“Norwegian hospitals are free though. I was just surprised the first time I learned Norwegians pay at all to visit the doctor because I assumed we had the same system.”
“Norwegian hospitals are free though. I was just surprised the first time I learned Norwegians pay at all to visit the doctor because I assumed we had the same system.”
You should though. Most ages would benefit even if only from a quick opportunity to ask about anything that might have come up plus the chance for some bloodwork to verify nothing obvious is abnormal. Prevention is way better than getting to a problem when it’s already serious, and preventative checks can spot a lot of things (liver issues, some cancers, metabolic problems, etc.).
Preventative checks are used in Sweden where there’s evidence for their efficacy - for example, mammograms for all women over 40, screening for colorectal cancer for everyone over 60, etc.
It’s just that evidence for efficacy is the bar that each screening has to clear, and general yearly health checkups did not clear that bar.
As far as I understand, yearly general health checkups aren’t that effective at catching things. That at least seems to be the basis for why we don’t have them. One meta-analysis I found referenced was this one published in the BMJ.
That isn’t to say that people don’t get regular checkups here. Depending on your medical history, your age, and your potential for particular problems, there will be regular specific health checks. If a particular group of people are more likely to be affected with a particular condition, then said group will be called for checks.
You can absolutely do regular yearly health checkups, but that’s generally done by private clinics, and you pay for that yourself.
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I have very mixed feelings about our healthcare system. On one hand it works well for the most part, but there are obviously some horror stories making the rounds. There are also some really questionable practices, for example you can get a referral to a chiropractor. Everyone knows that’s bunk science. At best chiropractors are con artists and at worst they’re butchers.
Yeah, we really need to remove chiropractors and osteopathic practitioners from public systems.
Is osteopathy not just a cheaper MD that’s slightly easier to get into over there? Here in the US it’s basically the same but with like one class added that’s basically vestigial at this point. Here we may as well just eliminate the remaining difference and make the schools the same.