trying to reach some magazines from the top shelf of a newsagent and twisted my ankle. Instead of taking me in an ambulance they told me it was ‘fine’ and I should go home and ‘rest’ it. They wouldn’t even offer me a lift back home because it was only ‘a few minutes away’ and they had another emergency call (It was FOUR minutes away and I hurt my ankle). Anyway, If I was private I would have been taken to hospital and gotten the attention I need. Just my two pence.

American here. A few weeks ago, my two-year-old cousin fell out of bed. His arm was swelling and was tender to the touch, and he said it was hurting him. His mom rushed him to the ER. Where they waited for EIGHT HOURS to be seen by a tired tech who took an x-ray, glanced at the kid and said “he’s okay, kids don’t break bones,” and sent them home with a nice hefty bill.

Kid’s still hurting the next day, plus the arm has swollen greatly, so mom drives him 50 miles to a different ER where he gets actual sensible and quick care. Turns out he’s got a broken arm. Furious mom calls first ER to find that the people who saw the kid the previous day didn’t even bother to look at the x-ray they took. Apparently, nobody knew how to read it. A two-year-old child was allowed to sit in pain for eight hours before being sent home by people who provided him no care and still get to charge for an ER visit and an x-ray.

Last year I suddenly became dizzy. I was dizzy every single moment of the day for weeks before I sought treatment. I went to a walk-in clinic. I saw a doctor in 45 minutes. I walked out with a vague idea of what the problem may be (they could do little without running tests or taking scans), and a Rx for something that they said may help. The drug turned out to be useless, but it only cost me $1, so no biggie.

Things got worse, and I went to the ER a week later. I waited 30 minutes in downtown Toronto. I got a CAT scan, and got my results an hour later. They set me up with an appointment in their neurology clinic, set for six weeks later. However, I managed to get an appointment with another neurologist through my family doctor for only two weeks later. I had an MRI three weeks after that. If the MRI had been marked as urgent, it would have been one or two days, the neurologist said. Total cost to me was just the buck.

My father has been suffering from some kind of growth on his neck. He’s been for an ultrasound examination, an x-ray examination and an MRI, and was told he’d be scheduled for biopsy surgery as soon as the surgeon was available. That was two weeks ago. Fearing that it could be cancerous, yesterday he phoned up the department at the hospital explaining that he expected he’d have an appointment by now, and they explained that the surgeon was on holiday until the end of the month.

The person at the other end of the phone then asked what condition my father had, and after my father explained she agreed that he shouldn’t be waiting. He went to the hospital today for pre-surgery consultation, during the course of which they discovered his blood pressure is unusually high (he’s had a quadruple heart bypass in the past) and so fitted him with a 24-hour heart monitoring device to record his biometrics: he’s going back to the hospital tomorrow to have it removed and to discuss the results.

Meanwhile, between his call yesterday and his appointment today the hospital referred his case to a specialist in another hospital for an expert opinion. The specialist will let our local hospital know by tomorrow whether his surgery will require specialist assistance (i.e. whether the surgery should be done in our local hospital or the hospital to which his case has been referred). Either way, on Friday we will receive a date and time for his surgery, which is expected to be some time next week.

The total cost for both of us for all of this? 4.Time between my Dad reporting that something is wrong and the doctors scheduling him for surgery to remove a potentially cancerous growth? Three weeks. My Dad is 72.

I live in Norway. Last year I started having frequent Lung collapses (Spontanious Pneumothorax), I had 2 weeks in hospital, roughly 40 x-rays in total and a 5 hours surgery after the 4th collapse. I was on sick leave from work for 6 months in total with full pay and my hospital bill was 200 NOK, ($30). I have no health insurance as Norway has a fully socialiced healthcare.

A few years ago, my mother started losing the use of her vocal cords. Her increasingly-croaky voice caused her to be fired from a phone reception job, so she decided it was time to go to her doctor. Our family doctor had to send her to a specialist, who then said that she needed treatment in Boston (several states away.) The procedure involved getting repeated shots of botox directly into the vocal folds with a huge needle over several weeks. Her insurance carrier explicitly said they’d cover it, so she handled the copay after each procedure and thought everything was all settled.

About six months later, she started receiving collections notices and angry phone calls. The insurance company had never paid their share of the specialist’s tests and the repeated injections, which added up to somewhere around $8-10k. She called the insurance company to find out why they hadn’t paid anything. Their answer was “sorry, your insurance coverage was terminated six months ago.” After further prodding and escalation, they claimed that her coverage had been terminated because she missed a payment in the exact month of her procedure… but, being quite a packrat, she still had that canceled check. She had kept every canceled check for the past five years, including all the ones from after they claimed her coverage was canceled. So they were still cashing her checks for a supposedly “terminated” account.

