My experience is identical to yours. My wife and I go to Greece every summer. Both of us started getting our annual checkups there, starting two years ago. We pay full price, which comes to a little more than the co-pays and deductibles of our excellent US health insurance. But we don't have any of the paper work headaches. We also buy our prescription medicine (a year's worth) from there -- we each have one prescription. It costs a little less than our copay here. We treat our US health insurance essentially as catastrophic illness insurance.
When I immigrated to the US in 1968 from Greece, rich Greeks preferred to go abroad, preferably to the US, for complicated procedures. Today, very few do, and almost none come to the US. I compare my US health experience to that of my brother and my sister in law and my mother, who all reside in Greece, and am amazed how far the health care system over there has advanced since Greece joined the EU. The physical facilities do not resemble luxury hotels, like here, but they deliver superior results with minimal hustle and great efficiency.
Greece spends 7% of its GDP on health care, and has a much older population than the US. Because it has a long tradition of socialism, most processes, such as setting up a business, dealing with banks, etc. are a lot less efficient and bureaucratic than here. The health care system is the one shinning exception. |
