PolyPassport recently profiled a Texan woman and her family’s journey from the US to France in search of more affordable healthcare and saner politics. They had EU passports on the basis of ancestry.
It reinforces a lot of the stereotypes we have about healthcare in Europe, particularly on pricing and access overall. Cataract surgery cost her some 300 EUR (!) and her daughter receives free prosthetics every two years.
But her story does dispel the notion that anyone, anywhere can just walk into an EU hospital and get treated—including EU citizens. That’s consistent with my own experience. I’ve lived in a few EU countries and certainly paid less for often high-quality care than in the US. But I never found it to be straightforward or necessarily leagues better than equivalent systems, say, in Asia. Like the woman in the article, I also missed speaking to providers in my native language about ailments that can’t often be conveyed with an A2 level proficiency! :)
It got me thinking about the trade-offs we face when chasing healthcare (or anything really) abroad. It’s about balancing the good with the not-so-good and making the most of our choices wherever we go.
Food for thought and a point discussion.
This is categorically false for the US healthcare system for the vast majority of the country. There cost of US healthcare is obscenely (and unjustifiably) high but is of a very good quality and typically fast for most people.
But the cost prevents many people from experiencing good and fast service. What good is high quality, efficient care if it’s only available to those who have money? Those who aren’t part of the “vast majority” (and we’re not talking a handful of people here and there – this is tens of millions of America’s most vulnerable citizens) are excluded from quality care.
I had a baby in Germany and 2 in the U.S. and I can say without a doubt the care in the U.S. was far superior. Way more expensive but so much better.
Unfortunately that doesn’t follow the narrative that people here want to believe. I’m a strong supporter of most aspects of socialized medicine but im not going to pretend that the US system doesn’t have some (possibly many?) upsides.