My mom faxed them an image of the check for the month in question showing that it had been cashed by the insurance company before the monthly deadline, so they changed their story and said she’d missed a payment four months before the procedure and that her coverage had been terminated at that time. They had approved the specialist’s costs and paid out to our general practitioner after that date… she had that cashed check for that payment too. It took almost a year of legal threats from a near-poverty line single mother to make them finally pay off the bill.

I grew up under what is (as far as I know) the longest running socialized medicine system in the U. S.–the one provided to soldiers and their dependents in the active armed forces. It pleases me greatly to see that this is finally being talked about in the media somewhat, though it exists as a shadow of it’s former self (i.e. most of the support for dependents is gone, and the military has experimented with proto-HMOs and the like for years, and of course, the VA being [messed up] due to under-funding/nobody giving a [crap]).

Myself and my younger brother and sister all received treatment through this system for the majority of our lives. While there are always scare stories, like a guy dying the waiting room, or the time my brother, age 2 and with a 104 fever, was made to sit in the waiting room in ice until he seizured, there are also stories of doctors with tremendous abilities who utilized themselves and their resources to the utmost. When I got shigella in my teens, the doctor I saw spent the whole day with me, gave me an MRI because, in his words “it’s free, it might help, and I need the practice”, and called me at school when I was feeling well enough to go to check up on me.

Calgarian here. I was at home alone some time last year when my appendix burst, so I had to call 911 for an ambulance. They picked me up, shot me full of morphine, took a bunch of blood, and ran a shitload of tests, x-rays, MRIs, etc as soon as they got me in to the hospital. I was in surgery within a few hours, and ended up having to stay in the hospital for a week.

A week or so after I was out, my guts started to ache again. I went to the clinic and got checked out, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with me. A few days later, it hadn’t gotten any better, so I went in for more x-rays. Again, they couldn’t find anything. After a few more days, I couldn’t even keep any food or water down, so I went to the ER and got more x-rays. It turns out the scar tissue from my first surgery was had become wrapped around my intestines and was choking them off. I was back under the knife in a few hours, and had to stay at the hospital another week. The only bill I received for all that was $350 for the ambulance ride, which ended up being covered by my insurance.

My mom’s in a wheelchair from a car accident. She’s quadriplegic, and so she needs a lot of care.
Our insurance won’t cover a visiting nurse or anything like that, so my dad has to come in from his job (but hey, it gives insurance!) to help my mom instead of being able to come in and eat a nice lunch with her.

He can’t have the job he wants because it doesn’t have insurance, and we literally cannot let our insurance run out because my mom’s quadriplegia is a [God Damn!] pre-existing condition. Yeah, that’s right, a car wreck is a pre-existing condition now. COBRA was soul-crushingly expensive when my dad lost his first job. Now he works as a cashier at a shitty job where no one seems to know shit about their job.

Australia again: My dad who is 65 had his first knee replacement at 48 (2 weeks in hospital), his other one 51 (7 days in hospital), his first one again at 60 (3 days in hospital) and the second one again at 63 (2 days in hospital). They told him the new ones should last about 15 years, so get ready to head in again. He had Brain Cancer when he was 26 which required a month-long stay in hospital, a follow up visit when he was 36 which I think he was there for a week or more from memory.

He did all this as a farmer, with private health care initially and a combination Private/Public when it came in when he was in his 30′s. He owes no money, but he did pay extra to get the same doctor back to do his knees the third and fourth time (which was around $3000 total). Strangely when he needed more details on his Brain cancer a few years he couldn’t get the original doctor (he had died), but his son had entered the business also and had kept his fathers notes, so Dad paid about a hundred dollars extra for a updated consult.

I’ve had and am currently having a terrible experience with US healthcare. About six months ago when I was living with my then fianc I started having severe back pains in my kidney area. One night it became some of the worst pain I’ve ever had and he ended up driving me to the local emergency care center, despite me reminding him that I don’t have insurance. Once I got there all they pretty much did for me was run a scan, say “Yup, you got kidney stones. Go home and drink water” and send me home with a $3,500 bill that I still can’t pay, especially now that I’ve had to move back into my parents home (break-up) and I lost my job (which had no insurance benefits for part time employees and was the only job I could find at the time). I know it’s not as bad as the other stories in the thread but I still have panic attacks over paying it off, on top of the other problems I have, like severe depression and anxiety.

I just now managed to find a place that I think will see me for counseling for reduced fees but after seeing that list of medication prices earlier in the thread I’m panicking about being able to afford the medicine they might want me to be on. If I can’t, I’m really afraid of what will happen to me. I already feel so much like I’m burdening my parents and everyone around me that I really do feel they would just be better off without me. I really don’t know what to do anymore.

