Healthcare in Poland: Real Experience
 

Okay, so I wanted to share my story to see how other people would handle it. A friend of my wife called and said she cut fingers with a blender real bad, so blood is everywhere. The husband is away, little kids around, 1-2-3 = Cut.

So she doesn't speak Polish and asked my wife to help. So she took her kids and met my wife at the ER at Komorowskiego. Apparently, in the ER they only have 'internista' who wouldn't do stitching ... So they jump back to taxi and go to the ER at Wroclawska - very slow registration, those who just got off the ambulance lay down in the hallway waiting without any sign of help or ETA on being seen...

All this time her hand's been bleeding, they tried all they could to stop it, 2 little kids ready to fall asleep. So my wife asked if there would be any ETA on getting help - " nie wiem nic " was the answer ...

I was at home with my boys when my wife called me to check on the internet if there was any other services available. So I tried Szpital Uniwersytecki - waiting time 4 hours was the answer...

Then I finally found a number 19-439 where you could request for private services. Again, all the private medical units you could come visit to get help work up to 20:00 max, then you could try ask for a doctor who'd be able to come and fix you, they work till 22:00.

This is a deep fingers cut, what would you do if there was a real health issue?

My message is - something is pretty sick in the system. When I left Ukraine I thought, if I pay tax here, they demand enormous financial gains for tax purposes from a single non EU worker in the company, I'd be using a EU level of medical services.

I'm not talking "rural" Ukraine, but anywhere in the town of 200k peeps in Ukraine you need a bleeding arm fixed you'd get immediate attention for as low as $40-50.

May be I'm knocking the wrong door? May be there is a better service with a reasonable medical insurance to some how jump between the hoops?

Apparently no, gotta deal with it.

Let me officially take my pink glasses off.

Thanks.

She`s not gonna die, so she waits.. Always depends on what traffic the hospital is getting at that time.

I've waited 10 minutes in hospitals, I`ve waited 6 hours. Depends what you've got/ who else has got what etc..

Also kids/head injuries pretty much always get priority, a cut finger however bad is just a cut finger.

I'm saying there is a fucking deficit of the doctors... usually if there is a demand there is a supply, but the point is something is wrecked...

And the wrecking ball of course is Government.

Not when you give service for free aka paid by tax payers-same problem in Croatia,a lot of doctors and nurses needed,but no money to pay them.Even current staff is problem which is why they going on strike tommorow.

I'm a non EU citizen in Poland, they fuck me hard demanding to pay tax... looks like they cant collect it off their citizens so they get to rape me instead...

Apparently yes, because the budget is too small to handle that...

My mother cut her hand real bad while on vacation, she went to the local hospital in the resort town, the deep cut had severed nerves - they didn't have a specialist surgeon, no small town hospital would, so they told her to drive to the city 2 hours away and get to an emergency room, where she waited again. she did have specialized surgery hours later but the wait was too long and the nerves were badly damaged - so she spent the rest of her life with very little use of that hand.

It might not seem like it's as urgent as a heart attack or a knife in somebody's neck but shitty medical care can affect the rest of your life and stories like this exist in most countries, Canada for sure. We have cases of people dying in ER waiting rooms without ever being seen by a doctor.

why are you always in different countries?

In the US at least, there are pockets in the medical industry which largely operate on a very free market basis, like Lasik eye surgery. It's relatively affordable, tons of options to choose from, quality is high, etc.. And that's because government bureaucrats haven't *yet* infiltrated this niche.

When government attempts to control something, they: (a) force people to pay for it via taxation, and (b) introduce intense regulation which sets a high barrier of entry, resulting in less competition... you end up with a broken ass, inefficient, costly clusterfuck. We can pretty much see that with anything government attempts to control.

There are actually some surgical centers in the US that don't accept medicaid / medicare, and publicly post their prices for surgical procedures. Their costs are a small fraction of what regular hospitals charge.

http://www.surgerycenterok.com/pricing/
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013...-transparency/

Some might say, "Well, if hospitals don't accept medicaid/medicare, the poorest of poor won't receive healthcare!", not true. Healthcare used to only cost a day's earnings for an entire year of coverage. I posted the video in the other healthcare thread going on now.

hey man, healthcare sucks in every place in the world....

only in Cuba they have one of highest % of doctors to population...j/k

.you should have make a lot of more noise to get service/ be more pushy... usually it works....unless in the line werent waiting 20 people like your wife, all with emergencies....

i feel sorry that guest/tourist/ visitor was treated like that in Poland.....they dont speak that much of other languages there so thats the problem too probably....

