I had a health crisis in France
I was hospitalised in France last year - and coming from the UK, which has a social healthcare system too, I was likewise blown away by the quality of care.<p>I was staying in a remote house, miles from the nearest village, an hour from the nearest hospital. After about four days of continuous vomiting in 40 degree heat I caved and called a doctor, in the hope of getting a prescription for antiemetics over the phone. It&#x27;s Sunday. I figure it&#x27;s a long shot but can&#x27;t hurt.<p>Well, I call and she says &quot;sorry, can&#x27;t give you a prescription over the phone - but the doctor will be with you in ten minutes&quot;. I was sat there expecting a call back when the doctor <i>shows up at my house</i>. Checks me over, says I need IV fluids pronto, do you want an ambulance for €20 or do you want to get yourself there.<p>Wife gives me a ride to the hospital an hour away. The place has recently undergone big budget cuts so they&#x27;ve mothballed a big chunk of it, and it looked a bit sad, but inside everything was new and clean, and I&#x27;m seen within a few minutes of arriving. By a consultant surgeon who was called in to arrive a few minutes before me. I&#x27;m given fluids, blood tests, a CT and an MRI, and about six hours later an functioning again, and they&#x27;re saying I can stay or leave, my choice, and here&#x27;s a folder of information for you to follow up on back home.<p>All of this cost less than €60, and I honestly felt like I had all of France mustered and rallied to my care.<p>I had a similar experience earlier this year in the U.K., and the contrast was significant - in the U.K. one feels like an irritation and an inconvenience. &quot;Bloody hell, what&#x27;s a patient doing here? This is a hospital!&quot;. I still got decent treatment, of course, but it was all with a grumbling, discontented overtone - and despite it being a new (15 yr) old hospital, unbelievable amounts of equipment didn&#x27;t work. There was a diabetic guy on a sugar monitor&#x2F;drip on my ward that kept crashing - so their solution was to have him wake up and reboot it every 20 minutes so he didn&#x27;t die. They didn&#x27;t have another one available.<p>It&#x27;s just astonishing to see how two supposedly similar socialised healthcare systems can end up so very different in their output.