All it takes is one catastrophic major illness to become an insurance companies worst nightmare, and take that and x it by several thousands of people...insurances are banking on NOT having to pay out high medical claims that is why they spread the risk out over so many people, and charge such high premioums so when those handful of people who do become stricken with a high cost medical problem...HOPEFULLY...it doesnt just financially ruin the insurance company, they can pay out those high dollar claims for the few people who have become very ill, WHILE still mainintaining care for their relatively healthy members. There are also with insurance companies fully funded plans, which the insurance company takes on the full financial risk, and self funded plans--where the employer takes on the financial risk of paying the medical claims for its employees...as u can see, either way it can be catastrophic if you have members with high dollar medical problems for either the insurance company or the employer.
Toronto the centre of the universe.
Hi Asma, glad to know that the health care sector is very good in your country. It really is good to know information.
Thanks for taking the time to give the URL nel. I will try and read it soon.
I saw a post on Facebook that tells it all: I want MY government to use MY tax money to pay for MY healthcare.
I've been one of the lucky ones in the sense that when I didn't have any health insurance, both my son and I were healthy. And by the time I developed the several chronic conditions I have, I had a job with good insurance. The problem with the US is that health insurance is handcuffed to either generous employment or EXTREME poverty. Is it any wonder that people CHOOSE to stay on welfare rather than get a job at minimum wage with no benefits?
On the other hand, countries with national healthcare DO have problems, too. It seems to me that it boils down to do you want private insurance companies to practice medicine without a license in order to preserve profits, or do you want the government to practice medicine without a license in order to keep taxes down?
I'm going to be on Medicare come March 2013, and it seems to me to be a no-win situation -- they've known we Baby-Boomers were coming for more than 50 years, but no one did ANYTHING to prepare for us. So it's only going to get worse. The only advantage I feel we diabetics have is that we can easily commit suicide if life becomes unbearable, even when we know that we COULD have gotten help and relief if only our tax money had been used responsibly.
A lot of the endos (and other specialists, orthopedic doctors, opthamologists, etc.) around here work out of different locations which, while keeping them busy, which is what I presume to be the reason they'd do this, it spreads them out and it seems to take a couple of days for them to get back to you.
Insulin is free or sold for a nominal price of 1-2 euro per 5 cartridges pack in UK (?), Spain, Finland, Czech Republic, Lithuania (?), Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Moldova. Probably in Italy, Turkey, Romania, Greece. From what I know for sure, is completely free medical care is available in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.