So, after seeing the stuff about "rape being a pre-existing condition" and all the other various loopholes the US HMOs use to raise their bottom lines - does anyone not from the US have a horror story about their Private Health cover?
I'll start - I pay for Private Hospital and Extras cover through Medibank Private in Australia, this doesn't exclude me from the public system which I can still use at will, it just gives me extra coverage with non-public health vendors. Anyhow. It turns out that if I want fancy polycarbonate lenses to reduce the thickness of my new sunglasses lenses then I have to pay some money out of pocket. SCUM.
Yeah, that's about as bad a story as I've got. In fact I dare say I haven't heard a single bad story about an Australian Private Medical Insurer (aside from some steep fees) - except for where people have deliberately concealed a pre-existing condition and whine when found out.
What? Don't you just have both of your cards in your wallet, and then pull out whichever the receptionist tells you to pull out? That's what I always did.
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The worst that i can report is some struggle about HOW and WHERE i am insured (bureaucracy...sigh), but thats just as much due to me screwing up as to actual problems with the systems (which was reformed at the beginning of this year, which lead to a bit of confusion).
Otherwise - nothing even remotely comparable to what i hear from the US.
The worst that i can report is some screwups by the insurances regarding coverage for extemely rare diseases, where the insurance companies may be relucant to pay expensive, since they are not proven to be effective.
But even these GET their treatment.
Of course, some screwups happen (we had to pay an extremely expensive treatment for my mother at first, because the papertrail got stuck somewhere - oh, and this was from a private company), but these are rare and normally get fixed.
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I would assume that private health insurers in countries with public healthcare are going to be wildly superior because they don't have a captive audience. If they don't provide exceptionally good service promptly then people just use the public system. It's competition in action, their whole selling point is how awesome their service is.
The only experience i have with private health insurers is my insurance for vacations in foreign countries. The public insurance doesn´t cover that and you have to get an 8€/year additional insurance. I had to use it once to get flown down from a mountain after a snowboarding accident. The insurance didn´t cause any trouble and handed over the 1500 or so €uros.
I´ve never heard of anyone having trouble with private health insurances either. Everybody who can´t afford private health insurance is jealous of people with private health insureance becauese they get certain advantatges like single bed rooms in hospitals or the right to be treated by the chief physician.
The public insurance here doesn't cover costs incurred on vacations abroad, probably because such vacations are considered a luxury. However, you can get private insurance for that. Mine is 25 euros per year and covers any medical costs incurred for almost any reason during a trip for the first 45 days of the trip. The 45 day counter resets after two weeks back home, so you can take as many 45 day trips as you can fit into the year as long as there are two weeks in between each and you're covered.
I don't remember it quite exactly, because I've never taken trips longer than one week, but it was essentially that.
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Yes, vacations are not covered by public insurance. However, insurances are always included in your vacation if you book it at a travel agency.
It also has the nice effect that injured/sick people get send back to Germany ASAP, as that saves money for the travel insurance - once you are back in Germany (or whatever country we are talking about), the normal insurance takes over.
SoS:NBAGALE Force "Destiny and fate are for those too weak to forge their own futures. Where we are 'supposed' to be is irrelevent." - Sir Nitram
"The world owes you nothing but painful lessons" - CaptainChewbacca
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." - Wilhelm Stekel
"In 1969 it was easier to send a man to the Moon than to have the public accept a homosexual" - Broomstick Divine Administration - of Gods and Bureaucracy (Worm/Exalted)
My public insurance covers vacations. If you get sick you call a 24/7 emergency number and they take care of everything. The insurance covers all medical costs, all transport, repatriation, they even reimburse the money you spend on calls. It's valid for recreational stays of less than 30 consecutive days.
Lusankya wrote:What? Don't you just have both of your cards in your wallet, and then pull out whichever the receptionist tells you to pull out? That's what I always did.
No, I mean after you've left the surgery and you have to go claim your rebate if it wasn't bulk billed. Both of my children had surgery last year on different parts of their heads; for some reason one of them is rebated through medicare, and the other through medibank.
Lusankya wrote:What? Don't you just have both of your cards in your wallet, and then pull out whichever the receptionist tells you to pull out? That's what I always did.
No, I mean after you've left the surgery and you have to go claim your rebate if it wasn't bulk billed. Both of my children had surgery last year on different parts of their heads; for some reason one of them is rebated through medicare, and the other through medibank.
I generally try for both. After all, what's the worst that they can say: "No"?
Everyone in my family including me is privately insured and we never had any problem with the insurance company either.
In fact, I throw out another factor why private Companies in Germany do not screw with their customers - stiff competition. IIRC there are about 400-500 insurance companies in Germany, which means that you can switch with relative ease.
The US healthcare "market" is more like a set of cartels.
