Originally Posted By: Cris
Can I ask people in the US a question. I honestly don't know the answer, and what interests me if my perception of your healthcare system is true.

Lets assume I am a US citizen, I am a very low paid worker and have no part of my income available for healthcare insurance or visits to the Doctor (I am assuming you have to pay to see a GP?).

If I had cancer, I may not know this of course, what treatment, help and support is available to me as someone who has no medical cover? And a what point would any state based help kick in?

Now my preconceptions would be that I would basically be left to die painfully unless someone would be able to scrape the money together to help me. Is this actually the case?

If it is, I find it hard to get my head around the fact that a modern society could deny any fraction of it's people the technology and knowledge to help in a situation like that.

Cheers

Cris.


A friend of mine fit you scenario exactly. He was a low paid worker with no health insurance.

He started complaining he had a pain in his shoulder. I recommended he see my primary care physician. He went to her and was immediately x-rayed and then sent to an oncologist. This is where his out of pocket costs basically stopped.

He was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. At this point it really didn’t matter how much money he had he was going to die in 6-12 months. He elected to “fight” the cancer. In my opinion from there on out he got excellent care. Everything was either written off (and his chemotherapy was not cheap) by the hospitals, doctors or paid for my Medicare. He quit work as soon as he was diagnosed and social security immediately (he did have to make a few calls) kicked in and paid for his living expenses. He even moved to an on the beach lake Michigan rental.

I’m sure there are horror stories out there of poor care for the poor but I was amazed at what our current system supplied him with.