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Comment by UomoNeroNero | Hacker News Reader

P.S.

As a European, I genuinely struggle to understand how you cope with your healthcare situation.

In France, in a small mountain village, I walked into a pharmacy and, through a combination of gestures and sketches, managed to buy a box of rapid-acting insulin at full price (around €30–40).

The insulin was clearly available. The issue was purely bureaucratic — technically I needed a prescription from a French doctor. But the urgency of the situation, and the fact that I was obviously diabetic, were equally obvious.

We certainly have our own problems over here, don't get me wrong.

But I don't envy yours.

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> through a combination of gestures and sketches, managed to buy a box of rapid-acting insulin at full price (around €30–40).

Quick tip for people that might encounter such situations:

- Phone to the emergency number. In Europe, it's 112. In France 15 is also working. Explain your situation (they generally do have English support).

- In many European countries, it is a Doctor you will have on the line. They can forward a medical prescription by email to the pharmacy close by.

- Even if you are not insured, the only thing it will cost you is the price of the medicine. For insulin, it variates from 20 to 40€ depending of the country.

- If you are over weekend or in middle of the night, in many EU countries have emergency pharmacy system. Some dudes somewhere on duty will open a pharmacy for you and you have to come on site.

If you are in France and if you wake them up at 03h00am, you can probably expect the legendary 'frendliness' (irony) of French customer service but at least you will stay alive.

> As a European, I genuinely struggle to understand how you cope with your healthcare situation.

As an American, most Americans don't realize how bad it is because everything seems fine when you are insured and only need basic care. The huge problems aren't immediately apparent until you suddenly get diagnosed with something serious and become a cost center for your private insurer instead of pure profit for them. At that point they realize how fucked they are and how much the insurance company will fight tooth and nail to deny care.

Everyone else tries to ignore how fucked those people are out of superstitious belief that maybe they too will fall into the Unfortunate Situation group if they think about it too much.

In the US every CVS had rapid acting insulin for $35 for one month supply. This is not special to europe.

Are you talking about the Lilly Insulin Value Program? If you're uninsured, you do need to get the savings card but it's mostly a matter of filling out the form. And that's only since they started the program in 2020.

Yes, the manufacturers coupon. Savings card takes 2 min to fill out, I have done it on my phone at a CVS

As an American, I am astounded at the the smug ignorance I see from Europeans online. I don't envy that cultural lack of self awareness

Are you trying to claim that American private healthcare is anything other than a giant shitshow of inefficiency, profiteering and death?

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