One of the biggest issues in American politics today is health care. Americans pay more for health care than the citizens of any other country in the world. And this is after stuff like the Affordable Care Act.
But many people who are against single payer, tax-funded health care say that it will lead to a system that provides inferior services to everyone.
But is this true?
One American recently fell ill while living overseas. He took to Facebook to document his experience.
Most of the world wouldn’t find what he went through surprising at all. But to other Americans, it’s eye-opening.
So what did Kevin Bozeat, who is currently living in Taiwan, go through? Did he have a horrendous wait time? Did he have a botched surgery? Did he get prescribed a terrible harmful substance?
No.
He got better health care than he’d ever experienced in his life.
And he got it almost for free.
The post, which he named “The Horrors of Socialized Medicine: A first-hand experience,” details the entire experience.
One evening, Bozeat went home after work. He began vomiting uncontrollably.
This kept on happening for hours. He decided to go to the hospital.
He was reluctant, as he hadn’t looked into getting health insurance in Taiwan. He had no idea about the Taiwanese health system, or how much it would cost.
All he knew was that to technically qualify for Taiwan’s single-payer health care, he needed to have been living in Taiwan for six months.
However, he’d only been there for a few weeks.
It turns out that there was nothing to worry about.
When he arrived at the hospital, a nurse, who spoke fluent English, checked Bozeat in.
He then had to wait for a grand total of 20 minutes before being seen to.
The doctors took some blood tests, did ultrasounds and gave him a diagnosis of stomach flu.
They attached him to an IV. Soon afterward, Bozeat’s stomach pain started easing.
Soon enough, he was feeling good enough to go home.
He left, with a prescription that would have him feeling much better in a short timespan.
But then, a few days later, he received his medical bill.
He knew that this had been coming. Not living in Taiwan long enough to qualify for free healthcare made this an inevitability.
The total charge was $80. American dollars.
And not a penny more.
In America, the bill for an uninsured individual seeking health care would almost definitely have been hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Many people in America would have suffered through Bozeat’s illness without getting it seen to, because they couldn’t pay for the extremely expensive health care!
Bozeat summed his feelings up.
“Given this experience, I no longer have a reason to fear or hesitate to get care in Taiwan should I ever need it.”
However, some people on Facebook, who don’t believe in universal health care, have been trying to pick Bozeat’s story apart, and failing.
For instance, some claim that to a Taiwanese person, $80 would be an incredibly high price to pay. Bozeat has debunked this claim. He stated that the cost of living in Taiwan is about half of what it is in the USA.
So to a Taiwanese person, being charged $80 would feel like an American being charged $160.
That’s still an insanely low cost for an uninsured person!
And even if someone in Taiwan couldn’t pay that medical bill, then there would be no dire consequences.
As Bozeat also stated, in Taiwan, “Everyone is covered, regardless of employment status, no one is uninsured, no one ever goes bankrupt due to medical bills.”
Since Bozeat posted the Facebook status of his experience, it has gone viral.
Over 95,000 people have liked it, and over 200,000 people have shared it.
Clearly, many Americans want a similar level of care. If only there were somebody running on a platform of giving healthcare to all people…
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