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My husband was extremely drunk and cycling home at 3am. Fell off his bike, smacked his face on the road and fell unconscious. Was picked up by an ambulance called by a good Samaritan who found him.
They put him on a drip, ran an MRI scan, found a fracture on his eye socket, told him he had a concussion, found some fibroids in his lungs (unrelated to the accident) etc. Was in the emergency ward for probably 12 hours until he was able to be discharged.
Got follow up scans and appointments looking at the lung, eye and concussion issue over two years until they gave him the all clear.
We paid not a cent for the whole thing. He did get a verbal lashing from me though.
On the flip side, I had to have elective surgery to remove a 17cm cyst because it was really, really uncomfortable. Because it's elective, it's not covered by Medicare. The quote from the hospital came to $22K and we had to pull it out of the home loan.
Location: Australia
Forgot to say that we both have ambulance membership which costs us $70/year. Without it, the ambulance cost would've been around $3.5K.
Ambulance membership? lol. So you don’t really have universal healthcare
Nope but our system is much more universal than America's.
We have the same system for ambulances. You pay a yearly fee to insurance and ambulances are covered or made much cheaper.
Hmmmm. Our ambulance membership costs go directly to the ambulance services though, not through an insurance company. The 'fee' without the membership is basically a penalty fee to encourage everyone to be a member so the ambulance is constantly funded.
It really should be done as part of our tax system, but we tend to follow US crony capitalism.
Edit: I'm half wrong. The money doesn't go to insurance companies but it's a state thing that sort of goes direct to the ambulance service.
Yes and it allows people such as myself, low income earners, disability, to not have to pay for an ambulance (or an annual membership) if needed. ❤️ I think it's a pretty decent system especially compared to others.
You can just say capitalism, calling it anything else only serves to mislead people about natural evolution of capitalism.
So what if you're outside that company's coverage area?
I think there's a little misunderstanding there (not US-crony-capitalism) but I'm happy to just call it capitalism.
It's not a company though. The ambulance is state run, so to be 'outside' the service area is to be in another state, where they'd have their own state run ambulance service.
The membership covers costs for everyone within the state regardless of how remote you are.
So if you're a NSW resident and you get hurt in Victoria, do you pay full rate or does the ambulance subscription cover you either way?
Very interesting question! I looked up what NSW has and they don't have anything like that. I also looked deeper into the ambulance Victoria requirements.
So, if your primary place of residence is not in Victoria, you can't be a member and have to foot the entire bill unless your private health insurance covers it.
If you're a Victorian with a membership, if you get hurt anywhere in the country, you're covered.