Health update and also a sale

[reddesert]

I was in Germany several years ago and got hit on the head by an automated gate (stupid!) No real head injury but lots of blood. The building super and a local decided they should call an ambulance. Ambulance ride to hospital ER, short doctor examination (mostly in English, although I do speak a little German), gluing the cut back together, and clean-up. I took a tram back to the meeting and the whole thing took less than 2 hours; many people didn't even realize I was gone. Eventually they sent me a bill, which was about 240 Euros. It would have easily cost 5-10x in the US (maybe more) and taken much longer.  Such a bargain that I've thought about having all my subsequent head injuries in Europe.

[blearyeyes]

Glad to hear you are coming back to life. Hope you fam is well and all other life things go smoothly..

[GermanCdn]

Glad to hear you're OK, I struggle with BP as well (less of a problem when my weight is down, more of a problem when my weight is up, which is usually when I'm under a lot of stress, so it just compounds). I don't have the headache issues, but I do have unfavourable reactions to the meds and I've tried a number of them, so it's keep losing weight or dealing with the side effects.

As far as the health care cost thing goes, yeah, that sucks.  While I'm not the biggest fan of the Canadian system, it certainly enables everyone to have access to care (the expediency of that care is sometimes the issue).

[Govmnt_Lacky]

And... The Chaos Engine??

Do tell please... 

[chromesphere]

BTW, for all those non-Americans who are curious: my ER visit which included a CT scan, EKG, blood test, zero medication and BP monitoring all done in about 2.5 hours (and probably less than 7 minutes with an actual doctor) came to over $2500 WITH insurance. Without: over $10k. That's how fucked up the USA is.

Wow.  That's pretty full on.  We'd still pay out of pocket with insurance here for a trip to hospital and tests but nothing like that.  I recently went in for a contrast CT scan of my lungs, a heart monitor, IV etc and I seem to recall the hospital visit was $300 out of pocket and around $300 for the CT scan.   Ill stop complaining about medical bills I think :|

Australia is supposed to be reputed to have one of the best health systems in the world though apparently.  You can get free bulk billed doctor visits and there is obviously public hospitals but they are very good, some say just as good as private hospitals. I haven't been much to either fortunately so I wouldn't know.