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weemadando wrote:I generally try for both. After all, what's the worst that they can say: "No"?
"That's it bucko, you're fired from Medicare."
While I have never had a bad experience with health care (I've only had to go to the doctor once), my dad needed a couple of teeth pulled. He was on a waiting list for a couple of years before he finally got to see a dentist, at which point he was in the chair for something like ten minutes. The next time he had trouble he just pulled the offending tooth out with his bare hands.
Cartels, at least, usually give you a way to get hooked before putting the dagger in. I can't even get health coverage so when I broke my big toe I just had to ice that shit. Thankfully I'm alright now, but my knee still gets sore, and I simply don't have any variety of compensation from my employers or any real opportunity to get a kind of coverage that'd provide me insurance. I get a variety of medication stuff (mostly nasal anti-allergy) via swapping for them with people who have extra (from a prescription they don't really use). It's pretty goddamn ridiculous.
Y'all are doing this just to piss us Americans off, right?
All kidding aside, from my POV it looks as if you are bitching about the thread count of your bedsheets in a 5 star hotel room compared to what we have here.
That said, I've actually looked into emigrating to Canada (I have family in Edmonton) and it would have been easier if I'd kept my previous job as a short order/line cook instead of switching jobs and becoming a certified forklift/power equipment operator.
Though I will admit that cooking under time pressure was a more 'interesting' job than the boring (operating stockpickers in VNA racks) one I have now.
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Glocksman wrote:All kidding aside, from my POV it looks as if you are bitching about the thread count of your bedsheets in a 5 star hotel room compared to what we have here.
This is exactly what's going on here. It's a carefully considered and applied troll.
Really, it staggers the rest of us(viz the developed world) that the most powerful nation on earth not only doesn't already have free public healthcare but there are enough people rallying against it to gum up the process. The Bill of Rights isn't a suicide pact, it's a murder-suicide pact.
tim31 wrote:Really, it staggers the rest of us(viz the developed world) that the most powerful nation on earth not only doesn't already have free public healthcare but there are enough people rallying against it to gum up the process. The Bill of Rights isn't a suicide pact, it's a murder-suicide pact.
What does the Bill of Rights have to do with healthcare?
Actually, if you are on holiday within the EU there is a card you can get which gives reciprocal coverage between EU nations. I cant remember the exact name for it, but it's an EU level thing.
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Keevan_Colton wrote:Actually, if you are on holiday within the EU there is a card you can get which gives reciprocal coverage between EU nations. I cant remember the exact name for it, but it's an EU level thing.
Never mind within the EU, I remember being amused by a leaflet in a chemist's about countries with reciprocal healthcare agreements with the UK (i.e. while on holiday you're covered by their public healthcare) which included such beacons of prosperity and comfort as Kazakhstan but not the USA.
Thanas wrote:The US healthcare "market" is more like a set of cartels.
This is a very important point, one that's not being addressed by EITHER party in the current health care legislation brouhaha. The US has over 1400 different insurance companies IIRC, but due to both Federal rulings and state insurance boards, the pool of competitive insurers in any given state is severely restricted. Add non-portability, and non-deductible status of outside-the-employer plans, and you do get, effectively, state-sanctioned cartels. The pity is that breaking this situation is NOT in the currently proposed legislation here in the US.
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Even if you were able to overhaul those restrictions, historically the inevitable result of a totally and free market for a good is mergers and cartel like behaviour. You need nation wide, tough and uniform regulations.
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I love the way Chocula sincerely thinks that cartel behaviour is driven by state limits on how many insurers can get into the market, and cites the fact that there are 1400 health insurers in the country as evidence. That is a shitload of health insurers: far more than are necessary to create a competitive environment, unless the companies themselves want to act like cartels.
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"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
Nor does Chocula address how exactly it will stop these health insurance horror stories. Horror stories like "rape being a pre-existing condition" happen because it is profitable to act in such an unethical manner, not because of lack of regulations.
"This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection." - Garibaldi
"Problem is, while the Germans have had many mea culpas and quite painfully dealt with their history, the South is still hellbent on painting themselves as the real victims. It gives them a special place in the history of assholes" - Covenant
"Over three million died fighting for the emperor, but when the war was over he pretended it was not his responsibility. What kind of man does that?'' - Saburo Sakai
and cites the fact that there are 1400 health insurers in the country as evidence
And the rest of the quote says that regulation limits those 1400 to a small pool of competitive insurers. He may not yet have backed it up with numbers but his point is not internally self-consistent.
Nor does Chocula address how exactly it will stop these health insurance horror stories. Horror stories like "rape being a pre-existing condition" happen because it is profitable to act in such an unethical manner, not because of lack of regulations.
And he doesn't need to address it since he's not giving a comprehensive review of the health care system, he is only commenting on the formation of de facto cartels and how it's hurting the health care industry.
