On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 09:46:14 -0500, "Sue"
wrote:

She's had the transplant already, but I forsee someday in her future of
having a kidney transplant because of all the drugs. To be honest, I had
thought of you and Thud when I talked about not trusting the NHS system.
Your family has whethered the system with a chronic illness, so it can't be
*that* bad. )

I think one of the major differences between the US system and the
Australian system is the access to medical care for non-chronic or
non-emergency illnesses. It is much easier and straightforward for
you get to get _anything_ done here under Medicare if it is deemed
medically imperative. However if you are after something that has not
been deemed an emergency or necessary to be done immediately you are
better off under the US system, assuming you have insurance. For
example, my MIL had to have her gall bladder removed. She has private
health insurance so she chose a doctor and he booked her into
hospital, it was done within about 2 weeks. My mother needed cataract
surgery within 3 months or she would be legally blind, the waiting
list in the public system was approx 9-12 months so she had to find
the $2000 per eye out of pocket expense to get the cataracts removed.
I think it turned out that about $500 per eye was covered by Medicare,
the rest was anaesthetist and eye surgeon "gap" or co-pay expenses.

And then as I said, my cardiac kid can't go to a private hospital for
his surgeries so we are going through the public hospital system and
basically choosing the dates we prefer. When he had his last
catherisation in late July I had recently found out I was pregnant.
The cardiologist asked me if I had any preferences on when to do the
surgery as we had initially discussed April next year, so when I told
him I'd rather do it with a baby in my belly than at home he
completely agreed and promptly booked Thud in for November. No
discussion with the hospital, no real _need_ for the operation to be
done then except that it fitted in with my family plans, it was just
deemed medically necessary by Thud's doctor so it's going ahead.

--
Cheryl
Mum to Shrimp (11 Mar 99), Thud (4 Oct 00)
Mischief (30 Jul 02)
+ Thumper due Feb 05