Reply #104: I'm 52. I'm still in pretty good shape 'cause I did athletic training [View All]

[Amonester]

in my teens (Olympic-type swimming competitions). Only last year, I happened to get a small problem. I'm not telling you what it was but it was sudden and painful. I could have let it go away by itself (I know about "medication-less" self-healing techniques), but after one night without sleep, I decided I could not take the risk of having to go through a second one... So I went to the nearest Hospital, and walked-in its Emergency department.

As soon as I got in, I registered for an appointment at the check-in desk there, got my Health-Care plastic card (credit-card size) off my wallet, and gave it to the clerk. She did the paperwork and then, she politely told me I had to wait for my name and door number to be called through the speaker system inside the waiting room.

The place was crowded, but not too crowded. I waited there for no more than 20 minutes. Then the Doctor I saw did everything that had to be done to cure the pain (a localized surgery), and before I left, I went to get my card back, and got a personalized computer-generated schedule for 10 preplanned daily visits at a local clinic (closer to my home). That clinic is a modern (recent) place and I was more than satisfied about the quality of the treatments I got from every Medics there. The wait was between 1 to 10 minutes (depending on how busy the clinic was on each of these days).

All in all, and in my case, the services I received were close to perfect, and I am more than grateful to all professional staff and taxpayers (including me... just kidding). Everything was just fine (again, in my "small" case). I can't say for any difficult case many people have to go through, but I rest assured if anything really bad ever happens to me, I will be treated with respect and I will get excellent health-care services (just wait the wait: something I'm good at).

Hope I could say more, but my friends and I cannot understand why our smaller country does have - and had - these "free" health-care policies (alright, we pay more taxes, and sales-tax on almost everything too) available on demand for the past 35 years, and a 10 times bigger (and richer) country does not (yet)... (??)