Three out of four ain’t bad…

2011-02-02Uncategorized Standard

This will have to be brief since I’m (supposedly) writing a lecture for tomorrow morning (exactly 12 hours from now).

Today’s health update is as follows:  Bjarki went to daycare, and did fine.  The rest of us saw doctors today.

Finnur got an appointment with some random general practitioner at Domus Medica, who listened to his lungs, put him on antibiotics, and then sent him for a lung x-ray and blood test for good measure.  Finnur felt miraculously better some four hours afterwards, and is now approaching ‘normal’ at a good rate.

Anna saw Soffía the pediatrician (Yes!  ‘Our’ Soffia from California!!) who found Anna to have strep throat, and the flu and put her on antibiotics and some asthma-meds to help with the coughing.  She still looked rather miserable at dinnertime, but hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Since my flu had mutated into a sore-throat/cough/nasal drip as of this morning, I started thinking I might also have strep throat.  So I made my way to the after-hours health clinic (same as on Monday) to find out for sure.   Long story short: The wait was much shorter (the doctor was En Fuego!) and I do not have strep throat, nor anything antibiotics are likely to fix.  So I get to tough my flu out the good old fashioned way.

Oh, and today was a day of lovely fluffy snow falling calmly calmly to the ground.  Just fabulous! 🙂

COMMENTS

Rajan P. Parrikar

Isn’t the Icelandic healthcare system much better than the US? I mean, is there even a comparison?

Hrefna

You must take care to distinguish the ‘health care providers’ vs. ‘health insurance’ vs. ‘access to health care’. I would say that the Icelandic health insurance system beats the US hands down, and by proxy the access is better. Sure there are co-payments in Iceland, but people don’t go bankrupt because of medical bills, i.e. the system has built in catastrophic insurance. The whole system functions much like I’m told the Kaiser system does in CA, i.e. you just pay a little up front, and never see any other bills or the hated ‘explanation of benefits’ letters.

The system is geared towards making health care for kids and the elderly cheap or free in many cases. Apparently, kids should not have to suffer if the parents have no money.

For example: This past week it cost me 0 ISK to take Bjarki to after-hours care (twice). We ended up paying about $25 for his antibiotics. I took Anna to a ‘private-ish’ pediatrician and the copay was about $6. Her meds came out to be $25-ish too. Finnur on the other hand had to pay about $20 to see a ‘private-ish’ general practitioner, $25 for his meds, $15 for a blood draw and $20 or $30 for a chest x-ray, so his bill added up to something significant. I paid $25 to see a health care doctor after hours, and $7 for a strep test (Anna’s was free).

I found the doctors here to be overall very good. One can argue that there’s been a lot of cost cutting and more is to come, but as a whole the system functions ok in that people don’t fall through cracks like in the US, and paying for medical bills is generally not a huge concern of people, like it is in the US. The only caveat I’d put is for medications, and dental, because the state has been cutting back on coverage in recent years.

But, I have never ever heard of fundraisers for people with cancer in Iceland, to help them pay for and get treatment, like in the US…