In which we experience socialized medicine

If you have been reading this blog regularly, you know that the doctor at my medical visit decided that I was suffering from an abdominal anuerysm and that I needed to get it checked out pronto. Fortunately, we had already made the acquaintence of a kind, English-speaking doctor, so at least I knew where to go.

Last Thursday morning I set out for the doctor's office, first checking to ensure that the office would be open.
Point: While specialists in France generally require appointments, as well as referrals from your primary doctor if you want it to be covered under the French insurance system, general practice doctors seem to operate primarily on a first come, first served model. I suppose that could result in having to sit for hours in theory. In practice, I ended up waiting for somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen minutes, less time than I often waited at home even with an appointment. Since there are ample numbers of primary care doctors (two in our complex, though neither speaks English), I suspect that anyone who was forced to wait for hours would end up switching doctors, a relatively trivial task.

In any case,I waited for 15 minutes or so for the person ahead of me, and then handed the doctor my very official looking letter from the OFII, which explained that I needed an ultrasound. The doctor read it and started laughing, then expained that it was extremely common to be able to feel an abdominal pulse in thin women. However, he said he would send me for an ultrasound anyway, not because of would show anything out of the ordinary, but because it was better not to annoy the bureaucrats. So he made out a referral for me, and recommended the radiology center across from the RER station.

I decided that it would probably be simpler, all things being equal, to stop in at the radiologist to set up an appointment rather than phoning. After all, as a worst case scenario I would be able to hand them the papers and they could figure out what I wanted from that. They were able to schedule me for an appointment Tuesday morning, and after admonishing me not to eat, drink, or smoke the morning of the ultrasound, sent me on my way.

Tuesday morning once I had gotten all three kids to school (Blaise had meeting starting at 9:00), I boarded the RER for the next suburb over. The receptionist took my information, and told me that, as I had expected, since I am still waiting for my carte vitale (insurance card), I would have to pay the entire cost out of pocket and be reimbursed. That cost? 86€, of which 75€ will be covered by the national insurance plan, and the rest by our mutuelle, or top up plan. (If you are sufficiently poor, the national plan covers everything. Otherwise it covers 70% to 90% of most expenses, and 100% of the most serious and of pregnancy.)

After ten minutes in the upstairs waiting room, I got my ultrasound, which was performed by a doctor rather than an ultrasound tech. As a result he was able to verbally give me the results of the test as he performed it. When I was done, he told me to go to the downstairs waiting room. Ten miutes later I left with pictures from the ultrasound (useful if I want to see what my left kidney looks like), and two signed copies of the doctor's report.

I walked over to the doctor's office to let him know the official results of the scan (not that he'd had any doubts) and then headed back home, stopping for a snack enroute.