Dankeschoen.

Got any snow there btw?

bout two-three inches here in town. quite a bit more down south. it should snow tomorrow or wednesday. i’ll go boarding the day after it snows…

In France we all pay a large part of our income in “charges sociales”, “contribution sociale généralisée”, “remboursement de la dette sociale” (even if the dette continues to grow) and this mountian of money is used to make the system work, rather well, and for everyone, so far. How long that will continue given the increasing number of possible treatments and their costs I have no idea.

When you need treatment you go to the doctor or a public hospital or private clinic and most or all of what you spend is reinboused depending on what you have done. You can take out a “mutuelle”, a private insurance to cover the non-reimboursed part but I don’t.

so you still have to front up some money for the treatment you have done?

For some ballance to edukators posts…….

I broke my arm in Spain recently, the Spanish ‘NHS’ hospital is exactly the same as a British one. Plenty of waiting arround in A&E and a 3 day wait for surgery, which ended up being 10 days as I had to be back in the UK on day3, which then meant the 3 days in the british system were interupted by a weekend and the christmas break (i.e no scheduled operations).

My experience of private insurance in the whole thing was dealing with a load of tight fisted **** monkeys who refused to pay out for anything at all and basicly told me to get down the chemist for some over the counter painkillers as a broken arm didn’t apprently meet their criteria for a serious injury and therefore I should just wait untill I got home and go to A&E with it.

Long live the NHS.

Usually yes, though though there are some things that are reimboursed at 100%. You pay after treatment so it’s not a case of not being treated if you don’t have the money.

same as in germany, then….

you get billed for the treatment which you can pay for and then claim back or pass the invoice onto your insurer. the second option can be risky if the bill needs to be paid within a certain time frame and your insurer is an inefficient pile of arse.

The letter has arrived.

Better get my butt down to the German embassy.

Just phoned up the dodgy German insurance company. Their phone menu system is accompanied by a “Land of Hope and Glory”. How very odd.