Health Care

Warning: This blog may be inflammatory to some.

One of the big reasons we live in a 3rd World Nation is the massive reduction in the cost of health care...without any loss of quality.

I had a friend who was hospitalized for 7 days for a double hernia operation. Total cost: $7,000.

In the US this would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

When complications happened after the operation, he had to go to the social hospital for 20 days because he was out of money. He reported that the care was excellent. Total cost: $1600.

Almost every nation in the world has socialized medicine!

I'm going to repeat this: Almost every nation in the world has socialized medicine.

Even Panama.

Here, you can go to a social clinic for $5.

Everyone is thrilled with socialized medicine n Panama. The docs, venders, hospitals and, most of all, the patients!

ALL doctors work first for the social system and they get paid about $60,000 a year for it. ALL docs work in the morning for the social system then in the afternoon they work in their private clinics or the private hospitals. Most make about $40,000 to $50,000 annually from their private work. This combined annual wage is HUGE in Panama and the docs are thrilled with the money and the system.

You can call a doc on their cell phone and they ANSWER. They will make a house call if you are stranded. If they make a mistake...don't fool yourself, all docs make mistakes...they admit it and fix it at no charge!

One of my buddies had a cataract operation in Panama City go bad. The doc admitted his mistake, paid for the flight to PC, a driver picked him up and drove him around for 3 days, the hotel was paid for and, of course, all the medical work was at no charge.

Try that in the US...

All this from a lowly 3rd World Nation.

What and the hell is going on in the US?

You can go to Cuba, Thailand, France, Canada, Brazil, Costa Rica...and the list goes on and on...and get excellent health care for a pittance compared to the US.

Because health care needs increase with age, we knew we couldn't retire in the US unless we had health insurance paid for by others.

No one stepped up to pay our health insurance so off we went to a country where we could handle the cost of health care.

Granted, there are many more reasons to be in Panama but the low cost of health care is a big one.

I am so grateful that something encouraged us to live in this remarkable country.

Even though Noriega has returned...more on this later.