Venezuelan hospitals (subsidized/free universal healthcare) start charging patients in dollars*

[GatoGordo]

"They asked me $3,000 for a catheterization"
Andrea Salas

Pablo Rodríguez, 51, time slipped by. A strong pain in the chest, fatigue and breathing increasingly deficient became his ultimatum. Undergoing a catheterization was your only option. It must be soon and with a foreign payment. "Get 3 thousand dollars." That was the request of his cardiologist. That's how he began his race against the clock.

Pablo Rodríguez, 51, time slipped by. A strong pain in the chest, fatigue and breathing increasingly deficient became his ultimatum. Undergoing a catheterization was your only option. It must be soon and with a foreign payment. "Get 3 thousand dollars." That was the request of his cardiologist. That's how he began his race against the clock.

After a strenuous tour of private health centers in the capital of Zulia, in search of other opinions and better "offers", they found a clinic that, in addition, allowed them to cancel after the procedure.

"We paid $ 1,200. We got a person who changed the sum to bolivars and, finally, they operated on my husband. Everything went well, but I lost everything I saved working abroad. I do not know what we would have done if we did not have them, "said Wendy Millano, the patient's wife.

But the same opportunity did not have Juan Carlos Luzardo, a Marabino of 52 years, who died two weeks ago for lack of money to practice the same surgery.

A worker from a private institution, north of the city, admitted the new collection mechanism. "Although in most cases the fees are in bolivars, the clinic asks for dollars because the prices of everything increase daily and it is unsustainable to receive the national currency," he said...

-snip-

http://www.panorama.com.ve/ciudad/Me-pidieron--3-mil-por-un-cateterismo-20180421-0041.html

*Venezuela has private health care centers that CAN offer services for a fee. HOWEVER, they cannot get medical supplies in Venezuela, as Venezuela under Chavismo doesn't produce anything any longer. Everything is imported. And NOBODY takes Venezuelan credit nor Bolivars (the local useless currency). Ergo, if you want something, you need hard currency (dollars or Euros)

In Venezuelas public hospitals (see below), these procedures cannot be had at any price.






Welcome to the Revolucion!

[DetlefK]

1. An anecdote from the final years of socialist Romania.

I don't know when this happened, my guess is maybe 10 years before the collapse.

The anecdote is that somebody needed a surgery. They went to the hospital and the doctors would have liked to help them, but they couldn't. They had the scalpels and the tweezers and the anesthetic drugs and the disinfectants, but... They no longer had surgical thread to stitch up the patient. They refused the surgery on the grounds that they couldn't sew the cut shut afterwards.




In the end, a minor incident kicked off a minor protest about government-injustice, which spiraled into huge national anti-government protests.
When the government tried to calm the masses, it became clear that they didn't understand why the people were even protesting.
An uprising and one week of civil-war followed.
The dictator was deposed.

Romania is now ultra-capitalist and corrupt at every level. The corruption is so bad that the government wanted to legalize some kinds of bribery, just to keep the country running. Protests prevented that.