Please tell us about your country's health system?

Health care?

Psh.

Here's an idea for you of what Americans have to put up with.

Health insurance is expensive, whether you get it privately or through the company you're working for (company insurance is the most popular, from what I understand). A junk plan that gives you hardly any help will run you around $20-50 per paycheck, and a premium one (still with many stipulations mind you) will easily be $100-$200 per paycheck.

In May of '09, I moved back home from Chicago with my husband. We had been living on our savings for a few months, as I lost my job 3 weeks after I moved to Chicago. So we were back home, no jobs yet, trying to decide what we wanted to do at that point.

We went for a bike ride one afternoon and while standing up on my bicycle to push down hard to accelerate, my ankle bent, I tumbled off straight onto my mouth, and knocked out 6 teeth and mangled 3 others (pushing a tooth through the flesh by my nose). We never carry a phone with us but happened to that day, we called the police and our mothers, they came and drove us to the hospital, and I had to stay overnight in the emergency room having dental work done.

I fractured my lower jawbone so they couldn't replace my 5 teeth on the bottom, and they rearranged my teeth back in my mouth (they don't look how they used to) and stitched up the hole my tooth had made.

The bill from just that night was a little over $16,000.

As you can quite imagine, I panicked. I didn't have $16,000. Hell, I didn't even have $100. Furthermore, I didn't have a job, neither did my husband, and I couldn't get one in the immediate future because of my mouth. We didn't have a car, we didn't have $ for groceries even. I applied for a poverty fund, filled it out, and wrote the hospital a long note explaining that I very much appreciated them taking care of me, but given my situation there was no way I could pay them, and I was very sorry for that. They graciously dropped their portion of the bill, which was a little under $8,000.

I still had about $8,000+ to contend with - fees for the anesthesiologist, the dental doctor, etc. etc., people whom weren't employed by the hospital but are rather like contractors. Not to mention I couldn't walk around like I was - I needed some fake teeth, preferably implants, and I needed to fix the ones that were put back hastily and improperly. I went to another dentist who demanded payment up front, a little under $1,000, which my parents paid for me. He put my teeth back into their original places - mostly - but I was still missing teeth and the ones I had were fractured and discolored.

I had to see yet another dentist to get a few root canals once it was apparent that the teeth put back were dying. That was another nearly $3,000 bill.

I went back to work 3 months after my accident and tried paying my bills in $10 increments - that was all I could afford. One place I owed $5,000+ to said that wasn't acceptable and sent my bill straight to a creditor - awful companies that buy your debt and hound you with threatening letters and telephone calls.

A few months ago I worked up the nerve to visit a different dental place altogether to get a full analysis of what I could do and how much it would be. They took x-rays, examined me, and discussed options such as implants, dentures, partial dentures, etc.

They told me it would be $28,000 to fix my mouth in the best manner - implants.

I went home crying.

Sorry for the rambling, but the point is this - I'm 26 years old. I can't eat an apple off the tree. Can't chew my steak properly. It's hard to brush my teeth and drink because water dribbles out my mouth unless I tilt my head nearly all the way back, like a bird drinking water. I cannot smile with my mouth open, customers at my job look at my mouth when I'm talking instead of my eyes.

I still don't have any money to pay back my debts, and I will only inevitably incur more as I still have a ruined mouth. I can get sued for not paying my bills, even though my lifestyle is at the poverty level in this country and I don't spend my money extraneously.

I still have hopefully 60+ years ahead of me and I had hoped to get real teeth replacements. Truth be told, I'm very sorry that I don't live in a country that takes care of its citizens.

♫ La vita è misteriosa ♫ provides one of the best arguments I've ever seen for our NHS (I'm British). It makes for a healthier nation as there are no cost worries about going to see your doctor.

I've had a few interesting pharmacy experiences... I went to my doctor once with an eye infection and he prescribed me chloramphenicol eye drops. The pharmacist threw the prescription in the bin as the actual cost was lower than the NHS prescription charge! So sometimes even the flat rate doesn't work, but pharmacists all know about that.

I have a good friend in New Jersey who has a number of chronic illnesses and the stuff he has to go through to get the best price for each medication via the drug companies strikes me as just loony.

Yeah the $10 aspirins are so much better then the normal ones you get in the store. The $30 bandaids make cuts heal faster too! India? The country that relies on US charity to care for their deformed children? Yeah, they are a shining star of efficiency that everyone should envy. The only reason the poor recieve any care at all is due to the fact they allow unlicenced "healers" to operate and again charity from the US. The modern hospitals they do have are also subsidized by other countries because of favorable currency exchange rates. (medical tourism)