I am so pissed off at my country! (The U.S.) After nothing but excellent experiences with the Spanish public health care system, I am really ashamed that the U.S. can?t pull it together and do something similar.

ya how long that going on , but take oil from the ground ,

I really need to chime in here because in retrospect I find this thread so very very funny. I just typed this once and lost the whole darn thing so I will do it again maybe a little shorter.

A year and a half ago I was hit by a car in a clearly marked “pedestrian” zone. Driver left the scene and all Spanish witnesses left as well (I wont even get into this point, all I can say is wow). I was left on the sidewalk helpless and unable to walk. Thankfully a friend of mine happened to pass by.

Went to the ER (which was close by), to discover they were on Siesta. I am not kidding, there was a sign up to the effect.

After haggling just to be seen, my leg was x-rayed. At this point my wife and a doctor friend showed up. The doctor at the hospital took one look at the x-ray and said I was fine. Even though I was clearly in pain. Here is the real kicker to the story, the other doctor, our friend, tried to point out to him a dark spot on the x-ray, which the public doctor quickly dismissed. I was discharged from the hospital with NO crutches, NO cane, and NO pain meds. (lovely)

That night I went to work, boy did that hurt.

After a few days of staggering around a Spanish friend of mine urged me to go see a private doctor friend of his. I was very reluctant because we had no private health insurance and I am very reluctant of doctors in general. We went to see this doctor (who specializes in injury of the knees). He took one look at the xray (the very same one from the hospital), laughed out loud, and asked us if we had been to the hospital. We told him I went directly to the ER after the accident, he proceeded to inform us that my leg was in fact BROKEN and I needed IMMEDIATE surgery (well in less then a week).

Since we had no private health insurance, we decided to return to the public hospital and confront them with their misdiagnosis of my injury. Of course this being Spain and all, no blame was accepted and after much haggling we were told they would be willing to operate in 4-6 weeks.

My wife and I were simply dumb struck. I used my legs at work all the time, for reasons I wont get into here, I can’t work with out them. Anyways, other Spanish friends of mine told us that this “private” doctor was trying to just make money and we should stick it out with the public health care system. Not wanting to put my career at risk we decided to get a second opinion and fedxed the x-rays overseas. (we happened to know an orthopedic surgeon outside of Spain) Not to our surprise, the diagnosis came back the same. I needed immediate surgery in less then a week due to the settling cartilage in the knee.

Of course at this point we lost all faith in the public health care system (even the way they wanted to fix my leg was SO outdated again, a point I wont get into here, but we are talking “stone ages”.) and decided to pay the private surgeon(a real god send) out of pocket. We came to Spain just so blind to the fact that anything like this could ever happened. We just assumed we would be covered no matter what and I guess for that we were at fault.

For myself and my family the moral of this story is GET PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE. Don’t chance it, who knows how you will be treated. We now have Mapfre and can see whatever kind of doctor whenever we want. In-fact many times, the same day we call. And frankly it really does not cost very much.

So when a person says they think the US system should be modeled after the Spanish system, I can only laugh. If this system works this way for a population of 60 million how will it work for a population of 330 million? I am no health care expert, I know the system in the US is really broken, but based of my experiences is the Spanish system really better?? (by the way I do live in a major city in Spain)

I am sure there will be many people that chime in here with very different experiences, I certainly hope so. All I can say is this is a very true story and a very hard lesson learned for myself and my family.

I am very sorry to hear of your accident and I hope you’ve made a full recovery.

My health experiences have been extremely different, however. I currently have Spanish public health care as well as private Spanish health care (Sanitas through my Spanish employer), and in the past used to have Kaiser and Blue Cross insurance in the U.S.

I live in Madrid. My public health center is less than a five minute walk away. When I call and ask to see the doctor I can always get an appointment for the same day and no one ever asks me what I want to see the doctor for. For day to day stuff, I couldn’t be happier. It’s been a while, but I seriously doubt I could have ever gotten that level of service in the U.S.

I admit I haven?t actually used my private Spanish health insurance yet, but I did call them the other day. They said I could see the doctor in three weeks. I was beside myself at that and then called my public center. As always, they said I could see the doctor that day if I wanted. So obviously I still haven’t used my Sanitas yet.

As for other stuff, some of my family visited over Christmas and my dad got really sick. We asked different people about a private doctor to go to but they all told us that the private doctor would send us to the public hospital anyway so just to go to the emergency room, which we did. We had to wait a couple hours in the busy waiting room, but then he was very well attended to. I had to act as an interpreter with everyone except the doctor, who spoke perfect English, but that was fine. They ran many tests and he received lots of attention, oxygen, X-rays, IV drip, all sorts of stuff. He was impressed at the level of care and they gave him a bunch of prescriptions. (He’s a retired defense attorney for the state of California and has always had good health insurance.)

As for the U.S. I don?t want to write a novel here, so I?ll condense my personal thoughts and experiences regarding the U.S. system:

1) Many people can’t afford health care and/or the level of care they actually need.
2) The health insurance companies are much more interested in you sending them checks every month than in you actually receiving health care. They act like gatekeepers to keep you out. But in general, the idea for using health care in the U.S. is to use it as little as absolutely possible, not as often as one needs it. I.e. “Walk it off.” That?s American health care for you!
3) Many people are denied health insurance on grounds that are either stupid or false. (For example, my mother was denied health insurance for what was later revealed as a misdiagnosis.)

Spain has its problems like any other country does, of course it does, but I’ve gone from praying that something bad wouldn’t happen to me (and I’m a young healthy person and was one of the ones who had health insurance in the U.S., not like some of my friends, but even so I didn’t trust I would be taken care of) to feeling like if something bad should happen to me in Spain (God forbid) that I’ll be in good hands and stupid caps and exceptions and exclusionary clauses like in the U.S. won’t leave me in the cold. 

I simply believe that health care should be a right and not a privilege, that marketing budgets could be better spent towards actually providing people with health care, and that people should have public alternatives to private insurance. I don’t like the thought of people worrying over if they can even afford health care or the medicines they need.