The Japanese healthcare system, great!

I can summarize the japanese healthcare system in two words: it sucks! I’ve heard many stories from other foreigners living in Japan concerning their experience with Japanese hospitals. Let’s just give some examples. In case of emergencies like a heart-attack or some other life-threatening emergency, the ambulance will bring you to the closest hospital. However, here in Japan it is possible that an hospital will reject you and so has the ambulance to leave for the next hospital on the list. But why would they reject a person whose life is in danger? Well, simply because they say they are ‘full’ or no doctors are currently available or the hospital doesn’t want to take the responsibility of someone’s life, because they might die. Ooooh! Isn’t that where damn hospitals are for? Trying to safe peoples life? It seems they care more about statistics and/or status among other hospitals. “We have the lowest death rate! Yaaay!”. Damn!
They also tend to declare people dead without even trying to save lives. If a person is in a real bad shape they won’t do anything as they “probably” can’t fix it.

Also Monday I was in a hospital to get some anti-cough medicine’s for Mami. We went to a random hospital near home, which was a very bad idea. The interior looked like they didn’t clean for a few years and both the hospital and the staff looked like they come from the 70’s or something. Everything was soooo old fashioned. Dust everywhere, sheets were fixed by hand, instruments like they were never cleaned. I’ve never seen something like this. Even the tongue depressor was not disposable. =/

The next day Mami went to another hospital which looks really clean as a normal western hospital. She has to wait ages for her turn to do a simple check. After the doctor recommended a medicine you have to wait AGAIN in order to get it. Also, you have to pay directly to receive medical help and the medication. This just plain sucks or not? What if you have not enough money at the moment? Anyway, it took almost the whole day in order to get the proper medication :/

And more… the doctor at this “nice” hospital shove a camera up to Mami’s nose, while she didn’t want that. She asked him to stop because it was hurting, she pushed him and he finally stopped. F**king asshole.
When I heard this, it made me so unbelievable pissed. I went straight from my job to the hospital to take care of Mami. If the doctor or someone else there could speak English or Dutch I would have a word with them, but now we could just file a complaint by paper. I wonder if they’ll even read it.

Back in Holland you can usually trust hospitals and doctors. It’s unbelievable that such a highly-developed country as Japan got so shitty health-care system. The technological development is great here, but the social system and health-care system is still like 100 years ago. Can you believe that? I cannot.

Sorry for the ramblings…

Ow and by the way, in Japan everyone goes to the hospital directly (even for a simple cold). There are no family doctors, how inefficient.

A podcast about the healthcare system by Josh in Japan