My nine-year-old has been complaining about her shoulder hurting all day, and when she moves it certain ways I can see her wince or she’ll let out a little “ow.” I asked her probably ten times today if she wanted me to take her to the urgent care place to get it checked out, and she kept saying no, that it wasn’t that bad.

About an hour ago, when I told her to get ready for bed, she came into my room and said, basically, that she’d been lying all day about how much it hurt because she knew it was expensive to go to urgent care. Last time she went to urgent care was when she scraped her arm very badly on the fence and had a huge splinter that I couldn’t get out. She overheard me and my fiancee talking about how the insurance her father bought for her isn’t very good so the entire visit plus her meds were out of pocket because he hasn’t met her annual deductible yet. It was $75 for the urgent care visit and $100 for the meds, and, as she put it to me tonight, “I didn’t want to cost you and Erik a bunch of money again.” Needless to say, we’re going to urgent care in the morning. But hearing my nine-year-old worry about the costs of health care just broke my heart.

I’ve been to the ER twice this past month, the first time they wrongly-diagnosed me after a 4 hour wait. The second time, correctly diagnosed. Charged over $1000.00 for each visit ($1260.60 for the first visit…haven’t gotten the bill for the second time but it was pretty much the same shit, so I figure it will be the same). The ER charge each time was $630.00.

It took two gallbladder attacks for them to correctly diagnose me. I get to pay for the incorrect diagnosis (acid reflux…yes, seriously) the first time.

Well, I live in the most conservative province in Canada, so of course we have the worst UHC, so here’s a fairly negative story: My dad had to get knee replacements 10 years ago, because of injuries he’d had when he was in his 20s (walked off a roof and landed stiff legged on the concrete below), and a year ago they started acting up again. Crazy pain, yadda yadda, turns out he had bone spurs growing in one of his knees. After a few months of barely being able to walk, they finally filed the spurs down, but there is a high chance of them growing back, and his knees still ache like crazy. He really needs another knee replacement but (and here’s where it gets crazy) they said he’s too young. Apparently if they do it now, it’s very likely that he’ll need it done again in ~10 years, and so they say they won’t do it until he is 60 (5 years from now). Meanwhile, he’s been unable to exercise and has gotten out of shape, which is particularly stressing given that heart problems and strokes run rampant in his family, and people rarely live past their mid sixties (which is why he exercised a lot).

Now, it’s not like they kicked him out on the street and said “come back in 5 years,” he got cortisone injections and physiotherapy, and a brace for his knee. His pain has died down considerably because of this, but he still really needs a replacement.

Out of all the visits, surgeries and other stuff, all he’s had to pay for is the brace. The wait times to see a specialist and get his surgeries have been really long, but that can be chalked up to this provinces awful government pulling the Reagan one-two of underfunding a public program and then pointing at it and saying “Look how [crappy] this is! We need a private system up in this [place]!” Luckily, their plan has failed so far, since all we have to do is look south to see how terrible a private system would be.

5 years ago my father suffered a mild heart attack. My mother called the ambulance (didn’t have to check if it was covered), my father was taken to the hospital (closest one, there are no in- or out-of-network hospitals) where he also suffered a stroke. He was immediately rushed to surgery that took about 8 hours or so. Thankfully, my father survived his rather massive stroke and he stayed in their convalescence wing for two weeks. Once he was stable enough to travel they transferred him to another, nearby hospital that specialized in neurology. He spent over a month there (I want to say six weeks but it might have been longer, that period is a bit of a blur for me) recovering and doing rehabilitation. Even after he was released he spent months coming back to their rehab ward and I’m happy to say that my father is pretty much completely recovered but he lost a little bit of his peripheral vision on the right due to the stroke.

Total cost to my parents? The ambulance ride (I think it was $90?) plus whatever gas money it cost my mother to visit him in the hospital.

I live in America. As far as I know, my father is still paying off my mother’s chemo treatments. She died in 05.

This happened to my mom. This past fall, she had surgery to remove pre-cancerous cells from her uterus and while they were in there, the doctors found other issues that created further complications, and she was told not to go to work until it was taken care of. After 84 days of unpaid medical leave, her employer let her go (as allowed by FMLA), and she lost not only her job, but also the health insurance that her employer had provided. Should I mention that her employer was the local hospital, the same hospital that was treating her, where she had worked as a microbiologist for 30 years?

One weekend I went to see my boyfriend and was having abdominal pains. I thought it had something to do with food I ate so I waited a few days but the pain seemed to be getting worse, so I visited the ER on Friday where they did an ultrasound, said I had gallstones and scheduled me for a visit to see a surgeon on Monday. I had the surgery on Thursday. The total time between my diagnosis and the surgery was less than a week.

