And yet, most money in the system goes to treat those who are really responsible for their physical demise,
It reminds me as I was in the waiting room at the hospital with other people during Covid with a suspected stroke, violent alcoholics with police guard were ushered in straight from the ambulance. four hours I waited.
knowing the risk I'm taking when enjoying a couple of beers, and so on.
I think this is necessary to be conscious about. Where I think the risk for many is that they underestimate the feeling of their future self who might look back and say, did I really need a couple more so often?
I don't have a healthcare system to fall back into, anyway. It depends on me.
Quite different from Europe, isn't it?
There actually is a public health system here, plus a second back-up system. The public hospitals are notoriously underfunded, though, and basically give out Paracetamol for everything. For check up and tests and such, you have to get your own supplies, they give you a list for needles, syringes, bandaids, infusion water, almost everything.
The back up system is a combined social security and health insurance. During the good years, when Ecuador was running well, it worked nicely. But then the oil price fell, and corruption became obvious, and the state started "borrowing" money from that insurance, bleeding it dry to fund prestige projects. So, that isn't working well, either.
I have a private insurance that covers me up to 30k. I hope I'll never need it, until now, my awareness regarding my health seems to be working. Lily is insured there, too, but most of her little illnesses are the typical children stuff, so I don't even bother uploading the receipts as it's below the self-paying threshold most years.