It,s not like you would wait less in uk or ireland

the prices from first link are outrageous. if thats the "cheap" healthcare, i dont want to know how much is "normal" healthcare in USA

Obamacare is the answer.

I ended up in the hospital here a few times, and it really depends on which hospital you hit... the "nicest" one in wroclaw basically told me to sit and wait with tachocardia (i had like a 200bpm heartbeat, probably due to my thyroid but they didn't know that). Another time that happened I went to a different hospital and immediately got hooked up to an EKG and taken in.

A cut on her hands isn't gonna kill her, and if the doctor on call was busy trying to resusitate someone after a car accident no one's gonna give a fuck about her hand. The triage nurse is there to decide the priority of each patient. If you want a good comparison, I spent 8 hours in the ER with a broken toe in Canada before a doctor came up, numbed it and straighted it out against a pen (5 minutes?)...

That being said, you need to find out which hospital in your city is the best to go to. It's not nessesarily the nicest, newest one...often times its some old communist looking military hospital (szpital wojskowy). That, or if you call an ambulance they accept you in the ER immediately. It also helps to have some friends at the hospitals...now that we've lived here for some time (my girl is an ortodontist) alot of our friends are doctors (ginocologists, neurologists, etc) that work at hospitals. It's enough to phone one of them that we're coming, and they'll phone a friend of thiers that's on duty.

How much ZUS are you paying? I'm paying 1050PLN and my girl is paying 1050PLN. Only 550-600 of that goes to medical stuff, the rest is for a retirement fund we'll never end up getting anyways.

It,s not like you would wait less in uk or ireland

Pro tip: watch what the fuck you are doing and don't cut your hands.

That is a shitty thing to have happen. Same to you Mutt for your mother in law.

In Canada going to the ER should be reserved for when it is really needed, we have people that go with colds. Sucks.

Anyway, i just wanted to say that sometimes you can find little gold gems out there in the walk in clinics. On the west side of Sauga there is a walk in clinic with two Egyptian doctors in it. Both of them are amazing. I think they were really high end doctors back in Egypt, but wanted to get out. So came to Canada and now they are Gp's checking baby snot etc.

They have always gone way above and beyond. Even diagnosed my friends daughter for something really really serious. They had been going to see specialists and had many tests done, and they just brought it up to the one when they were in for a visit, he got the daughters files. Figured it out, forwarded his results and suggestions to the proper people and whammo. She was in surgery soon after problem fixed.

Dont pass your nose up at doctors just because they were in the walk ins. Some of them are gold.

True, here they would check for nerve damage and bump you up/down the queue accordingly. But if there's life/death situations going on, even if you've lost a finger, you'll still wait.

They do collect off their citizens, but you find 25% are pensioners on low incomes so they pay hardly any tax.

There is you, your wife and kids. What would medical insurance cost in the US.. $500+ a month? And then there would be deductables.


Why would a country let you live there if you were going to cost them money? Your kids school age?, they in private or is the state educating them?


I pay 250 euros a month for social security in Spain, that's ontop of my taxes. Does it annoy me.. a bit cause I know I`ll never pay enough in to get a pension here, atleast now they pay unemployment benefit for self employed should I ever need it, they never used to.

Here you can get state services really cheap or RedCross really cheap but I wont let them work on my dogs. We go to one of the private hospitals.

When my father in law fell down the stairs he needed stitches. Tool him there for xrays and stitches etc . 4 hours plus in the ER and 380$ cash.

Would have cost at least 15K in the US.

I really don't see what the problem is? Polish people, like most east Europeans come to the UK get free care then fuck off again. Us lovely people in the UK pay for it all so that healthcare is free for the rest of the world.

And while you are at it, why not check out our free homes, benefits and jobs too.