I found out later that all the claims (ER, surgeon, anesthesiologist and the surgery center bill itself) were denied by my insurance as they thought it was a pre-existing condition. Granted, the gallstones didn’t just show up overnight but I hadn’t been to a doctor in years, so I had no knowledge of what was going on.

Although it was horrible timing I don’t regret having the surgery, since according to the surgeon my gallbladder started to rupture just as they were removing it. I now have roughly $10,000 in medical debt. The only good thing about the whole thing is that my $1,800 ER bill was written off because of my low income.

My mom was diagnosed with cancer a year or two ago. We live in Canada, and she received surgery and radiation treatment all within a few months, and was on paid leave for many more months. I believe all that had to be paid for was the medication. I can’t even imagine how much it would have cost in the States. She’s fine and back to work now, and has only an 8% chance of reoccurance, if I remember correctly. She had also had a heart arrhythmia a few more years back, and within a few months had surgery performed at the Heart Institute in Ottawa by a very qualified heart specialist.

Also, my grandmother and step-grandfather had dual citizenship and lived in the States. When my step-grandfather had a stroke, they had to move back to Canada, because the costs would have bankrupt them. As far as I know, they had no trouble getting treatment here.

Also, I was diagnosed with diabetes earlier this summer, so I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office, the dietician’s office, the optometrist’s office, etc. All of it’s covered by OHIP, and I can get appointments within a week.

My grandmother was diagnosed with stomach cancer at the age of 77 and even though her best case prognosis was 3 to 4 months she still underwent chemotherapy. She lived for another 2 years in overall good health. That is time that I am thankfull for and it cost her nothing. At no point did anyone in the Canadian health care system say, “she’s too old”.

My mother recently found out she has malignant cancer in her tear duct and part of her sinus. Unfortunately, this meant that she had to have her eye removed. The NHS set up a multidisciplinary team for her, an ENT Doctor, a cosmetic surgeon, an oncologist, and a prosthetics expert (for the prosthetic eye she will eventually receive) and she had surgery within a month. It’s been very traumatic for her, but she’s doing well now, and the total cost of the whole past 4 months or so of treatment (2 surgeries, about a dozen consultations with 4 different doctors) has simply been the cost of train tickets to and from the hospital (which also would have been free if we couldn’t afford that).

About a week after my mum’s first surgery, my dad collapsed at home and was rushed to A&E where it was discovered he had a ruptured aortic aneurysm. He was given a 50% chance of surviving the major operation to repair it, and he required 10 units of blood but he survived. He spent 24 hours being ventilated, 48 hours in critical care (with a nurse dedicated to him, watching him 24 hours), 2 days in a high-dependancy ward, 2 days post-surgical ward, and a week on a general hospital ward. This all cost us nothing. He has been prescribed about 15 different medications – if he was under 65 this would cost about 7.20 a month (for all of them), but as he’s over 65 they’re all free. When he came home, we had the option of having community workers helping him do shopping, or prepare meals for him, and we do have the district nurse coming to the house every so often to check blood pressure, etc. Again, total cost is zero.

US citizen here. In Arizona, broke my clavicle when a pothole sent me flying off of my motorcycle a few years ago. It was a clean break right in the middle so it didn’t hurt too bad (clavicle injuries are widely reported as the most painful form of bone injury). I was meeting up with a friend and had nearly reached my destination, so I drove myself the rest of the way and had her drive me to the hospital. I arrived at the hospital at about 10AM.

An hour of waiting and I’m brought into triage. “I flew off of my bike, now my shoulder hurts.” Simple enough. Six hours later, a nurse brings me back into an examination room. Two hours later, a doctor comes in. He asks me the same questions that they asked in triage. “I flew off of my bike, now my shoulder hurts. May I have an X-Ray now?” One hour later, someone brings me into the x-ray room. Takes about 10 minutes. I’m brought back to the examination room.

One hour later, the doctor returns. “Yup, your clavicle is broken. Here is a sling. Let me get you some pain medication. Do you have a primary physician?” I do not. “Let me recommend a good orthopedic.” One hour later, doctor returns with 10 vicodin pills. The injury was pretty sore all week, but I managed to ration them until I could see my orthopedic.

Time spent in hospital: 12 hours, it’s now 10PM. All I’ve eaten since breakfast is shitty vending machine food. Luckily I had fantastic health insurance through my parents, being in college at the time, so all of this cost me less than $1k.

Three days after my dad was diagnosed with cancer he was having major surgery for free by a top surgeon. Chemo and endless consultations, house visits by a nurse when he got too ill to have his chemo in hospital, all by our evil socialist NHS.

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Tags: healthcare, insurance, uhc