In 2005, while very happy living in the US generally, I felt forced to leave and go back to Great Britain because after four years trying to raise two children without any proper health insurance I felt too insecure to stay.
I've started this blog because friends in the US have asked me to share my experiences of health care in both locations so that they can pass the information onto their friends.
I will start first by telling you what is happening close to my family in the present. In subsequent posts I will go into detail about what happened in the past 12 years. Once I'm back up to date I will carry on blogging about what's happening as it comes.
At the end of January 2008 my ex husband (the father of my two teenage daughters and my oldest friend) was diagnosed with colon cancer (Dukes stage D, which means it had already metastasized to his liver). He lives near us in Oxford about 5 minutes away from the John Radcliffe Hospital, a major teaching hospital, allied with Oxford University.
He was scheduled for surgery in the third week of February which was then moved forward to the 14th - basically about 20 days after his diagnosis. The 20 days allowed him time for not only all the pre-op testing and other stuff but also to organize his own life enough as he's self employed and needed to take a long leave of absence.
His surgery was a success, he was released from the hospital after 6 days and came home to our house to recuperate and stayed with us for another month.
Cost of the surgery and the week in hospital = £0.
Paperwork other than relating to recuperation instructions and medication information = none.
At the first hospital appointment after his release the options were explained for chemotherapy and he decided to go down that route. He was offered a place on the COIN trial, which was looking at a new treatment in combination with more traditional chemotherapy.
He then spent the next 6 mos having both the traditional chemotherapy and participating in the COIN trial. Because 6 months into the trial his liver cancer shrunk completely, he was able to carry on in the trial on a weekly basis once his chemo ended -and so had the experimental treatment for a further 10 months.
Cost of the chemotherapy = £0
Cost of regular scans (8-12 weeks) = £0
Blood tests and other monitoring and doctor visits = £0
Cost of parking at the hospital for chemo treatment - £0
Cost of drugs for side effects etc = £0
I believe that not having any financial strain with regard to decisions about his treatment has gone a long was towards his generally decent state of mind and ability to handle what's been happening. All he has to think about is getting better and his work - but "how will I pay for all this" is not something he EVER has to think about.
I did some calculations for a friend last night and tried to estimate what all this would have cost had he remained in the US and been treated in NY State. By using several services that calculate the cost of various medical treatments I came up with the following:
Colon Resection Surgery plus 6 days of hospitalization – $24,500
Folfox 17,584
IFL/FOLFIRI 38,027
Erbitux 255,000
Scans 12,000 (CAT)
Scans 5400 (MRI)
Colonoscopy 2,000
The estimated total so far, not counting any doctor's appointments or regular testing or monitoring, or all the meds that are regularly prescribed for chemo side effects (including doxycycline, anti histamines, pain killers, anti sickness drugs etc) = $354,511
(disclaimer - this is an ESTIMATE based on my findings looking up sites - it could be under or over but its an approximation)
Oh boy...
So is that what UK taxpayers are expected to pay for you? Or are the costs in the UK kept lower because there is no market interference? Can you put this in some sort of comparative perspective?
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