Also just to be clear, that $14 wasn’t a co-pay. I checked with my wife. There was no insurance company involved.
That was straight off of the street with an appointment made that morning, no insurance at all.
So whom do you deliver for now?
Urban America isn’t that far from rural America. So instead of months getting an appointment/hours waiting in line call up a rural county court house and see about starting the process of getting a passport there. When I got my passport it was a quick in and out (no appointment) for the application and they took my photo and mailed it in to the U.S. passport processing office and I got my passport a month later.
Congresscritters maintain staff of staffers and interns who spend all day helping constituents out with issues with government offices. When I was an intern, we called both the Social Security and passport offices on an almost daily basis.
I don’t, it’s a several month process to get the legal right to work in the country, I obtained that not too long ago, but there’s also a mandatory level of schooling needed in Norwegian that you need to take to be a permanent resident so that’s next on the agenda.
BTW speaking of low health costs now that I’m here…
My wife and I drove a couple of hours today to Lillehammer, mammogram and biopsy at their hospital facilities there.
Parking:** $1.50**
Mammogram and biopsy: 30 minutes, $17.
It’s 170 Norwegian Kroner. The exchange rate is a little different, but the prices and value of labor is also a little different. It works out like this: The absolute minimum you might earn in an hour, any unskilled entry-level position, would be about 100-140 norwegian Kroner per hour. And 100 would be extremely rare. Something that costs 99 cents in the USA like a candy bar or a package of pasta or a drink is about 10 kroner. So if you were to figure a 10 dollar an hour hourly wage, that’s about what 100 kroners per hour gets you, especially if you compare it to prices. The exchange rate is more like 8 kroners to 1 dollar.
~most of the prices you’ll run into are basically the same as it would be in dollars, plus an added zero. Some things are more expensive than this, especially imported goods. But that’s *about *what it works out to. I just want to point out, these are excellent, first world facilities, and some of the healthiest people on the planet, and without any health insurance, you’re paying 1-2 hours worth of labor at the bottom of the pay scale out of your pocket for some of the best health care on the planet. In the United States, those two doctors visits would have represented at least 2 months worth of labor. Months, not hours. We’d have been several thousand dollars in the hole over the past two days in the States.
Still not sure why this isn’t something we should strive for in the United States. Sure, it would mean a lot less of your money is going to insurance company profits. That would be a shame.
Were you able to sign up for lessons in Norwegian straight away? I wanted to study Swedish while I was in Sweden but couldn’t (I needed a local tax ID but I couldn’t get one).
Must depend on where you go. My local post office still lets you walk in according to the State Department site. So do a couple of others in my county. A few require appointments, but they’re very small.
I’ve heard of this in other countries, but never the US, and I can’t find anything at all about US passport applications requiring interviews. I don’t think that’s a normal part of the process.
Congratulations, Askthepizzaguy. I am very very happy for you.
I’ll guess that the difference in medical costs is one of the most surprising things for Americans who venture out. In Thailand I’ve gotten an EKG for $7, and a cerebral CAT scan for $28. Nursing needs like wound dressing is free if done at a public hospital or clinic. For my coronary stent I splurged and went to one of the best hospitals in Asia — it was $8000, with most of that the cost of the Made in U.S.A. stent itself.
No, you’re not allowed to do that until you’ve got your legal permission to stay, permission to apply for permanent residency, and your proper IDs which require the first two things. That would have been a huge time-saver, though.
And now that I have it, I have to wait until summer is over, so the school that is within driving distance of the house is in session again. It’s a hassle but we’re doing everything above board and these things take time. Well worth the price of admission, though.
I suspected medical costs would be cheaper in developing countries, but I figured the quality of care would be lower, and medical costs in developed capitalist countries would be about the same, maybe a little less. I wasn’t expecting a cost difference of 90-98% less.