TheAmericanMedicalSystem

I promised to write about all elements I found here during my stay, including the less positive aspects of America during my trip, so here goes. The U.S. medical system is expensive, but very effective, but only if you can afford it.

This morning we were, as a family, all sick with lingering various coughs and sneezes type symptoms. We needed medical attention to sort it out. More a precautionary measure than an emergency, but if 4 out of 5 of you are laid low you want to know recovery is certain and not too far off.

If you have money and / or insurance this is not a problem. Fortunately I am an assiduous gatherer of travel protection so our journey to recovery was to prove more interesting than painful.

In fact there was very little pain involved at all. I had carefully filed my travel insurance ready for this trip but had forgotten to pack the policy document. My lame excuse is that this oversight was due to my already having flu and a temperature. Despite the lack of my policy document I did have my policy number and more than my share of Klinger chutzpah.

Sarah, my daughter, seeing our ailments and fed up with being an unpaid nurse, took decisive action and called her own medical practitioners for an emergency appointment first thing this morning, which she obtained within 15 minutes.

Getting to the shiny, clean and well-appointed medical building within the allotted time was no problem. Seeing the medical assistant and the doctor was almost immediate and without any fuss.

There was the anticipated problem with the insurance numbers from the UK not being recognizable for an American medical practice but remarkably we were being checked over, comprehensively, politely and with no fuss exactly how you would wish. The doctor, the medical assistant and the receptionist were charming, helpful and terrific at their jobs.

I was reeling from the shock, it isn’t exactly like this in England, where going to the doctor is something like meeting Osama Bin Laden and his cronies on a day they’re feeling nasty.

The only down side here, on which we in the UK have the definite advantage, is that our General Medical Practices are totally free of charge, and accessible to all, whereas here in the States you need the cash or the insurance or these medical pleasures are unavailable.

It was at the point of payment that the system did unravel somewhat. The receptionist almost blew a gasket trying to work with the insurers, and it proved to be simply impossible, so I paid for the service and we went to the pharmacy to fill the prescriptions. Again this was probably worse in the States as a service than in the UK and undoubtedly far more expensive. Instead of just a few pounds the prescriptions cost over $120.

I was reminded of a trip we once took to Vancouver in Canada, when my son Dan was sick. We found that Canada had all the medical efficiency of America at its finest, combined with the caring for all mentality of Britain’s National Health Service at its best. Surely both are possible and desirable and are a measure of a country’s civilization. In this respect Canada is the model we should all aspire to.