Current Mood:
Happy
I went back to the doctor today. I decided I should figure out how this whole health insurance thing works. According to Dilek, the woman at my health insurance company that is my contact (she’s the only one I could get on the phone to speak English), I have the best health insurance, so I took the opportunity to go in and get checked up. It was an interesting experience.
First, I called Dilek to get a brief translation of my policy and how to go about seeking treatment. It seems I have unlimited coverage for accidents, serious health problems, hospitalizations and things like that. I have 80% coverage on this while abroad. I have 5,000 Ytl of what seems to be doctor’s consultations and visits. What is not covered in the policy (I haven’t checked this with the company) is general check ups. It appears that you cannot go in for a general check up and have it covered even by the best insurance company in this is retarded for two reasons.
 1. Preventative strategies are (as far as I know) ALWAYS cheaper than other reactive strategies. This may not be the case for everything, but it is certainly the case in medicine. Strike one against the intelligence of the insurance company.
2. As far as I could tell, there is nothing to stop me from going in there 10 times this week and making up a variety of random ailments and in a sense, getting a general checkup. This will be no cost to me other than my time, and it will be very costly to the insurance company.
Anyway, moving on. So Dilek gave me the number for the International Hospital here in Istanbul, not too far from where I work. There are plenty of medical clinics around like the one I visited for my wrist, which my friend owns, but they don’t always honor the insurance. That means there is a frustrating process of trying to get a refund from the insurance company. I therefore decided it was best to go where they told me. In general, most primary health care needs are handled by hospitals here in Turkey. Looking around their website, I discovered that they offer health care in the following languages (other than Turkish):
English,
German,
French,
Arabic,
Italian,
Spanish,
Bulgarian,
Russian,
Albanian,
Persian
I arrived there 30 minutes after my scheduled appointment. This is where things differ tremendously from the US. First of all the hospital was small, but really nice. It had fancy falls and and nice chairs. It was a far cry from the sterile bleak hospitals that you see in the US. At the reception desk I answered a few questions and presented my insurance card. They confirmed what Dilek had said in that I had the best insurance. This whole process took under five minutes!
Now this is where things really get unbelievable for someone who is used to 22 years of US health care. Guess how long my wait time was for the doctor? Less than one minute! I was amazed! The whole thing was very quick, I hardly had to answer anything, they spoke English, there was no paperwork for me. The insurance covered everything, but I still got the receipt. The whole visit was less than 100 dollars!
For those of you that are not from the US, going to the doctor in the US is a huge pain in the butt. You have to wait forever, there is always some paper work to fill out, first you see the nurse practitioner, then you wait again, then you see the doctor. Sometimes you will have to keep waiting for no reason after that. For me there always seemed to be something up with my health insurance. The trouble involved with seeing a doctor always acted as a disincentive for me to get problems checked up on. Here, the only disincentive is the traffic. So I think the next time my toe hurts, I minds well take advantage of my health insurance and get it checked out.
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