People are apparently clamouring for a health system funded by insurance so...

[Hanschenklein]

Those MNetters in countries outside the UK how much do you pay a month for your health care ? Is your country's system completely financed by this insurance alone or does your government contribute too ?
People call the NHS a financial black hole. They resent the fact that ever increasing amounts of money are apparently being ploughed into the service to see no real improvement. They seem happy to pay via an insurance style system instead.
So how much do you and your family pay ? How do you contribute towards your pension in the absence of national insurance payments ? If you pay a fee to see a GP does that put you off going ? Do you struggle to pay this insurance if not well paid ?
Most importantly is your health service sufficiently staffed, safe and prompt ? Are HCPs in your country valued, well paid and happy in their jobs ?

I'd just like to point out a few problems with your post,please.

"People are clammaring ". Which people and where?

"People are calling Nhs a black ho le". Which people, whe re"

"They resent the fact". Who are they?

and so on, through our your post.

I'm a vehement supporter of the NHS , and posting about what "they" and "people" say/think backed by no evidence neither helps not harms the NHS

If they ask you, and they usually do about your family history, would you not say?

This can mean no coverage in the future if you omit to say

Don't lie to medical insurers. It's like you are a car but you have to disclose previous accidents.

Do not lie. You will be asked.

Well, I can say something about mum and dad

best friend is adopted so she can't

but I would have thought many people would lie if they thought it was a problem. I also think a lot of people won't know the full details of their parents' health.

I can't answer re grandparents at all but perhaps they don't ask those questions.

I imagine the bulk of the pricing is about your own history and the condition you're in when they do an exam.

We moved to Portugal from the UK three years ago. Any resident can use the national health service (SNS), regardless of whether they pay social security or not (we do as we both work). There are very small co-payments in the SNS (a GP appointment is 4,50€ in my village). There are 24 hour health centres which you can use if you need to see a doctor urgently. You turn up and queue, and it costs 14€. This means A&E is actually just for accidents and emergencies.

There's also now an SNS app which has details of all your vaccinations, through which I think you can book video appointments, but I've never tried it.

Health insurance is quite cheap, so we generally go private. My policy costs around 500€ per year and covers 80-90% of the cost of consultations, tests etc, depending on whether the provider is in or out of the insurance network. Co-payments for private consultations or GP appointments are around 15€.

My partner has to use the SNS for a pre-existing condition, and has very good care.

By EU standards we're a poor country, so healthcare isn't perfect, but we're very happy with it so far. There are issues with funding the SNS which are a big political football - incomes are low on average, and although taxes and social security are higher than the UK, there's a lot of tax avoidance.

UK doctor who used to work in Canada.

Province provides free healthcare insurance to all residents - it is paid for via taxation, and you show your health card when you show up to hospital/GP clinic. No card, you get a bill.

It is a good system, BUT:

• doesn’t cover medications - DH paid $80 for a week-long course of amoxicillin, would have been £8 in the UK. Some of my patients were paying hundreds of pounds per month for essential tablets, many more were just not taking them. You can pay for a separate drug plan, but it won’t cover everything and most plans are a couple of hundred dollars a month.
• doesn’t cover physio, dental, eyes etc - I was paying $180 for my 2 year old son’s dental checkups, my own were $250 for a basic checkup, more for X-rays etc.
• no interface with community care - so if a patient falls over, and needs a package of care, Zimmer frame, commode etc, the ward physios/OT will just make a recommendation and turf the patient out of hospital, and it is up to them to find a care agency/buy a zimmer frame or not, their problem not ours if they don’t or can’t.
• similarly no waiting in hospital for a nursing home place - you are kicked out to sort a place out yourself from home.
• not everything is covered - there are lots of treatments which are routinely available in the UK that are not available in Canada on cost grounds.
• less joined up thinking - the kidney transplant waiting list in Toronto is almost three times as long as the list in the UK, because there isn’t a national organ allocation scheme. So if somebody dies in Toronto General and there’s no suitable recipient on the Toronto General waiting list, it goes in the bin instead of offering it to patients at Sunnybrook. There is no pre-emptive transplantation in Ontario, but it is standard care in the UK.
• no generalists - GPs have a vastly reduced role, mostly looking after coughs and colds (even my son’s vaccinations were done by a paediatrician, not a GP practice nurse). Patients will be under a nephrologist for mild CKD, a respiratory physician for mild COPD, and a diabetologist for type 2 diabetes, whereas in the UK a GP would manage all of that. So lots of hospital appointments, nobody has oversight of the patient from a holistic point of view, nobody looking at the whole patient. And incredibly long waiting lists to be seen - up to 18 months, whereas my waiting list in the UK is 3 months and I am being asked to open extra clinics to get that down to my 6 week target.

Pay was much higher - a dialysis nurse would earn $100k, compared to £35k here. A consultant would earn $500k, compared to £85-100k here. The overall health budget was about double the UK’s per capita, for a significantly lower level of provision.

This, and when I have seen some 'clamouring' for this (on MN!) it's usually clamouring for 'people richer than I am' they mean!

Ah. You must declare. And they will in the UK ask for your records, your history, and then make further enquiries which you must agree to obtain the insurance.

If you lie, it costs. Or no insurance.

This is quite standard in medical insurance. They will also reserve the right to recover any costs against you if you withheld information.

I would not do so.

For example all of the following will typically have a family history.

