A bit more paper chase... Medicals...

Now, for the medical tests... Really, it's not that difficult: Go to the doctor and get a physical and have him/her fill out the form. Issue: we have never been to the doctor here. Sure, the pediatricians know us well (we're one of the few western families that uses that particular hospital and when you have little babies, you are always there for sicknesses or vaccines), but as for Brett and I we haven't really needed a doctor. So, Brett went to the hospital the other day to check things out. I might mention here that everyone goes "to the hospital" for basic medical stuff. All the outpatient things here are connected to hospitals. It took me a while after living here to get that. At home in the US, you only go to the hospital for the emergency room. Here, your regular doctors are at the hospital. So, based on my many visits there, I told him where I thought he should go. An other problem: our insurance does not cover "preventative medicine". If you are sick, fine but if you want to just make sure everything is ok, not fine. So, since Brett was a bit sick anyway we thought it would be a good time to get him into a doctor. The receptionist spoke excellent English and understood what he wanted, but said that the doctor he needed to see was only available in the AM. I should mention a few other things: they don't take appointments so you just show up and take a number AND they operate on a split schedule 8-12, 4-8. Turns out our physical with all the tests will cost about $300. Not bad considering in the US it would be much, much more I think. We could go to the public hospital for free, but as Brett describes it, that would require "a pound of flesh". So, how much is that worth?