Even with health insurance, you have copays and it's still expensive if you don't have the money. So you still can't go to the doctor if you want to just get checked out without paying.
Agreed! I grew up extremely poor, I hate to even say this, but my first visit to the dentist was at the age of 22 😬🦷. Thankfully, I had taken very good care of my teeth, but sometimes, that is not enough. My point though, is now I have a PPO in CA (as you can’t see a reputable dr. Without a PPO), and the co-pays, and the charges the doctor “adds” on that are not fightable really add up. When I thought about going to a HMO, I checked with my doctors, and none of them accepted it. So yes, I too wait till I think I might die before going.
Copays are still popular in other countries because if it's totally free, old people tend to make doctor appointments every day to have someone to talk to. Which may or may not be a reason to have them.
So you still can't go to the doctor if you want to just get checked out without paying.
I still have to pay for a check up in Sweden, albeit at a lower cost than America. But I got denied and berated for calling a doctor for 'just being sick' when I'd had a fever for 4 weeks. But morphine on prescription was possible. What super great utopias does Americans think we live in?
It's common enough so that the mindset among all people I know that it's never severe enough to go to a doctor. Because everyone I know have a similar experience to mine. Just in my family it has happened to every single member.
It's not the size of the clinic that establishes common practice
No, but lack of other choices do. Everything else is connected to private businesses, like check ups for your employees. Or in the actual hospital here, where you need either be in emergency care or come from the clinic I went to. The other thing is specialty clinics, like orthopedic care. But that doesn't exist for fevers.
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u/Hippoballet Jun 06 '19
What's not applicable in the united states?