Huh ? I'm glad that your finger is better, but you procedure was not 'out-of-pocket' $0. Here in Canada, where the similar treatment would be $0 at the time of treatment, I would've paid in thousands already into the health care system in federal/provincial pay deductions. I consider, the money lost to be a continuous out of pocket expenditure. I still like this system more tbh.
The out-of-pocket was 0 in the sense that my tax is already paid and there was no additional expense in me choosing to go to hospital to be checked out.
So, yes, I pay for it. A big chunk of my pay packet goes to tax, but i'm happy knowing I can receiving good treatment without having to work out if I can afford it.
I'm also happy it means those less fortunate than myself (re: current income levels) will receive the same level of treatment.
After hitting the road and dusting myself off, it meant I didn't have to do a cost/benefit analysis of going to hospital vs. walking it off.
And I really can't emphasize enough how much it sucks to do a cost/benefit analysis on going to the hospital or not. A couple of years ago my girlfriend and I were on crappy insurance (i.e. catastrophic coverage only) because that's all we could afford. She had a medium level concussion and we were debating the cost of going or not. Going and getting a cat scan was a sure way to spend $2,000 that we simply did not have. They might proscribe a painkiller, but otherwise she would sit around for a couple of days with a headache and be OK. If she didn't go to the hospital, there was a 99% chance that she would sit around and take advil and be OK. But there was that 1% lingering chance that it was worse than we thought and that not going was a horrible decision. We opted not to go to the hospital. It sucked worrying for days. Luckily she was ok in the end. But now that we have the means, my policy is that no matter what the cost, any recommended/optional healthcare gets paid for.
In 1952 Aneurin Bevan, arguably the architect of the UK NHS, wrote a book about his beliefs - interestingly enough he called it In Place of Fear which pretty much sums up what the NHS achieved:
In the USA health insurance terminology "out-of-pocket" refers to what you have to pay for some procedure in addition to what you normally pay for insurance coverage. With the insurance I had when I was in the USA a visit to the GP would be 30$ out of pocket, on top of the monthly insurance fee (that was 300$, I think).
