Up Close and Personal about Health Insurance

Horror stories about American healthcare are rampant, so I thought I’d check in with the personal experience I’ve had, living these past thirty years in Prague, Czech Republic. The CR is a tiny country of 12 million residents, a nation that is only now recovering from 40 years spent behind the Iron Curtain.

For comparison, a news item from today’s paper about Russell Cook’s treatment in America

Russ’s daughter, Frankie, is a junior in high school and she wrecked the family car on wet roads. The car was pretty much totaled but Frankie was okay but for being knocked around a bit. After picking her up at the scene, her dad decided to stop by an urgent care center near their house to get her checked out. Good dads do that sort of thing.

(NPR) "'We don't take third-party insurance,'" Russell, says the receptionist at Atrium Health Floyd Urgent Care Rome told him, though he wasn't sure what she meant. "She told me, like, three times."

The problem didn't seem to be that the clinic lacked the med…