Ronan's soccer accident

While I'm catching up on my other blog posts, just thought I'd share this little adventure to the ER with you all.

Yesterday Ronan rolled his ankle at soccer practice, resulting in a severe sprain. As usual, James and I missed the event and only found out about it when we arrived to pick him up. The trainer didn't examine the extent of the injury until the end of practice when Ronan had trouble walking back to the changing room. We were strongly encouraged to take him to the ER, which I never would have done in the US. I would have at least waited til the next day and taken him to the doctor. But this is Germany and we have comprehensive health insurance as all Germans do, it's even mandatory. So off to the ER we went courtesy of the trainer's wife. This will be interesting, I thought.

Burghausen isn't that big a town and it was a Monday night, so the ER was empty. We checked in and were led into an exam room where the doctor examined Ronan's ankle and then sent him off for xrays. If this had been the US, I would have been almost more worried about the costs and my expanding credit card debt than my kid's health. But here in Germany, I could just focus on Ronan. The xray confirmed severely torn ligaments, so two attendents thoroughly bandaged Ronan's leg up and provided him with crutches. The doctor gave us some painkillerwes to take home and at first apologized that she had to charge us a € 5 processing fee. I just laughed. Five euros? No problem, do you know what I would've been charged for this in the US? Then she corrected herself and said, oops, no, we don't charge processing fees for children. Never mind. We walked out of the ER without a worry and without a bill to pay.

This scenario is pretty much unheard of in the US, why is that? Why should we have to worry more about health costs in an emergency than about the health of our loved ones? Don't we as Americans deserve not only the best health care, but health care that is comprehensively covered? It doesn't even have to be "the best," I'd be happy with pretty darn good and that's what we got yesterday.

Ronan will have a few days off school, get a splint fit to his leg to provide additional support for a few weeks, several follow-up visits with the doctor, all covered by health insurance. Ronan can heal with all the care he needs and we don't have to stress about the cost. What a concept! Thank you Germany!