bushamy13
5/25/2011 13:40 EST
Describing health care in Nicaragua is like describing the weather in the United States. It depends where you are talking about. Nicaragua is a third world country with the wealth concentrated in a few cities and it takes wealth to have modern medical facilities. Also, consider the fact that most residents of the USA still believe they have the best medical care in the world yet the USA is ranked 38th in the world by life expectancy. The USA does have very good health care but the health care system has serious problems with a huge dependency on decisions made by insurance companies and elevated costs due to malpractice suits.
Nicaragua has greatly improved its health care in the past few years and boasts the most modern hospital in Central America. Indeed, friends of ours chose to relocate to Nicaragua due to its reputation of good health care.
One suggestion is what we did when we left the USA for Nicaragua. We went to our various doctors and dentists and requested copies of all our medical records. After all, they are your records. I believe they charged an administrative charge of $10 for each of us.
Our Granada doctor speaks English and we consider him the best doctor we have ever had. He is a surgeon at a local hospital then takes office calls in the afternoon and an office visit costs $15. We have his cell phone number in case of emergencies. Will your doctor allow you to call him at home?
Many of us that have moved to Nicaragua do not have medical insurance or rely on local coverage options. With the much, much lower medical costs here we simply believe it is cheaper than paying high insurance premiums assuming you can get the medical insurance. At this point, some of you are probably gasping for breath hearing that you could exist without health insurance. Please remember that the USA is one of the last countries not to offer national health insurance and a large proportion of the USA residents does not have any health insurance.
One popular Nicaraguan health plan is the health plan offered by the Pellas Metropolitano hospital in Managua. There are two levels of the plan which are available for Nicas or expatriates with little or no paperwork prerequisites. While not exactly a comprehensive health plan it does offer substantial discounts that increase over a period of time. It is very reasonably priced. My wife and I recently decided to subscribe to the health plan then have a complete physical since we have been here for five years.
Here are some of the discounts you receive and remember, these discounts are on prices a fraction of those in the states.
· Discounts of up to 100% in some emergency services,
· Discounts up to 80% on diagnostic tests, hospitalization, surgery and intensive care
· Discounts up to 60% in executive checkups,
· Discounts up to 50% on regular replacement materials,
· Discounts up to 35% on drugs. · Care and caesarean births with hospital cover up to 50%.
· Discounts up to 65% in medical fees with enrolled doctors.
The physicals cost us around $700 for the two of us. Our next physical will be discounted 60% now that we are plan members. We arrived at the hospital with our little jars of the usual body excrements for testing to see if we had any little critters that were uninvited. Then the next five or six hours were spent having tests from stress tests to ultrasounds, x-rays, electrocardiograms, etc. At the end, a doctor interviewed us and covered all of the results with us with the usual recommendations for lifestyle changes. That's right, they had already completed and analyzed all of the blood, urine and feces tests. All test results were then physically given us including the the sonograms and x-rays. Have you ever had that happen anywhere in the states?
There are excellent dentists available in the major cities of Nicaragua and many speak English. They can perform almost all of the services that you would expect at much lower costs. Many people plan a vacation to Nicaragua, have major dental work performed and use the savings to pay for the family vacation.
Our English-speaking dentist in Granada recently quoted the following prices to us:
Root canal, post installed and crown installed $400
Bridge $400
Crown $200
And if we agreed to all of the above work he would give us a discounted total price and replace our old fillings for free. At our first dental visit in Nicaragua, the dentist requested an updated x-ray of our teeth and gums. We drove across town to an x-ray lab where they quickly, without an appointment, performed the x-ray and in a few minutes we had the x-rays in our hands returning to the dentist. And, it was a state-of-the-art x-ray showing a 360 degree view of our teeth. Our dentist in the states had to take several x-rays to cover all of the teeth. Total cost - $20 each.
The dentists here perform all forms of dentistry including cosmetic dentistry to correct dental problems and to simply improve your appearance when you smile. It is the low cost that will really make you smile.
A surprising but pleasant discovery for us was to find out how many of our friends were now getting cosmetic surgery performed here in Nicaragua. The main reason, of course, is the much lower cost but also because the technology now exists here. All types of facial surgery are performed to bring back that youthful appearance. One of our friends also had surgery to remove their eye cataracts.
There are several clinics in Managua offering the latest laser technology to fix your eyes to negate the need for glasses and we are now seeing advertisements of laser clinics for dermatology. Other applications available in Nicaragua are laser treatment of permanent hair reduction, skin tightening, skin rejuvenation, vascular and pigmented lesions, tattoo removal, scars, warts, leg veins, acne and acne scars. Another reason to vacation in Nicaragua and let your treatment savings pay for the vacation.
In conclusion, we have excellent medical service in Nicaragua but you will have to go to one of the major cities. If you live in the mountains or some small town on the east coast you will have meager facilities if any.
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