Posted by Riccardo (195.103.80.225) on June 27, 2000 at 06:40:10:
In Reply to: for UK sufferers - and interested others! posted by Simon on June 26, 2000 at 20:00:35:
Please Simon tell me if our situation differs from UK.
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We pay (within annual taxes) a "fee" for Health assistance. (approx 5% of our net income).
Health assistance covers all the expenses with our GP, the 70% with meds, specialist visits and exams, the 90% in surgical operations and Hospital staying, the 100% of ER "trips".
The average waiting time for specialists, exams and surgical operations is 1 month, but may range between 15 days to 9 months (sic!)
The quality of assistance is medium/low, excluding the surgery, that is pretty good (how lucky we are! :-) )
We have the option to stipulate private insurances (cost varies from 300$ to 1500$ per year) that covers PRIVATE specialists, exams and surgery. NOT and NEVER GP and meds coverage.
The average waiting time goes down to 5 days! The quality is surely high.
We cannot have a PRIVATE GP, in the sense we cannot get free meds prescriptions from noone, except our "PUBLIC" GP.
We can, on the other hand, get effective prescriptions (to be entirely paid) from any private and/or public GP and/or specialist and/or Hospital.
But if we go to the GP with a specialist prescription, the GP can deny the "free of charge" receipt. (anyway the pharmacy will give us the med, but we have to pay the full price for it)
We can change (easily) the GP we have, for any cause (right or wrong). In case of home change we can choose any GP near the new zone.
Any GP can have max. 1200 patients.
The people that become chronic in some kind of illnesses and have some bad illnesses (high BP, cancer, paralysis, and so on) get the complete free of charge assistance (in other words don't pay one lira for any health thing).
We pay 2$ for each GP receipt. The meds are cataloged into 3 ranks:
1) completely free, if I have the GP receipt
2) partially free (means approx 5$), if I have the GP receipt
3) to be completely payed, don't matter if I have or not the GP receipt. In this rank there are the new (and the most effective...:-) ) meds on the market.
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I hope this can be useful for you and for any interested in our assistance system, let me know
Ciao and PFNAD