Diabetes (type 1)
Heart disease
Cancer
Motor neuron disease
Parkinsons

This will increase costs

@EmmaEmerald - They do factor in family history. When you take out insurance, you have to fill in a detailed form about your own and your family's health history, how old your parents and siblings were when they died (if they are dead) and what they died of. If you are found to have lied on your form (and believe me, they have investigators who will check these things if you have to make a non-trivial claim) they won't pay out. They raise prices on a regular basis as you get older and, if you go down with certain illnesses, as your risk increases.

Lex, I'm getting quite confused by your posts.

i have no intention of with holding information from private insurers.

I had private insurance for a short period. I don't recall being asked anything about parents. They were, understandably, more concerned about my protracted periods of ill health.

Are you just having a giggle at some weird joke or have you been at the sherry?

Never ever would I go to a private system if I had the choice.

Lived in the US, top notch employer, top notch healthcare. Was paying over $100 / month for insurance.
It was good for things you might not bother with here - covered skin appointments etc.
Still had to pay for GP appts and contraceptive pill, and they rationed it so you couldn't just get 6 months' supply - a shock when I needed to go abroad.
Terrible for emergencies- they will ALWAYS cover their arses and say you need to stay in hospital if they're not sure what's up. Ambulance had to be paid for (hundreds of dollars). Hospitals no better than NHS ones, at least the one I went to.
Would not have given birth there.

You can't just up and leave your employer because you have to find new healthcare. Some employers use this to take the piss.

NB this was quite a few years ago so may have changed, but it was not good - I got overcharged by tens of thousands and you have to be able to navigate the system. You have to be able to find a good GP etc 'in-network' and that could be anywhere. I went to my GP once and he basically just asked what drugs I wanted - you're treated more like a customer.

I'm plainly addressing the topic, not your personal circumstances @EmmaEmerald

Your insurers will have done their homework. But family history is relevant to maintaining medical insurance. If you didn't declare a something they considered relevant, they can recover against you later if they chose.

I paid between $200- $300 per month in Bermuda and the States.

In Bermuda it was worth it as there was so much access to health ‘maintenance’ - chiropody/ allergies/ physio/ gynae health

full MOT every year.

I need it now not in my 20s!

Okay, cool, parents and siblings.

What I would really like is insurance for stuff like breaking a bone (in my case, another one!) But I'm not interested in being covered for heart ops or cancer ops. I would only want palliative care but that's probably a separate set.

I didn't even try and renew private health after a spinal injury. I only had it initially because it effectively reduced my gym membership to 1/4 and got me a phoneline to a private GP while working mad hours.

Mostly I want the NHS to actually claim back the money from people who use it but arent entitled to do so. Tourists and those who dont pay NI for example
It works both ways. On holiday in Spain my DC needed a doctor. GHIC gets you their free healthcare. We saw a doctor within 10 minutes and just had to pay for prescription.

Prehistoric "I went to my GP once and he basically just asked what drugs I wanted - you're treated more like a customer."

that sounds awesome!

I hope not, I'd never get insurance with pre-existing conditions. And I can't work because of them, so couldn't afford it anyway. Basically I'd be fucked.

Btw you can get very good coverage for some things very cheaply. Look at Beneden Healthcare.

The issue with insurance is that if you are very ill, or old, it is very expensive. Socialised medicine is better because everyone shares the risk.

This means a family who do have say, a history of breast cancer will not be made bankrupt by costs or have to accept that they will have the most basic of treatment. That is why it works for a society.

If you are individually minded, then you will want insurance and to bear your own risks at your own costs.

I live in the USA now and I hope for the UK's sake that you never get an insurance-based system like here. It's a nightmare for a big percentage of people who can't get insurance because of their work situation, or their pre-existing conditions.

We have an amazing insurance though DH's job - we pay a $300 a month (for 2 adults and 1 kid)

We still then have to pay $20 per regular doctor visit, $30 per specialist, and $75 for an ER/A&E visit.

The prices for things if you didn't have insurance are horrendous. We had a $1000 co-pay for the birth of DD, but if we hadn't had insurance the bill would have been over $60,000.

My asthma inhaler costs me $30 a month - without insurance the cost on one inhaler would be $350 a month.

Anytime you need a specialist, an x-ray, a new treatment you have to phone the insurance company to see if they will pay for it, or to see which doctors they will be prepared for you to see.

In my country you pay 13.5% for health insurance of your gross pay and your employer pays another 9% of your gross pay. all health care is free, the only staff we pay for are fillings, unless you have a very basic amalgam ones.
The doctors and nurses can be sometimes rude and patronising but the actual treatment is usually very good.
Post-communist country.

Wordler that sounds like my experience.

You basically end up trying to diagnose yourself to see if you want to pay the money, then it's a ball ache trying to work out what you are going to end up paying. There's a lot of second-guessing because you're making financial decisions as well as practical/medical ones.

And you still pay taxes!!

@blondieminx yes but most people aren't net contributors and clearly it isn't working

I'm sorry but people 'clammaring' to get rid of the NHS and replace with an insurance based system are either young, very rich and in perfect health or just plain stupid. My bet is stupid, this is the country who voted for Brexit after all.

I also think people wanting an insurance based system must never have tried to make an insurance claim. The very first thing they do is look for any possible way they can get out of paying the claim.

True @Kendodd insurance only really works as a business model if they weasle out of as many claims as possible. Annoying if its a car repair, bloody tragedy if its your cancer treatment.