Arthur Salm: European vs. American health care

One family. Two stories. No comment.

STORY #1

“Don’t worry,” the head doctor at the hospital told Geoff Griffin. “It’s not like America here.”

Last March Griffin, the long-time tennis director at Balboa Tennis Club, the public facility in Morley Field, was vacationing in Austria with his wife, Manuela, an Austrian native but now a legal resident of the U.S. It’s unclear exactly what caused what, but on the 17^th of March, Manuela banged her head on a low ceiling.

“The day after that, I got kind of a blue eye,” she said. “I didn’t think much about it.” (This was before the well-publicized tragedy of Natasha Richardson.)  “I went skiing all day, then had wine with friends. But I went to bed feeling very sick. I threw up, and had a bad headache. I took aspirin, the worst thing to do, I found out later.”

Sometime in the night, she got up to go to the bathroom. “I might have hit my head again,” she said, “because I kind of fainted a little bit in the bathroom.”

The next morning, she had blurred vision. Geoff called a local doctor — they were staying in the village of Göfis  – who told him to take Manuela straight to the hospital in Feldkirch. There, they did a scan, detected bleeding on her brain, and immediately admitted her.

Over the next two weeks, Austrian physicians tried to avoid major surgery, first through medication, then by making a small incision to drain the blood. There were MRIs, and round-the-clock monitoring and care. But the bleeding - and pressure on her brain - continued. Finally, they had no choice but to operate; the procedure involved removing part of her skull. The surgery was a success, but not without subsequent problems: severe headaches, seizures, swelling.

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Manuela was in something like intensive care (terminology is different in Austria) for 20 days, then spent another 20 days in a rehabilitation hospital. She’s home now, and although she still has to take it easy, and gets headaches and feels nauseated when she does too much, she’s expected to make a complete recovery.

Now for the money part.

When Geoff Griffin brought his critically ill wife to the hospital in Feldkirch, no one said a word to him about payment. Not that day, or the next.

“On the third or fourth day,” Geoff said, “they called me into the accounting office, and I put 2,500 euros (about $3,500) on my credit card. A week and a half later, they asked for another 8,000 euros. I started calling my credit card companies to get increases. I thought I was going to have to put about $200,000 on them.”

The Griffins have health insurance through Pacificare. But the Austrians, Geoff said, wanted nothing to do with American insurance companies. “No, no,” he was told. “You have to take care of it yourself.”

Meantime, Manuela was getting world-class treatment, and Geoff was having no trouble getting information. “The nursing staff treats you like you’re at a four-star hotel,” he said. “You felt like you were talking to someone who was almost a doctor. The night staff, too. They really took care of her.”

Geoff returned to the U.S first - for a few weeks after Manuela’s release, it was unsafe for her to fly - and Manuela put the rest of the bill on her credit card. The total - for hospital stays, treatment, medication, surgery, everything - was $22,000.

“Had I not said I was an American,” Geoff said, “it probably would have been free.”

A few weeks ago the Griffins received a check from Pacificare for $2,500, a snafu: Geoff’s first payment was 2,500 euros ($3,500, remember.) As for the remaining $19,500? So far, nothing.

Check back Thursday for Part II of the Griffin Family’s health care tales. Arthur Salm is an SDNN columnist.

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