Despite the precariousness and excessive workload of many of its professionals, something in which Spain has always stood out is its public health service. To the enormous system of centers, resources and workers we must add the fact that the State pays in full for most health coverage: care, tests, interventions and many medications fall within the umbrella of public health, which in many cases takes many foreigners by surprise and even becomes a claim in what is already known as health tourism.
Surprise like the one you have felt Jesusa woman who defines herself as “a mother American in Spain” and that has gone up a video to TikTok in which she explained her experience at the doctor: “Yesterday my daughter came home from school and told me: ‘I want to lie down. a nap‘”, he began to explain. “If any of you have a child of six, seven years out there, you already know that They don’t come home from school and say ‘I want to take a nap’”. As the woman says, when children return from studying “they want to play on the tablet, they want to have a snack, they want to run around.”
In this way, the mother felt that something strange was happening and put the thermometer on her daughter. “I had a little fever.”, nothing too crazy. Typically, in the United States, if a child has a fever, you are not taken to the doctor the first day”. However, her Spanish family insisted that she take the little girl to the emergency room to be seen by a doctor. “We are in Social Security, in the public health system here, because my boyfriend is spanish and he works for a Spanish company, so he is contributing. I receive healthcare through him because I am your de facto partner“, he told his followers, “and my daughter, obviously, receive healthcare through it because she is Spanish, because his father is spanish”.
So they decided to go and showed up at a health care center. “We waited an hour, they treated her, they made her a smear after they brought in all the nurses to restrain her because she had fallen asleep in the waiting room, and once she saw that big Covid with the swab test they were going to do, they said that anyway, strep throat wouldn’t have cost us anything”. In this fact, Jesus found a very big difference with the United States“where my daughter and I had to pay a $10,000 franchise before insurance would cover anything, and this in addition to what was obviously they deducted me from my salarywhich was a significant amount.”
After the diagnosis, mother and daughter went to a pharmacy to buy the prescription drugs. “The amoxicillin and the ibuprofen what they prescribed cost us in total 7 euros”, a very low price for her and for most people who live outside this country. “I’m very grateful to live here now and know that if my daughter gets sick, I don’t have to think twice. I don’t have to stress thinking how much it’s going to cost me. If she gets sick, we go to the doctor, we buy medicine. It’s not like in the United States, where you pay from your check, you pay when you go and you hope that the policy covers you whatever the doctor sent you, wherever you end up going.”
Complaints that have also extended to the purchase of medicines, which may are not covered and you find yourself with a “ridiculous” price. “It’s happened to me before,” Jes lamented. “I don’t know if I could return to the United States because the health system there It’s broken, it’s rigged and it’s a mess., and you shouldn’t have to stress about your health.” The fact of being able to go to any pharmacy also seemed amazing to him, since in the United States medicines are They only ship to some specific points“and that just adds to the stress you need to focus on the fact that your child is sick and you want them to get better. “This is how it should be”he has sentenced.
