Healthcare: United States vs. Korea
Hannah Chen
SINGAPORE—As I walked into the hospital, there were people already waiting inside and sitting on rows of chairs. I was there with my sister and mom to get vaccinated for the new school year before we left back to Singapore. We checked in with the lady at the counter and sat back down to wait for our name to be called.
My sister and I busied ourselves by playing games for ten minutes before our names were called. Getting pulled into one of the rooms, we waited to receive our shots. Once we did, we were told again to wait for a short moment to calculate the payments.
The three of us sat patiently. It took another several minutes to have our names called to pay. We weren’t residents of Korea, therefore no insurance. But, although I cannot recall the exact price, the vaccines for both my sister and I were much less than a hundred dollars.
We left, this visit taking up to thirty minutes maximum, and headed to do things for the rest of the day.
One of the things I love best about living internationally is having the ability to see the best of both worlds: my home country and the international countries around me. While living in Asia for the past five years, I have noticed the scary disparity in healthcare quality and accessibility between Korea and the United States. Korea is known for their amazing healthcare system, where most people can easily afford to pay the medical fees even without insurance. Korean citizens have free healthcare, but the healthcare they receive is of great quality and no issue. People aren’t afraid to get check ups because of how friendly receiving healthcare is, which should be the norm, shouldn’t it?
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. When I visit New York City in the summertimes, I remember how calling an ambulance to help somebody can cost over a thousand dollars. Without insurance, which my family did not have since we lived internationally now, I felt less safe because healthcare was now so much more expensive. Simple check ups and necessary needs were going to cost over hundreds of dollars, whereas in Asia, I could get the same treatment for much less.
Reforming a broken healthcare system is important, especially for the eight million people who cannot have that same access in the United States. I may not be a government official, but if other countries can pursue a friendly version of healthcare that does not burden its citizens with large numbers of taxes, others should attempt to do the same. We cannot keep debating over the lives of people who are dying due to issues they would be able to fix by having access to health care.