Wife fainted at work. Was sent to hospital, stayed there for a week, full MRI, spinal sample, meds, etc. total cost 400€

27 comments

  4. How this works is still a mystery to me. Couple years ago I had appendicitis, got hospitalised, transferred from Helsinki to Espoo, surgery, 3 total nights and paid €25 only because of the ambulance transfer.

    Then last summer, had ear infection, went to a health center in Uusikaupunki, was recommended to go to Turku because they didn’t have ear specialist, visited the hospital in Turku, doctor saw me for 20 min and sent me home. Total €80 from both places

    Edit: typo

  8. Fuhhh that s expensive! Or did you take a private room you payed yourself or s th? In Germany this would be nothing. Or maybe 5€ for the prescribed pain killers after you came home.

  10. Years ago I had a bout of lyphmnode tuberculosis. At first the GP at YTHS thought it could be cancer so I was sent to be checked with all methods. At the end, HUS figured I need a surgery to know what’s inside the lymph node. The whole experience caused me just ~140€ for the little operation only.

  12. A good reminder would also be that if this happens again it will only cost around half of that as you reach the yearly cost cap. If your income is low you can also get most, if not all, covered by kela.

    Edit: after you reach the cap everything would be free for the rest of the year.

  16. I remember when we went to the hospital because my partner was having heart palpitations, and they did an EKG, just to be safe, due to her health history (She was fine! It was just stress).

    I remember the nurse telling us they were sorry, but they *were* going to have to charge us–

    Something, like, 20€, at which point I basically fell over laughing.

    ​

    She sounded SO apologetic to be charging us such a small amount for something that would have almost certainly run HUNDREDS of dollars back in the states! (Which I made sure to relay to them as the reason I was laughing.)

  19. I got to go to private clinic to get my spinal nerve done, 8ke. Even that i had lost control of my legs twice, vantaa pushed operation over six months. I would rather have killed myself, than waited, so i did the faster option. For private side wait time was 1.5weeks, and four weeks later i’m back in the work.

  20. All of y’all saying this is a lot, my U.S brain is exploding. After insurance it costs me about $40 to see my doctor for 1 hour much less a week long hospital stay, holy shit

  23. Finnish dude here. I spent a year in the US as an exchange student 10 years ago. My host family was an older couple. The man (70yo) had a stroke and was sent to ICU and what not, was kept a week or two in coma and so on. Later when he got somewhat better he got a room in a nursing home.

    The couple had both worked for the military their whole lives basically so they had full insurance and didn’t have to pay a dime, but we got the bills in the mail anyways. It was in five parts and included all the hospital as well as nursing home fees over a 6 month period. The entire thing totalled over $500 000.

    Needless to say I really started to appreciate the Finnish healthcare system. Imagine if they didn’t have such insurance. They wouldn’t have been able to give the treatment he needed. The guy would be dead.

  24. Expensive comparing to taxes paid here. In Croatia this all would be free including all prescription drugs. In Finland every single drug you need to pay yourself. Okay maybe hospital buildings are not in top shape in Croatia and the system is a bit more chaotic, but the service you get there is resulting the same. Keep in mind also staff is like 3 times less paid than here and they manage to get good results

  25. I severed a tendon in my thumb when I was in Finland in 1989. After surgery and a hospital stay, when I was checking out of the hospital, I got a bill for $80. I asked when I would get the rest of the bill. What do you mean, they asked. You know, the remaining portion of the bill. No, this is everything. Hold up, you are telling me this is the bill for the surgery and hospital stay? Yup. I couldn’t believe it.

  26. My wife complained about light headedness at home. I called an ambulance. She lost consciousness when she stood up. They took her to the hospital, determined she had internal bleeding due to an ectopic pregnancy, had to be put on surgery. One of her fallopian tubes was removed. She was back home in 24 hours and they charged us 20€ for the ambulance ride, 100€ for the surgery.

    This was the one time I was incredibly grateful we have public healthcare with such great quality.

  27. I got to enjoy an ambulance ride, ER, neurosurgery, ICU, a month of trauma ward and three months of rehab. Rounding a bit up, it ended up costing me around 2000€, but thanks to the sick pay and a compensation for disability I started getting retroactively, I came out of the hospital with something like 1500-2000€ more money than I went in with. I got a free wheelchair and other assistive gear, PT, OT etc.

    My story is a happy one, but Finnish healthcare is not free. It’s comparatively affordable for most people. If I genuinely couldn’t have paid the bill, social security would’ve taken care of it, but it’s sometimes a harrowing process. A surprising amount of credit problems of the poorest people are because of unpaid healthcare costs.

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