I have a few tips here that will make your experience easier and more pleasurable, as well as help you not to look like a complete jackass/bitch in front of other people:
Buy travel insurance. Good travel insurance. US$700 coverage is laughable, in fact it would not get you the time of the day in most countries of the world.
If you ever have a medical emergency in a foreign country it is always a good idea to treat hospital personnel with respect and courtesy. Actually you should *always *treat people with respect and courtesy.
Do not lecture people on what is what is not the law. I very much doubt you are a lawyer in your own country, and I am almost certain you know jack about the local laws.
It would be really nice if you did not pitch a two hour-long screaming fit at a hospital reception over an error made by *your *insurance company, threaten to sue the hospital over $120 your insurance company says you have to pay and get yourself detained by security when you storm out screaming “I will not fucking pay and let’s see what you do about it”.
No, I actually sold our properties and moved out of town before I lost my sanity. We now live in a faraway town, surrounded by dozens of hotels in one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Americas.
I went for a routine checkup at the local (private) hospital. It’s as good a small hospital as you can get anywhere. Usually things go nice and smooth there with not too-long waits. But yesterday there was the Spanish bitch from hell, who had an emergency at a hotel and had to be kept in the hospital for two days (she doesn’t seem to dispute the validity of the diagnosis) while they ran some tests. Her insurance company had originally told her the hospital she was fully-covered, only to find out that she was really not when they called back again to get authorization to release her. She had to pay 120 euros out of pocket.
I know all this because for two hours she terrorized the personnel, made an spectacle of herself, and prevented them from doing their jobs, she made everybody’s wait longer. All this while she was there lecturing the personnel what the law was and what her rights were. :rolleyes:
While I sympathise with your enduring the awful behaviour of some eurotrash bitch, the medical cover offered by travel insurance in Europe is often unrealistic when applied to the US and we don’t realise it.
I lived in the US for six months and had overseas BUPA coverage out of Ireland and assumed I’d be OK. Luckily I never needed to see a doctor while I was living there, because soon before I was leaving I discovered that it only paid a maximum of $3,000, which would have included the cost flights if I needed to be repatriated - and I was led to believe by my coworkers that this amount wouldn’t even have covered an ambulance ride.
Still, even I understand the concept of insurance excess payments.
Well yes, I imagine it can come as quite a shock to Europeans to be suddenly confronted with the horrifying bureaucratic and financial dysfunction that is the American healthcare system. They are not used to such things.
I’d like to apologize in the name of the 30M or so Spaniards who did go to kindergarten. Sadly, the peeps who like “golden cage vacations” appear to be all of the kind who didn’t :o
Actually, I am in the Dominican Republic. But your comment is valid, our system is a combination of all what is dysfuctional in the US system plus all that sucks from the European system.
Private health care here is not as expensive as in the US, but it has its costs. There’s always public, state hospitals, but I am sure that crazy bint would not like that.
As I said, health care is a lot less expensive here, but $750 is laughable you have to admit.
The hospital is owned by a Spanish chain of hospitals. It is pretty good for the size (they’d air lift you to a bigger one about 250 Kms from here if they can’t fix you in the smaller hospital). They follow the Spanish standard of care, and it was conceived as a facility to serve foreigners. They have translators in many different languages and multi-lingual doctors.
The funny thing is that once she was escorted back by security she was pretty meek, and readily accepted the personnel’s suggestion (which they have been making for a while) to provide her with a transcript of the conversation with her insurance company, in which they originally mistakenly informed the hospital that she did not have to pay co-pay, in case she wanted to fight it off with the insurance.
Since it was an employee of the hospital that conveyed the erroneous information she insisted the hospital was responsible for the mistake.
The only good thing is that I learned a whole lot new swear words in Spanish. She has a Madrid-whereabouts accent, so I am looking forward to my next visit to Madrid.
I have to buy insurance to enter the EU. Coverage for 33,000 euros at least, people shouldn’t expect free healthcare outside their own countries. If anywhere.
