Adventures in Socialized Medicine

Posted at 11:00 PM, Wednesday, June 6, 2007

I went to a local optometrist on Monday to try to establish why I've been having so much trouble seeing the lines on the road at night when it's raining. It turns out my prescription has changed in the last year, and he was quite confident that new contact lenses would fix the problem. When I learned from the receptionist that the contact lenses would cost over $400 per year, I decided to set vanity aside and switch back to glasses. This meant a repeat trip to the optometrist to write up a separate prescription for the glasses, and I did that on Tuesday. The glasses will be relatively expensive, but the two doctor's visits were free. The office billed Medicare for both appointments and will be reimbursed at a reasonable level. Socialized medicine at work!

Late on a Friday afternoon in January, I was out in the yard picking several dozen overripe peaches off our tree. Like most moments during the day, I had too much on my mind and was trying to do too much at once. I turned around and got stabbed through the eye by a tree branch. Ouch! Luckily, I had a contact lens which absorbed much of the force and hasn't been seen since, but I was in a lot of pain and quite worried. Since it was already after 5:00 p.m., I called the After Hours Doctor Service for help. An hour later, a physician drove up to the house carrying a large case filled with a tantalizing assortment of bottles and ointments. He put some drops in my eye to help him look for abrasions and found none. Then he put a drop of a wonderful painkiller in, and things started to seem much better. He scanned my Medicare card, had me sign a form, and drove away without charging me anything. Socialized medicine at work!

Following six weeks of school vacation, Nadav returned to school and immediately began behaving badly. Very badly. Badly to the point that he routinely spent time sitting in the principal's office just so the poor teachers could actually teach. After weeks of agonizing and fruitless problem-solving with his saintly teacher, we sought outside help. First, we took him to our GP Pamela Rachootin for a full physical check-up (no charge), then to a nearby lab for a blood test to rule out the possibility of an iron deficiency (also no charge, plus a really cool and very solemn certificate for enduring the ordeal). Once we'd ruled out any physical problems, we took him down to spend two productive sessions with the wise children's psychiatrist Carolyn Dorrington. She listened very seriously to him and to the rest of us, and diagnosed him with an acute case of homesickness aggravated by a fear that Australia might run out of water. She prescribed lots of fun for him plus time spent discovering Australia's wonderful side. He started back to school with his behavior wonderfully improved. Although he still has his moments!

Our visits to Dr. Dorrington were not free. In fact, they cost close to $400 for the two sessions. However, we only paid $80 of the cost, or a $40 co-pay per visit. Medicare paid the balance. The reason I know how much the real cost was in this case is that she asked us to file the Medicare claims ourselves and then mail the checks to her, which we happily did. Socialized medicine at work!

What's not covered? Dental care for one. We have supplemental private insurance for about US$165 per month that pays 50% of adult dental care and 100% of the kids' treatment. Like any private health insurance policy, it has its foibles and doesn't cover specialty pediatrict dentists, just general practitioners. Nadav, who suffered through a ridiculous number of dental indignities as a small child and now has $1000 worth of dental work in his mouth, goes to a pediatric specialist, and we actually have to pay the full bill ourselves. Gasp!

I'm sure I'm failing to convey to you just how wonderful it is not to have to fret about healthcare. I'm hoping that after this next presidential election, America will finally start to move in a sensible direction. It certainly couldn't do much better than what Australia has had for decades.