There are several horror stories about the U.S. healthcare system; for a supposedly advanced nation, the inability to provide primary, affordable care to common Americans is baffling especially to Europeans.
Sometimes American citizens need to travel abroad to see precisely what they’re missing; a visit to the emergency room is traumatic enough; it’s ridiculously unfair to saddle somebody with years of debt too.
In 2006, Nashville, Tennessee-based author Mary Robinette Kowal was in Iceland working as a puppeteer on a kids’ TV show called Lazytown. One day, while doing a regular check, she found a lump. “This wasn’t the first time I’d found a lump, but there’s always a sense of dread, said Mary Robinette. “Even though I knew it was probably nothing because there’s no history of breast cancer in my family, there’s still a chance that it is going to be a problem.”
That’s how Mary Robinette’s (amazingly short) journey through the Icelandic healthcare system began. She could not speak highly enough of the professional, efficient, and incredibly cheap service, as well as the country in general. “I love it and would move back in a heartbeat,” she said. “The landscape is stunningly gorgeous!”
The post sparked an interesting discussion about the merits of several healthcare systems around the world, with people sharing their own eye-opening experiences.
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