UK here.

Its better then America, but many fail to see that our NHS wasn’t given freely, we struggled for it, and year by year we loose more of it to privatisation. I am currently witnessing one hospital closure in my county, and this is happening across the board. Nhs Waiting lists are a hot topic across the country due in part to years of austerity measures.

i live in Canada and it’s a constant struggle to keep it afloat, we have our own brand of braindead morons we call maple maga that actively try to sabotage it at every possible opportunity…

what we do have is pretty good for basic coverage, but it excludes mental and *most *dental, and you still need insurance through work for costs of medicine etc. that being said, all hospital visits, stays, and treatments receive no billings.

just ‘getting’ universal healthcare isn’t enough, you have to fight for it, and you have to fight to keep it.

Austrian here: medical debt does not exist.

Both my boys broke their arms snowboarding (a couple of years between each accident), costs for the first one were none because we went to a regular hospital (including everything from setting the bone to cast to regular checkups, cast removal and clean bill of health report). Son #2 had to go to a private clinic. Which was still subsidized by our national healthcare provider, so I only paid 65€ for x-ray, setting the bone and the cast. Checkup and removal back home were free.

GP visits are fully covered. Some medication is subsidized, but not everything. I rarely pay more than 10€ for a box of pills of any kind, even if I get them without a subscription (for instance sea sickness in my case). Our docs recommend various exams the older you get to catch any budding cancer cells before they can cause too much damage (Prostate exam, Mammogram, Colonoscopy, …). All covered.

Dental depends. Fillings are covered, if you go for the cheap (bad) ones. Anything beyond that will cost you. Orthodontics depends on age. For kids up to 18yo it’s completely free. Adults have to pay. Don’t ask me for prices though.

Pregnancy/birth: all covered, including all necessary exams.

If a parent is insured (i.e. employed), their kids are covered as well automatically.

Never in my 45+ years have I ever had to wonder if I could afford a medical procedure. Sure, there’s a big lump of money removed from my paycheck every month (minimum employment period is a month, you can’t fire people with shorter notice except when they messed up royally). But it’s the same for everyone in the same salary bracket (more income = higher share; does not change level of care), and it is a guarantee for social peace.

Spain. I have private health insurance (it’s quite affordable here).

If you are dying, use the public services. They will do whatever it takes (under their material resources) to save you.

If you want comfort and probably reduce waiting times, go private. Public hospitals have long waits for anything that’s not immediately disabling/life threatening.

Example. My dad had a fall at home alone and broke his femur. He used his telemedicine device to call for help. When I got at his home, the paramedics were already there. They stabilised him, put him in ambulance and brought him to a public hospital. The same evening he had a titanium inserted. After five days in the hospital he was transferred to a recovery center.

Guess the cost?

Zero euros.

Canadian. The hospitals are overcrowded and can be a bit dirty, but the quality of care is good and the staff do their best. The biggest problem is wait times, which is typically many hours. No hospital bills, though. A previous Liberal government partially implemented universal pharmacare, but it’s still only in its first phase and only applies to insulin and a few other things. I don’t expect that it will progress past phase 1.

Universal healthcare is popular enough that they can’t just abolish it, but right wing provincial governments (healthcare is administered at the provincial level) continually underfund and mismanage it with the hopes of replacing it with a private, for-profit system. The idea is to degrade the system enough to convince the population that fully public healthcare is untenable, and that private options are needed to take some of the load off of the public system. Then, with its replacement in place, the public system can be defunded at an accelerated rate and eventually fully privatized. This demonstrates that social democracy is untenable, and that a dictatorship of the proletariat is needed to protect the gains of the working class.

UK

If you need urgent care, you get it and it’s almost always high-quality. If non-urgent, you might wait several months for an appointment. I’ve never personally had a problem with quality of care, only wait times. That’s one of the reasons the government is trying to reform the way we do cancer screening and prevention, because it’s hard to catch it early when it takes so long to be seen. The NHS is not in a great state currently, but it’s getting better and we’re definitely better off with it than without it.

Should not have opened this today. Was already depressed.

Latvia, a country where 1000 EUR after tax is considered a decent salary, but realistically you need to earn above that to live comfortably. There is a certain budget and quotas for government-funded procedures and appointments. For in-demand things it runs very fast. It’s normal to have to get an appointment for non-urgent things 3-6 months in advance to get a partially funded price, then it usually costs less than 10 EUR per. Non-subsidized appointment slots are generally available very fast, but can cost anywhere form 25 to 90 EUR depending on the doctor, clinic and so on. Blood test subsidies are also very few and far between. I think I can only get one subsidized TSH test a year. There are private health insurance plans that generally cost triple digit sums per year. Not worth taking it privately as they will not cover existing chronic health conditions, but can be great if arranged through and partially covered by the employer. These insurances return part of the costs that patients pay out of pocket for these non-subsidized expenses. I think the rising popularity of these plans are partially to blame for 2-3x increase in medical appointment costs over the past 10 years.

Every now and then I see old people trying to register for appointments at the clinics and being astonished that they’ll have to either wait for half a year or to pay 1/10th of their pension to see the doc in a couple of weeks.

