I'd like to know other non-US citizen's opinions on your health care system are when you read a story like this. I know there are worse places in the world to receive health care, and better. What runs through your heads when you have a medical emergency?
A little background on my question:
My son was having trouble breathing after having a cold for a couple of days and we needed to stop and take the time to see if our insurance would be accepted at the closest emergency room so we didn't end up with a huge bill (like 2000$-5000$). This was a pretty involved ~10 minute process of logging into our insurance carrier, and unsuccessfully finding the answer there. Then calling the hospital and having them tell us to look it up by scrolling through some links using the local search tool on their website. This gave me some serious pause, what if it was a real emergency, like the kind where you have no time to call and see if the closest hospital takes your insurance.
that your country is the actual shit hole. The worst part is when people who do work, and have insurance get denied care or endebted because something is "out of range" or whatever the fuck it is you yankees call it.
I live in LATAM, and healthcare is good. I had ... "worker contribution" (mutualista) tier healthcare and private medical. Mutualista worked adequately, got my needs met, but the centers were a bit spaced out, ironically due to market competition. Similar problem with the private medical insurance, but it comes with lots of fancy bells and whistles (telemedicine, medical history app, wide variety of specialists to resolve issues etc).
I pay about $100 (monthly) and it covers everything. I never have to think about going to hospital, except "Let me see if I can avoid it by doing a quick video call"
There's also universal healthcare that covers everyone not in mutualistas or private medicine. It's not as well regarded, but at least it's there. If you are making tax contributions, you're on mutualista tier healthcare anyway. I don't think anyone hesitates to call ambulances or react properly in the case of a medical emergency.
What use is having 8 different burger chains when you get squashed by a train and you yell at people to not call an ambulance so you don't go bankrupt?