Friday, March 4, 2011

Signed up for my own doctor

Norway's health system works like this, at least this is my current understanding, you have to sign up for a doctor once you have your personal number.  To do that you must log in to www.nav.no, which is of course in Norwegian.  There are many useful links there unfortunately not many pages have English translations.  To sign up for a doctor you must go to this link, log in with your Min ID (which is an account that links your personal number to your contact details like email, mobile number and address) and after that you will be able to select your doctor from this list.  Select the area where you live and click Søk. You are allowed to change your GP twice a year.  I think you pay about 130 NOK here per visit just for the visit alone excluding medical costs.

In Singapore I just show up to my GP without any booking required and I only pay for the medicine.  And I can pick any GP I want.  It can cost up to maybe 88 NOK at most, assuming fever medicine.  This is for the visit and for the medicine.  Singapore has one of the lowest tax rates in the world.

In Australia it's pretty much the same, you can visit any GP you want.  It's more expensive though, private consultation would be about 170 NOK after deductions, and you still have to get medicine.  However if you visit a Medicare doctor then you pay nothing, just for the medicine.  Australia has high taxes too but not as high as Norway.

So even though you pay a lot of tax here you *still* have to pay to visit the doctor no matter what, I think there is some threshold of 2000 NOK or something after which it is "free" but if you have to pay that much then something must be really wrong with you.

Anyway the moral of the story is do not fall sick. :)

4 comments:

  1. Lovely information in ur blog ... Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. No worries thanks for subscribing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. There's a remote place in India,.. you pay only fifty cents(usd) for consultation, medicine is another matter altogether, but still pretty cheap, but if i had to go there when i'm sick, i'd feel a little bit shy, if i only pay fifty cents like the rest, because i'm basically not a local, and the doctor is there to provide healthcare for people living in the area. But still you're right being sick is a really bad thing, even if things come cheap.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Why feel shy?

    It's called capitalism. Money will flow to where money is treated best. It is why people go to cheaper countries on holidays, why $1 shops work, and why companies that are not competitive go bust. Hooray for capitalism and cheap medical consultation.

    Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.