The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign
Posted Aug 31, 2003 1:00 UTC (Sun) by
XERC (guest, #14626)
In reply to:
The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign by dbhost
Parent article:
The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign
I live in Estonia<http://www.riik.ee/en/>,
Eastern Europe. In our case, we have a medical system,
where any citizen, who works or is unemployed,
gets a "healthcare card" which gives the
person the right to get all the necessary
medical care, that the local healthcare
foundation has to offer.
Serious operations are performed in the hospitals
funded by the local healthcare foundations but there exist
some small privately held (commercial)clinics
and medical institutions, that deal with births,
cosmetic surgery, psychotherapy, artificial fertilization,
etc. Generally the state healthcare foundation does
not cover the costs, if the medical services are
provided in the commercial medical institution, but still
pretty often even the commercial institutions have
some kind of a contract, so that sometimes the healthcare
foundation covers some part of the costs. Almost all
of the dentists operate privately and if any of them
used an 1950 technology, it would be definitely out of business
in a month or two.
The most advanced operations,
like neurology, heart operations, liver transfers, etc,
are made in 2 hospitals: one in Tartu and another
in Tallinn. There exists one dedicated hospital for cancer
treatment.
In the most severe cases, the patients are sent
from local hospitals to one of the two advanced hospitals.
Unfortunately, because of financial reasons, there does
not exist any air ambulance in Estonia. Local emergency
services coperate with other
governmental and nongovernmental institutions in order to
use a civilian copter or an army transportation
plane for sending the worst patients to one of the 2
advanced hospitals.
First aid is always for free, even to the ones, who
do not have the "healthcare card"(uninsured noncitizens) and
nobody has to wait a month for an ambulance: if it's serious,
ambulance will be present in 5min in urban areas
and in approximately 0,5h in rather deserted areas.
If it's a single small island in the
sea, like Ruhnu island, then, indeed, it will probably take hours
to get to the nearest hospital. In that case, because of lack
of finances, it's probably the coastguards, who have
to come to the rescue and probably there are no copters
available.
Estonia is a very poor country with a population of
approximately 1400 000 and the main problems in our
healthcare system are due to lack of finances, but
what I want to say is, that even in case of such a poor
country as Estonia, a healthcare system, which covers
almost all of the citizens on an equal bases, is not
as bad as many people think it is.
Indeed, most of the local hospitals
have obsolete equipment and in many cases the cost of
HIV and cancer treatment medicines is a huge problem, but
the almost all advanced operations are performed with up to date
equipment and the skills of the doctors do play a huge role
in the quality of the medical services.
For instance, my stepfather is a Finn and his
brother had a motorcycle accident
in Estonia. Estonian doctors patched the guy up and flew
him back to Finland for recovery. Finnish doctors said, that
the Estonians have done a great job and advised the guy
to start doing exercises. But the unfortunate thing was, that
the Finnish were not able to determine, if the bones were
grown back together or not, and as the whole bodyweight was
resting on the metal construction, which was screwed in to
the bones, the metal construction just broke. So, if I were
to choose between an average Finnish hospital or an advanced
Estonian hospital, I prefere the latter.
(
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