Free health care system

Italy has a "free" health care system. I say "free" because in my pregnancy experience not everything has been free (some exams and blood tests-but still, if you go public the most you would spend on an entire pregnancy couldn't be more than 500 dollars), but it still beats the US.

A friend of a friend recently traveled to the US, and was 2 months pregnant when she left. She got the go-ahead from her general doctor AND her OBGYN to travel and off she went. A few days into her trip, she started hemorrhaging. She is now stuck in America, in a hospital, until she delivers (another 7 months!) with her medical bills piling up, since she has no health insurance in the US. If the situation were reversed, any American (or any nationality) in an emergency would be able to have free health care. But this being said, it does not mean that the Italian public health care system doesn't leave a lot to be desired.

The health care system here is great when you are diagnosed with a serious disease, for instance. You will get all the treatment you need for free. However, true in form as a country full of self-contradiction, screening, yearly check-ups, prevention, and early diagnosis are unheard of here. And almost everyone I have heard of being diagnosed with cancer, died because they discovered it far too late (in fact a quick search by me on the world wide web found that Italy is ranked number 2 in the world for countries with the highest deaths per diagnosis of cancer). The expert that I am, I would deduce that this is at least in some part due to the fact that most middle class Italians wouldn't dream of going through the public system for something as useless as an annual checkup, as it would entail taking a full day off of work, standing in line at the public health care office for possibly hours just to make an appointment with a specialist. Additionally, public health care doctors have a reputation (whether merited or not I really don't know) for being below par when compared to private doctors. However, (another contradiction) public HOSPITALS are regarded as better equipped and medically trained than the better organized and more convenient private hospital 'clinics'.

I don't know why I have decided to blog about this. I guess because I am running around trying to find out how to not pay 200 euros for certain pre-delivery exams and it is driving me crazy. Here, doctor offices do not take blood or cultures or anything else. You have to do everything separately in different offices, and then bring the results to them to be analyzed. How would I do this if I had a job? I would probably just do everything privately in a private hospital, because I wouldn't have a choice. Just taking the days off of work to run through this bureaucratic circus would be the means to justify paying for the convenience of a private hospital.

Bottom line is, thank God I am in a country that at least offers me the option, headache or not, to have free health care.