Category Archives: Political

Breaking your collarbone in a country with socialized healthcare

As an American professional, I’m accustomed to HMOs, PPOs, group policies, co-pays, etc. I’ve now lived in Austria for over five years, and I’m learning my way around its brand of socialized medicine.

I personally opted for private insurance, rather than the public, but the way it works, I often get the same care, particularly when I go to a hospital.

So, two weeks ago, my son and I head home from his swim lesson, he on his scooter, I on my longboard. And I hit a wet patch of concrete I didn’t see and wipe out. Hard. I’m near blind with pain, but I manage to get up, reassure my son, and get him home. In retrospect, it would have made more sense to get to the hospital immediately, but, well, I didn’t.

Anyway, I get to the hospital and here’s how it goes (It’s a Saturday, by the way.):

12:30: Check in. They ask for my eCard, I explain I have private insurance and will be paying myself. Fine, they’ll send the bill to my house.

12:40: Wait.

13:15: See doctor, who examines me, asks where it hurts, and sends me to the Röntgen Ambulanz (in-house X-ray).

13:25: Wait.

13:30: get X-rayed

13:35: Wait.

13:40: Doctor confirms broken clavicle, prescribes Seractil (dexibuprofen), tells me to come back in a week. Nurse fits me for sling and swathe.

13:45: check out

The Seractil costs 7€ ($8) and is very effective on the pain.

The hospital bill comes to 106.80€ ($117). Total. My insurance company will reimburse me 80% of that, so I’ll only pay 21€.

I go back to the hospital a week later (Friday morning). I’m in and out in an hour. Treatment included another X-ray and feedback from the doctor.

Went back today and it was the same – in and out in an hour. It’s healing well, by the way.

So I’ve been to the hospital three times, seen doctors each time, gotten three x-rays, and checked in as a new patient once. Total time is less than I’ve typically spent in a single hospital visit in the US. The cost, even before I get reimbursed, is a fraction of American medical costs.

I’m telling an outpatient hospital story because the experience is the same whether I have private insurance or not. Private insurance makes more of a difference with in-patient or doctor care, but even then the difference is more about comfort – private rooms and whatnot. 

The War on Terror is over. Terror won.

The country which claims to lead the free world now openly spies on its allies and its own citizens. The rationale? Terrorism and crime.

The President-Elect won on a platform that stated America is in trouble, she is in danger, and your neighbor, your neighboring country, your neighboring religion, your neighboring race, your own allies…they are the danger. What danger? Terrorism, crime, and economic ruin.

Parents risk losing custody of their children if they allow them to explore their own neighborhoods. Why? It’s a dangerous neighborhood. Strangers are dangerous, and they are everywhere. Better your children be taken by CPS than by a human trafficking ring.

We spend billions and have invented almost an entire new branch of government with a slew of new acronyms…DNI, NCTC, DHS, TSA to name a few. Terrorism.

Where once we worried about Africanized bees, now we see the spread of militarized police. Crime.

Cameras, ubiquitous now, are not welcome near the actions of these entities. Drones recording the #NoDAPL protests are grounded by the FAA. We can’t see what the militarized police are doing.

We imprison more of our people per capita than any other developed nation.

But terrorism is a danger on par with texting while driving in number of annual deaths. Perhaps we need to reduce the WoT to a few ad campaigns and PSAs. Or maybe create half a dozen new federal agencies (armed, with drones) to fight the WoTWD.

Crime is down too. Actual stranger danger is so rare as to be almost nonexistent. Your child is in more danger at home, indoors.

The economy is doing well. The rich are getting richer faster than anyone, but everyone else is doing better. Global poverty continues to drop dramatically. Goods are cheaper.

There are localized differences. Deaths by gun are high in the US. Deaths by armed conflict are high in the Middle East. Deaths by disease are high in Africa. Factory workers are losing jobs to automation even as Uber makes anyone with a car employable. But globally, and nationally in the US, we are living better than ever before. 

Our greatest actual dangers are actually problems of affluence: we have so much cheap food we are eating ourselves to death, and we have so many cars whizzing around that we routinely smash them into each other with people inside.

We are not acting rationally. We are reacting from fear. We live in fear. But we are like a child who is too scared to go down into the dark cellar, but has to be held back from running into traffic. Irrational.

The only winners are those who profit from fear.

I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at “therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone.”

Randall Munroe, in mouse-over text on xkcd: Bookshelf

Couldn’t agree more.