A scandal!

di11on

I'm here in France at my French in-laws

I had an athsma attack... my second in 6 years. Went to the doctor - the clinic was fully booked, but in French clinics, there is a doctor there specialising in accidents and emergencies and I was seen within 30 minutes.

The doctor gave me what I felt was a thorough examination (nothing too bad!!) wrote the prescription and gave me the bill. I was dumbfounded. He wanted €22 yoyo from me. €22!!!! That's the full unsibsidised price for seeing the Doctor in southern France. Amazing. I pay €55 to see my local doctor and I can tell you that I'm not getting more than twice the service. I'm lucky if I get half the service. What's more, the richest in France only get a 75% refund on their doctors bills!

Are we all mad over here... how do we put up with it. The reason our health service is dysfunctional is because we're paying too much to our doctors... in my opinion.

Rant over.

Anyway - seeing as parents are the ones hit most by high doctor's bills, thought I'd post this here!

Nevyn

Eh no thanks, this post was off topic in that thread and deserves a thread of it's own so here you go.

mike65

Mike.

Heinrich

neil_hosey wrote: »

I started school when i was 4 years ( after turning 4 the June gone).

I am delighted I was sent to school so early. I was always the youngest in my class, primary school, secondary school and even university, but it never affected me socially or academically.

Now i'm 21 finished a four year degree June gone and working full time.

Delighted


IMO if the childs ready send 'em early!

Great to heat that wonderful success story but is it in the wrong thread? Must be an excess of schooling!:D

neil_hosey

lol... Totally wrong thread.. woops!

BanzaiBk

€22? I paid €20 the last time I was over:p I've seen a GP in France a good few times since I spend quite a bit of time over there (half french) and agree that we are being totally ripped off over here. The emergency GP setup is also extremely well thought out (esp for out of hours service). Some GP centres also have a full time Nurse(s) for dressing changes etc, easing the people-load on the local hospitals.

BanzaiBk

€22? I paid €20 the last time I was over:p I've seen a GP in France a good few times since I spend quite a bit of time over there (half french) and agree that we are being totally ripped off over here. The emergency GP setup is also extremely well thought out (esp for out of hours service). Some GP centres also have a full time Nurse(s) for dressing changes etc, easing the people-load on the local hospitals.

Edit//. I would also commend their A/E service. During the summer my mother fell off the decking and broke her elbow. She was seen, xray'd and plastered cast'd in 40 minutes. It's the same for everyone. It really is an excellent system.

galah

I can do one better - get an EHIC card (free to every resident in Ireland, for example), and pay absolutely nothing in emergency situations in Europe.

(the boyfriend had a stomach problem when we were over in Germany - he went to A&E, was seen within an hour (while a nurse came in twice into the private waiting room to apologize for the delay!), spent 3 days in hospital getting all sorts of tests done, and did not pay a cent. Nothing.)

Why people put up with the crap service that is the Irish "health" system?
Because they don't know better, and can't imagine that a health system could be efficient, effective, and show results for little money.

nesf

galah wrote: »

Why people put up with the crap service that is the Irish "health" system?

Because they're not willing to pay the tax required (or arguably see a fight with the unions and civil service) for there to be a better one.

We all whine about not having the health service of a high tax country but as soon as you offer people said health service in exchange for paying enough tax they say no (ie look at elections).

Bottle_of_Smoke

Not to put a dampner on the thread but I hear their healthcare system is bankrupting the country.

Can't remember the source./

galah

Maybe a healthy medium then - pay a little more, but don't have people die from infections they picked up in hospital, because the hospital's not following hygiene procedures...(MRSA and all the other bugs are almost unheard of in other European countries...)

But it's also the little things that could rather easily be changed - like don't get sent down to A&E for every little thing because GPs wanna cover their arse, have GPS make proper decisions (I was suffering from repetitive strain in my wrist for a while (from typing ...), went to a GP, and she sent me to A&E to get Xrays - completely unecessary, I was clogging up the system for absolutely no good reason, when all i needed was a cert and a few days rest.

Have larger GP practices have an XRay machine, or more labs to check blood samples, or pap smear results, etcetc (like in Germany, for example...) - there's so many things that could be done to relieve A&E, so that hospitals could really concentrate on the acute cases that really need attention...

And then there's the management of hospitals...

But this is turning into a rant, yet again...

nesf

galah wrote: »

(MRSA and all the other bugs are almost unheard of in other European countries...)

Eh, no.

galah

eh no, what?

I've yet to hear of German hospitals (example) to have such a widespread MRSA problem that isn't dealt with quickly, compared to the problem here!

nesf

galah wrote: »

eh no, what?

I've yet to hear of German hospitals (example) to have such a widespread MRSA problem that isn't dealt with quickly, compared to the problem here!

You said MRSA etc are practically unheard of in the rest of Europe, which is false.

arctictree

galah wrote: »

I can do one better - get an EHIC card (free to every resident in Ireland, for example), and pay absolutely nothing in emergency situations in Europe

Maybe we should just bugger off to Germany on a cheapo ryanair flight everytime we get sick!!

Probably opening a can of worms here but it seems to me that our problem is shortage of Doctors. ie, if there were more doctors, there'd be less queues and less waiting lists. Open more doctor training colleges and let anyone in who has a good leaving cert and an interest in helping people!

A

Firetrap

I do think that the bar is set too high for people wanting to become doctors. I'm sure a lot of our older GPs and doctors wouldn't have 6 or 7 As in their Leaving Certs and they're not worse doctors for that. We definitely pay too much. Perhaps if we didn't have to shell out €50 a time to our GPs, we'd be more inclined to go to the doctor when we need to, rather than leaving issues til they're too late.

MRSA is a symptom of what's gone wrong in our hospitals. This year my mother (who's got Alzheimer's and is now totally incapable of doing anything for herself) has been admitted into hospital a few times. Our family have learned a lot about what goes on in hospitals and it's been an eye-opener. I'm in danger of going to go into a whinge mode here and going off topic but it does bother me that nurses were happy to let my mum sit for hours in wet incontinence pads, not clean her up properly when she had nosebleeds or bit her lip or even give her a glass of water to drink. And as for moving her in the bed or rearranging her pillows.... It's wrong that we the family have had to do all the chasing to make sure that my mother received better basic care. My dad, who's been in this hospital more than me has noted that there seems to be a lot of staff just hanging about doing nothing in particular.

Seeing as the staff in this particular hospital are so half-hearted about the standard of care they're providing to the people they're supposed to be looking after, I have little faith in them bothering to do simple things like wash their hands.

bada_bing

went through something similar in barcelona. had conjunctivitis and went to the Hospital, got seen within 20 minutes and was prescribed medication. Was totally free, i was shocked that i even had to ask, are you forgetting to charge me??
even better was the fact that the medication was so cheap as well, i had to buy various things and it all added up to a measly €11.
it really depresses me the state of things here, i'm registered with my local medical center for 7 years and i had to make an appointment for 5:30 pm when i called at 9 am!!!!! had to wait an hour and forked over €50 for just 5 mins and didn't even get an answer!!