I had a most edifying relationship with a stomach parasite whilst on a sail sabbatical in the mid 2000's. As I had recently dropped out of polite society I had also dropped my US based, employer provided
health insurance to an ungodly high-deductible emergency-only plan. This just prior to the Obamacare kerfuffle that continues to keep much of America so apopleptically pliable.
I had made my way down the
East coast of
Mexico,
Belize, dabbled in
Honduras and ended up wakeboarding downstream of Fronteras on the Rio Dulce
Guatemala. Never swim downstream of Fronteras. It's a fairly obvious conclusion that any sane sort would come to immediately.
Sadly, several days later I could come to no other conclusion then that i'd contracted a stomach parasite. I'll leave the specifics out. After a bit of local query I made my way to a local Dr who's name escapes me these many years later. I entered a cluttered basement office just off the busy main road. Discussed my issue in my limited and inept Spanish and was asked to return with a sample which would have to be sent by bus to a nearby lab. A day or so later I was given a prescription and an invoice. Maybe 15.00 dollars all in. Another couple days and I was right as rain...(and ripped as I'd
lost significant pounds in the process).
This, my first cruising
medical event, became an effective and defining counterpoint as that
Christmas while visiting home for the holidays I decided to see my Primary Care Physician for a simple checkup. Now self-insured living on savings and with no-copay to hide the
fees behind, I was pretty darn shocked by the $380 for a temperature check bloodpressure and discussion.
In
Guatemala, 15 Bucks covered Dr's
fees, lab
work, remedy AND some poor soul carrying my poo by bus to Puerto Morales for testing.
But the "greatest healthcare system on the planet" can't pull off a wellness check for anything close to reasonable?
This anecdotal experience, surely oft repeated by cruisers everywhere, has forever opened my eyes. Note that I do not write this as an indictment of the quality and capability of the stateside medical industry but as a full throated indictment of the for-profit
insurance system that stands between humanity and healthcare in the US. The same system that has spent decades aggressively lobbying politicians and misinforming the public. It is truly mind numbing That my country can be so easily waylaid by flim flammery that any attempt at improvement, any alteration of the status quo can so easily distort into a battle of the very definition of freedom...and this even in the sanity of a pre trump America.
For those US citizens of out there cruising...I'm not sure I can recommend coming back...
But I definitely recommend NEVER swimming downstream of Fronteras...