An American in Hay-on-Wye

[dreamer_easy]

The doctor says Morgan's foot will be fine; we just have to keep the cut clean.

The receptionist, however, looks altogether more grave.

"The visit's normally covered under National Health," she says apologetically, "but since you aren't residents..."

"Yes?"

We once made an emergency visit to a doctor in Oregon to get a large splinter out of Morgan's foot, and the clinic tried to bill us five hundred dollars. And that was without any blood or swelling.

Jennifer and I brace ourselves.

"... it will be twenty pounds."

We gape.

"What?"

"I'm sorry!" the receptionist pleads. "It's terrible, isn't it?"

"You... think..."

"Is it different in your country?"

We stare uncomprehendingly at her.

"Yes," I finally say. "It is different in our country."

- Paul Collins, Sixpence House, 2003

(Two years after Collins wrote that, Jon and I would both have similar NHS experiences on a UK visit. :)

Comments

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Signed.

One interesting effect of this debate is that Britons seem to have stopped moaning about the NHS, which until now was one of those things we only noticed when it went wrong.

(You go to a hospital in Britain, get your leg seen to, and are back on the street; that's how you expect the world to work. You go to a hospital, they lose your paperwork and hold you overnight for no reason and without telling you what's going on; that's the bl**dy NHS for you...)