Free health care like the Portuguese

A woman who grew up in Portugal meets a Liberal – in a DMV office while waiting, and waiting - who wants to leave America because we don’t have “free health care” like they do in Portugal.

Finally she says, in a bombastic tone, “You see, I wish I weren’t an American. I’m trying to leave the country."

Why? Is it the economy, the politics, the .... ?

Instead she blurts out, “You see, here we don’t have a right to free health care.”


At which point I rotated my head like something out of The Exorcist and said in my best *I am controlling my voice because otherwise I’ll shriek so loudly people from Kansas will run in to see what is going on* tone: “You don’t want the free health care they have in other countries. I grew up with it. And Portugal is not as bad as some.”


She smugly gave me the “Better outcomes. Cheaper.”


At this point I started giving her home truths and anecdotes. I started with the “better outcomes” being because it’s so hard to GET in the system (and not be sent home to die) that most people aren’t in the system when they die — hence, not “outcome” of health care. I continued with the fact that my third year in college was spent sitting in a DMV-like office confirming that, yes, I still had impacted wisdom teeth, causing infernal pain and trying to grow into my jawbone. Every morning I went in to confirm that, no, this hadn’t magically resolved. And then I waited in line. Sometimes I made it to afternoon classes. All this for a two-hour procedure — at the end of the year.


Or the fact my grandmother was still being tested for “unknown ailment” when she died. Her results as having stomach cancer came three months after she died. Also, when my husband and I caught pneumonia while there, there was no way of getting us seen AND tested. We could go to emergency, but we couldn’t get the tests done or not right away. My sister-in-law who is an MD advised us to return home ASAP so we could get testing, since tuberculosis is endemic there. So we returned two weeks earlier than planned and were seen, X-rayed, and medicated the next day at one of the express care places.


Then I told her it was easier to get tested and treated in Portugal now, because now they allow private care too, and everyone who even remotely can goes private. Only indigents take advantage of the “free” health care. And it’s worth about what you pay for it. There are good doctors in the system, of course, but there are a lot of indifferent ones, and money and permissions for tests and treatments are controlled by an indifferent bureaucracy. And that’s the truth everywhere you go that has “free” health care.

And here's the surprise:

Okay… so far so good. I expected her to come back with some factoids, and I expected to discuss it, and maybe even have words. You see, normally I don’t discuss this with strangers, but I was in a bad mood, so I didn’t care if she argued.


Instead, as I wound down, I found she was staring at me open-mouthed. When she could speak she said “Is it really like that? I thought we had the worst health care anywhere. No one ever told me centralized healthcare had problems. I never thought that it would need a bureaucracy and of course it would be like this”– gesture at the DMV.

It’s worth reading the original article, and then go to the comments because they are a great education on the subject of “free” healthcare.