Because, I can LOL

Slightly onesided, take a look at any doctors surgery/hostpital in Southern Spain, the heath costs of foreign pensioners are massive.

All euro health costs are supposed to be billed onto respective governments, but doesnt seem to be the case.

About being pushy...

In Poland the have a little different plan for vaccination then in Ukraine, so they started stalking me with phone calls and letters asking me either to bring kids to get vaccinated or sign papers that I disagree...

Not like I don't believe in that, I brought kids, but apparently there were one vacine shot missing, so they gave me 2 phone numbers to call and ask for an extra shot. I didn't know it would be that hard to make it, 3 days calling both numbers 3-4 times a day - BUSY! No ANSWER!

SO I return back to my family doctor and say - dafuk, fucking make it real for me, order that effin vaccine and i'll pay or i'll fucking report your ass and you'll get fucking fired...

Guess what, after 3 days they called me back and said they would order vaccine for free because I have a fucking insurance and eligible to get it for free.

I'm not Polish, mate. I pay fucking tax here in Poland because i run business in Poland. I could probably go to UK even to find a surgeon for stitching that finger for free, LOL - but apparently I need a visa for that...

To answer that, I guess you have read my initial post in full, I wanted to pay cash to get served ASAP without any delay - Its good I found a number online to call a private surgeon to come ( was about $100 ) and help that lady... Question is how silly is that if people need help they cant even get in time?? Even if they could pay for it... 10 pm rings a bell all the doctors are fucking out of order = AMAZING!

I'd spend 2 years in a nursing school to open my own 24/7 'Stitch & Fix' medical service!

Pro Tip: How About Showing Your Tip Up Your Ass?

Damn - that would hurt!! and break your tip :))))

I hate the retirement plan part... no one pays that shit in Ukraine, but here I must do that to stay legal LOL

I get that part about priorities.

But I did NOT expect there is a HUGE shortage of doctors in Poland...
You go to ER in Ukraine, add extra bucks and you get stitched in a minute,
I have NEVER seen lines that long in the ER EVER before.... :helpme

Also, it's all messed up, people walking in, half dead bodies, bleeding people,
like a fucking battlefield... in Ukraine its separated! You can walk, you're not fucked
you sit and wait, but injured and people in bad condition get to the hospital via
different entrance directly to the surgical room...

And I get your input about doctor friends, Konrad, but hey, I'm building it from scratch here
while many things take ages to get fixed properly...

Easy fix - kick out all the immigrants and bring in all the UK cockroaches that have spread all over Europe like plague, 600 000 of you in Spain alone, I mean how hard can that be?

Or the States...sticking you in a room so you can wait an hour or more for somebody to actually see you doesn't count as actually being attended to as a patient.

I hope she's doing better now.

I'm on facebook expat section, UK peeps come to POland in bunches! Alo, Italians, hey, its COOOOOLD here :))))

Thanks, it was fixed after all, thanks to the private doctor who came up and stitched her hand.

With all the insurance gigs, US living costs and Osamacare or not you gotta go on barricades!

In Russia it's free :2 cents:

It's free in Ukraine too, but our foreign friends won't believe that so I added some "realistic fee" .. I had a case I paid like $7 just to "thank" the doctor.

great idea, it would cut massively the amount of drunken East European drivers on our roads instantly. It'll also get rid of all the metal thieves, the cash machine scammers, and the beggers. Then we can start on the Africans and rid the country of the street gangs, remove the Asians and that's our paedo gangs gone. its a great idea, lets do it. :)

And even being an FSU citizen I dont blame you for that. God existed when there was no EU.

The fact that you are Polish makes perfect sense now

I'm not Polish. I am Ukrainian. Does it make even more sense?
But I agree I'm the same cocky, you bastard!

Actually, yeah. :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

You cut the "bastard" thing, think you're better then that?

huh? :1orglaugh

Chalk it up for the school system over there... I guess. :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:)

Please post ugly pictures so people know how fucked you are.

Everything everywhere in the world is turning in to shit.
But with that stated, do not catch gonorrhea in Québec because you will loose your penis. Try Ontario because there you will only loose a testicule.

Thanks. Do you swallow?