Hi Everyone
This has been an interesting read so thought I would contribute. I have been a private patient as I have private health care cover, but I have been treated for most of the time in public hospitals. So most of my costs have just been sent to my health insurer, apart from the $50 per day to a max of $250 hospital charge. (It is now $150 for the first time in any one year and nothing after that!). All of my specialists have either bulk billed me or charged me the medicare amount. So for most of the time I have very little out of pocket expenses. Recently I found a spreadsheet I had done at the end of my first treatment all those years ago. Including pharmacy costs, four days in hospital, lots of various scans over the six month period, weeks of radiotherapy and the initial pathology at the end I was $440.35 out of pocket.
Currently my oncologist requests that I be bulk billed for all pathology and radiology. My surgeon who sees me every two months to conduct a minor procedure to keep bits of me working ensures that all my bills either go to medicare or health insurance. So apart from the pharmacy co-payment, which these days with the benefit of a health care card is a lot reduced, I am very little out of pocket.
So I quite fervently thank the deity that I am treated in Australia and not North America or Europe. In North America I would be impoverished by now and having to sue my health fund to get treatment paid for, and the treatment wouldn't be available in Europe.
Cheers
Sailor
I would not creep along the coast but steer
Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars. George Elliot, Middle March