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by ryandrake
594 days ago
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This is such a tired, pedantic retort. Nobody believes that taxpayer-funded services are "not paid for". OP obviously meant "pay for fully by the individual at the point of sale." And yes, as an American, it also boggles my mind that we have to pay for emergency health services including ambulances[1]. My wife, who is not from a stone-age civilization like ours, didn't realize it either the first time we needed to hit up the emergency room. Thankfully I was able to convince her to not call for an ambulance, and I drove myself to the hospital. 1: individually, just so I'm clear |
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In the case of Switzerland (which is in Europe, at least geographically) we do not have a “taxpayer-funded system” (see my other comment in the thread) and that ambulance ride would have to have been (depending on your insurance providers which go with a “you pay now, we reimburse later”, literally) paid fully at the individual at the point of sale (in the most logical model for someone in good health, the first 2’500 CHF + 10% up to 700 CHF a year are “self pay”).
Moreover, ambulance rides are not covered by the health care insurance in case of “accidents”. Which in this case (being run over by an ambulance) it very clearly is. It might be covered by the accident insurance, if you have one (which to be fair is the case if you work more than 20%). In case of “sickness”, some complementary insurances might reimburse for part of these costs.
You would probably find that this is actually the case in many European countries. The American healthcare system might be broken, but please don’t pretend that the ones in Europe aren’t and that we all live in some kind of healthcare utopia (see someone else’s post about the two-speed German system in the thread).
Healthcare is very lucrative, and greed does not know any borders.