I don't think you can generalize here, universal healt care and universal
health care is not the same thing. Just as I don't think the health care is
the same in all corners of the US. But to answer your question based on my
own experience, I had MRI some years ago. I had chronic headaches and my
vision was blurred from time to time and went to my doctor. He ordered MRI,
blod tests etc, and it was all done the following day. I paid a total of
$10 for the whole thing. It turned out to be stress, at least I am not dead
yet.
Then few months ago I had to visit a doctor here in the US. I am insured,
and have probably paid around $5000+ in insurance since I came. They ran a
few tests, including MRI (had that two days later, the doctor insisted
despite I thought that was not uneccesary). The bill I got for all this was
close to $900. The insurance company paid about twice that if I remember
correctly.
Now, I don't know which system is better and I don't want to do any
comparisons. But in my mind there is something seriously wrong with the
ever increasing cost of health care, and then I am not only talking about
the US. I simply can not understand the staggering sums involved. Of
course r&d costs money and pharmaceutical companies do invest heavily in
developing new and better drugs for all kinds of illnesses and diseases.
That is good, but still the cost is so staggering and it goes directly into
the health care. You actually have to ask yourself it this is really worth
it, or if all this r&d does perhaps benefit the shareholders more than the
general public. I started thinking about this some time ago when there was
a newsreport on new drugs which replaced some generic labels. The new drugs
were expensive, patented of course, and doctors were under tremendous
pressure to prescribe them rather than the generic ones (not to mention the
TV commercials, something that should be banned in my mind), even thought
the new ones had no benefits over the older ones. I don't know if this is
common, but in this case the pharmaceutical companies are putting lot of
money into r&d just to develop new drugs which do just the same thing as the
older ones do, but put considerably more money into their pocket - at the
cost of the health care system.
I am sorry for this rant, I realize that there are more sides to this story,
but it is also clear that there is a lot of unneccessary cost involved, and
it seems in some cases that you are simply forced to pay what they demand.
> In the USA you can schedule an MRI in three days.
> How long does it take in a country with universal health care?
>
> Dick
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