Drug Deal

February 26, 2010 By: erik Category: Funny, Politics, Spain 129 views

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The other day I took Nora to the doctor to get her cough and recurring fever looked at. Actually I went in just to get an appointment, but as soon as the receptionist heard the F-word, she passed me right along to the pediatric waiting area. Eventually the doctor saw us, probed and prodded a screaming Nora, and gave us a prescription for a cough and fever medicine. We headed straight for the farmacia.

Pharmacist: “How may I help you?”

Me [handing over prescription slip]: “Here.”

Pharmacist: “One moment.”

Pharmacist [returning with bottle]: “Okay, that’ll be seventy-two…”

Me [thinking with my American brain]: “What?? 72€ is awfully expensive for cough medicine!”

Pharmacist: “…cents.”

Socialized medicine really is brutal.

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  • http://landofnospice.blogspot.com mondraussie

    Yeah… my recent trip to the doctor involved him writing out a script for something…

    “You can take use this for the pain” he said “but you’ll have to pay for it”

    The poor bugger was actually apologising to me for having to pay for my script!

  • Paul

    Meanwhile, back at the ranch, health insurance rates are going up 30% to 40% this year because, due to the bad economy, the healthy people are dropping insurance, hoping to pick it back up again before they get ill. Since it was the insurance premiums for the people who don’t put in claims that was paying for the rest, with them gone, the cost to the sickos skyrockets. This will, of course, exacerbate the problem.

    What I thought was going to be a push for federally paid-for health care here seems instead to have turned into a probable law requiring everyone to buy health insurance, or be fined if you don’t. With the fine being less than the cost of two months of insurance, both those without money and those who can do math will be scofflaws.

    As much as I hate insurance companies, what I actually regret the most about living in a country that doesn’t include medical assistance in the tax-paid package is that the people of my country have not had the opportunity to develop the attitude displayed by the Mondragon pharmacist who apologized for charging for medicine. Since everything is relative, if it is OK for babies to not get medicine they need because their mother and father have no money, then waterboarding doesn’t seem so bad.

  • Josh

    Wow, you can really tell the recent arrivals — they’re the ones who bother getting a prescription. Basically, in Spain, if you know the name of what you want, or can at least remember the color of the box, it is unlikely that the pharmacist will even ask for a script. (This, of course, is a corollary of the State-subsidized pharmaceutical system.)

    @Paul Nicely put.

  • uncle Neil

    All my friends, just a few kilometers from me, in Canada love their health care without problem. It seems so simple to me to just adopt the Canadian system. I believe that the USA is controlled by the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies even to their death.

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