I am not sayinf that American healthcare system is better, but I live in Europe and here is what I have noticed the problems with universal healthcare:
Hospitals are on a tight budget, even some meds like atypicald would be better, they cheap out and give you haloperidol and other old gen antipsychotics
I can only have 1 diagnosis in healthacre area, for example if I am paranoid schizophrenic, I can get subsidized Invega, but if i am schizoaffective, Invega is no longer subsidized. And if i also have major depression and my main illness is paranoid schizophrenia, I get only subsidized schizophrenia meds and I need to pay a full price for antidepressant or mood stabilizers
Food at the hospitals are horrible and in low quantity, usually the hospitals have 1€ limit to feed tour for a whole day
Psychiatric wards tend to keep you longer even if you are already stable, dish out cheap meds on you, cause ward psychiatrist gets paid for how long a patient is treated
There is a time limit a year how long can you be hospitalized “for free”, In my country it is 3 months a year and if I would need longer, I would need to pay for it
In Belgium health insurance is heavily subsidized by the Government but not free. I still have to pay a part of the meds, pdoc visits and hospitalizations.
Well you can probably afford it, cause I heard disability allowance in the western europe is quite big. In my country 300€ Invega depot costs like a half salary of minimum wage’s worker, so psychiatrist cheap out on it
This is an issue in the US also. We have to pay out of pocket for meds that insurance refuses to cover. I was once paying $600/month for my geodon because I got new insurance, and the new company refused to cover geodon unless I tried risdperidone for six months first. I had already had a bad reaction to risperidone, so I was unwilling to risk it.
I can only have 1 diagnosis in healthacre area, for example if I am paranoid schizophrenic, I can get subsidized Invega, but if i am schizoaffective, Invega is no longer subsidized. And if i also have major depression and my main illness is paranoid schizophrenia, I get only subsidized schizophrenia meds and I need to pay a full price for antidepressant or mood stabilizers
Less of a problem here. I have diagnoses listed on my chart that do not apply to me, because my insurance will only approve my medication for certain disorders. For example, I am listed as having ADHD because I need a med to raise my blood pressure. Insurance would not approve the med for raising my blood pressure, but they approved it for ADHD. But I can be treated for all applicable conditions. Medications CAN be pricey here, but most pharmacies participate in discount programs.
Food at the hospitals are horrible and in low quantity, usually the hospitals have 1€ limit to feed tour for a whole day
Hospital food here sucks too. The one exception would be when I was in the children’s hospital and we had as much free ice cream as we could want. That was provided by private donors, though.
Psychiatric wards tend to keep you longer even if you are already stable, dish out cheap meds on you, cause ward psychiatrist gets paid for how long a patient is treated
Definitely not an issue here. We are more likely to be sent home in active crisis just because we don’t have enough beds available.
There is a time limit a year how long can you be hospitalized “for free”, In my country it is 3 months a year and if I would need longer, I would need to pay for it
It is usually the opposite for us. We pay high prices for the first bit of treatment, but then we hit out out of pocket maximum and the insurance covers the rest.
It was interesting doing a comparison. It seems like you guys have more even treatment, whereas we have more options but only if we have the funds to pay for them.
I’ve always thought universal health care or free health care for all was a scam. I’m on Medicare and Medicaid and get free medications but they suck.
We have universal healthcare in Canada, but it’s far from perfect. A hospital stay is free, but I have to pay my medication and other medical expenses out of pocket. Right now, I spend over $300 a month on medication. At one time it was $600. Chiropractic, physiotherapy, all those extras that I need, I have to pay for myself
That’s a lot. Here we have a maximum bill, meaning that you cannot pay more for healthcare than a certain amount. I believe for people with a chronic illness it’s about 500€ a year. Everything above that is free.
Chiropractic isn’t covered though as it’s considered alternative medicine here.
Wow, that’s not bad at all. Do they cover therapy as well? Here therapy can cost anywhere from $100 to $250 an hour. And of course, I have to pay for it
There is always an explanation. But basically some things would be too expensive to cover. If everyone for every reason could get a free psychologist, it would be very expensive and according to the biomedical model often not necessary.
If you break your leg you’ll be covered. If you break your head there are limits to the system. Too many people with mental health issues that take ages to heal.
Budgets are beyond tight. Hospitals here are only given so much for surgeries for example. If the budget for surgeries is exhausted, the hospital stops doing them for the year. It doesn’t matter that there is a years long backlog and that the doctors and hospital facilities are now unused.
Not a problem here so far as I know.
So true. The hack here is to tell them you require a kosher or halaal diet. They have no facilities to produce those on site so they have to order out - these are of much higher quality.
We have too few psychiatric beds for this. You get nuked with meds to the point where you are no longer capable of acting out. Now that you’re a zombie, you’re considered “stable” and tossed back into the community to free up that bed for the next person. You basically have to be criminally insane and a danger to the community if released to get a long-term admission here.
You can be hospitalized for a year straight if required without a bill, but we don’t have enough beds for that. You’ll be sent home dangerously ill (doesn’t matter if the illness is psychiatric or not) to free up a bed for the next person.
Also worth mentioning - our health care system in Canada is now in full-collapse nationwide. People are dying because they can’t get treatment in time. The system was under funded for decades and it was pushed past the breaking point by the pandemic. It’s beyond a simple and cheap fix.
The bottom line is someone always has to pay for no matter how it’s structured. And yes there are limitations to every system, and no cure for schizophrenia. There’s only so much that can be done really.
