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Comment by INTPenis | Hacker News Reader

Really interesting reading this, because I went through my partner having cancer a decade ago, in a nordic european country, and the experience is very different.

They rolled out the red carpet for us, they gave us everything, we essentially had a direct line into the oncology ward. They also gave us all the meds we needed. At one point we wanted to go to SE Asia and they gave us twice the meds we needed for an entire month so we could mail one half, and take the other half with us, with doctor's notes, as redundancy!

And no we didn't pay a dime for any of it.

But if you don't have cancer, then I agree with the first statement of the blog, you really have to act as your own project manager when it comes to health care.

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In the US, my experience is also having the red carpet rolled out for my kid. Our health insurance company has already paid $500k+ within a few months of diagnosis, and there are still a few medicines at $70k and $100k+ per dose to go through, plus ~$7k+ per night in the hospital for a few days to a couple weeks at a time.

Nurse staffing ratios are 1 nurse to 2 kids or less, we get private rooms with a bed for parents, broadband wifi, and extensive food menu to order room service from all day. We also have the email addresses of our oncologists, 24/7 phone number to oncology department, and we got opinions from 4 other cancer centers in the country to confirm treatment was appropriate (luckily there is a lot of data).

That's good health insurance, I thank the stars you had it.

But we just went with standard national insurance, and the total cost is never revealed to us so I can't even tell you what it costs on their end.

We reach a certain level of cost, it was maybe around 250 dollars at that time, after that threshold they pay everything for the rest of the year, until the threshold resets

I'm so glad you had this experience (genuinely). My husband and I were treated very well here in the US when he was diagnosed with cancer and I'm so grateful to the doctors, nurses, admins, and the cancer center we were treated at for that. It takes so much off the plate when you just have to focus on 1) showing up for infusions and then 2) going home to rest.

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