I don’t know that much about urgent procedures. I believe the ambulance rides are covered if the medical emergency is deemed serious enough. Surgeries and hospital stays are also partially covered for a time, especially in serious cases.

Sweden. Doctor’s appointments cost ~€30, normally capped at ~€150 per year. There’s a cost ceiling for drugs at ~€300 per year. Urgent care is free. Dental is subsidized but only free up to age 19. The care itself is fine, there are multiple research hospitals and if you’re in a real bind one of the best research hospitals in the world.

I’d gladly pay higher taxes for better healthcare.

Netherlands: 2x stage 4 cancer with 10 years difference, so constant checkups, and of course the 2 treatments. we have “eigen risico” (own contribution) here (385 eur per year), and due to the many checkups I always max this out, but that’s pretty much where it ends, everything else is covered by the state (well, my state health insurance). the treatments were of course FoC, incl all the scans, the chemo, an operation, etc. i can not imagine the stress somebody without health insurance must have, when facing something like this. there are things that health insurance doesn’t cover or not fully: dentist i bought extra coverage for, fysiotherapy is only covered max 10x per year.

Aus.

I’m waiting for minor surgery. Basically every 6 months or so they make me come to the hospital to talk to a nurse or doctor or whatever, it’s pretty pointless. Ends with them saying “yep you need surgery” then I go back to waiting. No idea when I’ll actually get it done, should be any year now.

If I got private insurance I’d have to wait a year before cashing out, so I’m fine not paying anything and waiting a bit longer. If I had known I’d be waiting as long as I have I might have opted for private, but there isn’t any solid timeline given for waiting times.

Everything outside of that is quick and easy. Go to gp, get referral, see specialist. No roadblocks at all, but the specialists likely cost a couple hundred bucks. Medication is pretty cheap, usually $10-20 for a month’s supply of anything you need.

Canada here. I’m very thankful for it. I don’t think I’d survive if I had to individually pay.

I live in Germany. It can be a bit complicated…
I was encouraged to sign a “contract” with my GP saying I should always go to them first with any non-emergency issue and they’ll refer me to a specialized doctor. The idea is to have all my medical info in one place, which makes sense.

So I was at work, pulling open a desk to wire up all the IT stuff, when something in my finger snapped.
I reported it to my team leader. He gave me an ice pack and told a colleague to drive me to the doctor.
The colleague asked me where to drive to, and I honestly had no idea. This is the first issue. I was expected to decide: Is this an emergency? It’s not life-threatening, but it hurt and started to swell quickly. How time-critical is it, in order not to lose use of the finger? Should I go to the hospital? Do I need an X-Ray? How the fuck should I know before a doctor looked at it?

So I googled “X-Ray clinic” in my home town and found a big one. I waited in the phone queue while we started driving. Eventually I got through and they told me they only accept patients with referrals from a doctor.
So we re-routed to my GP, which is half an hour drive. When we got there and had found a parking spot, a sign at the door said that the doctor’s practice had moved to a new address the week before.
We drove to the new address. I talked to the receptionist. She told us that since this is a work accident, I need to visit my workplace’s approved doctor. She asked which one that is, and which insurance is responsible. I had no idea.

So I called my team leader. He also didn’t know. He said he’d find out and call back. We waited.
After 15 minutes, we had the right address. It was a 30 minute drive in the other direction.
When we got there and had found a parking spot, a sign at the door informed us that the practice had recently moved.
We drove to the new address, which was another 30 minute drive, but within walking distance of my workplace. I was finally admitted to get looked at.

By then the ice pack had long melted, my finger was swollen, hurting and throbbing, and the receptionist told me she can’t give me a new ice pack, only a doctor can. She then handed me a 4 page document in small print to fill out.
So I sat there, with a swollen, throbbing hand, filling out all kinds of info about me, my medical history, allergies, my work place info, insurance number, how I got injured, whether I had reported the injury, etc.

Then I had to wait an hour, was given an X-Ray, and 10 minutes of a doctor’s time, who told me they can’t see what it is. I should come back in a week if it doesn’t get better, and then they’d give me a CT scan.
A week later, it was not fully healed but much better, so I didn’t go back. That was 6 months ago. I can use the finger normally and have no pain, but I can still feel it a little.

Poland

My country may be poor backwards post-soviet hole, but social media and news present USA as Fallout-style post-apocalyptic dystopia.

Every member of my family has a family doctor assigned (it’s the same one for convenience). This doctor reminds us about mandatory vaccinations and tips us if there are any diseases spreading (for preparation sake). If anyone is seek we can usually schedule visit within a week, and most standard medicines are fairly cheap due to governmental control.

Romania: I use the private system cause the public system is mostly crap. People are still sometimes literally catching infections and dying in hospital, having been hospitalized for smth completely different. It’s improving though. To clarify, the aforementioned situation is news-worthy nowadays, but still…

Private system is relatively affordable and partially integrated into the national one, so that’s nice. You can see a specialist for like $50, or for free if your GP refers you to them.