My GP is out of town and I needed more blood work this week, so he’d given me a referral for the local hospital. I walked into the hospital to find antibacterial hand sanitizers lining the walls with information about H1N1 above them. I know that the government is taking the swine flu very seriously over here, but I wasn’t expecting that everyone who enters the hospital would have to use hand sanitizer. Anyway, hope it works.
The lab area kind of reminded of a post office or department of motor vehicles in the U.S. You take a number and when the number is displayed, you enter the lab. Seems efficient. The woman who took the blood was very friendly, quick, and she only took one vial. Yay! Then things got interesting. I asked where I should go to pay and she said it was a free service. I told her that I wasn’t Irish. She still claimed that it was a “free service”. I about fell out of the chair. Our health insurance doesn’t offer infertility coverage, so there is no way a blood draw is free, particularly in another country. I told her I was sure I needed to pay the hospital, again she said it was a free service. I’ll definitely be following up on this one because I guarantee, I owe somebody some cash.
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When I lived in London I had to go to the doctor and even though I was an American student and should have paid someone something (I had insurance so no big deal) they kept telling me it was free. The exam, prescription everything.
ReplyDeleteJDD, I was really tempted to ask if they had an IVF program ;)
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