OK Brian and CAR
My friend is spending the the night here and while most of what we did was talk about our kids and life in general I squeezed in some health care questions for you. Here is what I got from him:
1. We have undeniably the absolute finest medical care available anywhere on the planet in the US.
2. Nowhere elese in the world can you walk into a hospital without money or insurance and get open heart surgery. In the US they have to treat you. In other countries with socialized medicine they put you on a list. Unfortunately it is a list you will very likely never see the top of. The idea that in America, someone without health insurance is pretty much SOL if something bad happens is a myth. Walk into an ER and you will get taken care of. Anywhere else in the world you are SOL if you dont have money unless you have the time to wait on a list you most likely will never reach the top of and get lucky.
3. If you are in Indonesia and get sick. Try to swim to to Singapore. If they give you an antibiotic, look up what they gave you on wikipedia because that is what your doctor probably did.
4. In Thailand there is good quality care available at very reasonable prices as long as you need the care for a procedure they are good at. What they are good at is limited and if its one of the things they arent good at you are SOL. If it is something they are good at, the hospitals are like resorts and the more you can afford to pay the nicer accomodations you can get up to 5 star treatment. If you have a complex case or complications they dont know how to deal with it. They will just pass you onto to someone else. Doctors in most other countries dont have the ingenuity and ability to think outside the box and come up with ways to deal with anything beyond what they have been trained to do.
5. Again, the US has the absolute best medical care available and the best trained physicians in the world. It is not even close.
