Cost of Dialysis Treatment

I am curious about the cost of dialysis treatment for people from countries other than the UK. For instance, what is Medicare, is it a private medical insurance or is it run by the government? Does it meet all the costs of dialysis treatments or just some? How much does it pay to wards the cost of medicines? Does it only cover those who pay into it and if not what happens to kidney patients who don't?

Here in the UK we have our national insurance premiums deducted by the government from our incomes which is regulated according to salary for instance on a £16,000 per year salary you'd pay about £1164 per year. This entitles you to free treatment from a dog bite to open heart surgery at any National Health Service (NHS) Hospital in the UK irrespective of the cost. Although national insurance payments are compulsory in any paid employment, you would still get the same free hospital treatment if you'd never worked in your life. Medication prescriptions are about £6 per item and free for seniors, children the unemployed and people on low incomes. If like me you take a lot of pills you can buy an NHS yearly season ticket for about a £100 believe me this is a big saving. It's also free for some chronic illness's and I haven't checked out yet if kidney failure qualifies. I haven't got a clue what the criteria are, it must be very arbitrary as you'd think a disease like Cystic Fibrosis would get exception but it doesn't. So, all haemo and pd is free as is my cycler and Baxter dialysis monthly stock. Oh and I almost forgot, if you opt for home haemo, the NHS kits the room out for free.

Generally so far so good. But here's the downside of the NHS
We have in most NHS hospitals a particularly nasty bug called MRSA. It is completely resistant to all antibiotics so you could for example have minor surgery and die from the infection to the wound. That is an extreme scenario but its quite common for MRSA infections to last for months. The emergence of this bug seemed to coincide with general finance cut-backs by the government resulting in amongst other things, contracting out the responsibility of hospital cleaning to private companies. When I had my catheter fitted I was hospitalized for 5 days (got an infection but not mrsa thank God) and the general day to day ward care was shite. The wards are appallingly short staffed. I spent most of the time after PD catheter surgery trying to stop the 87 year old Irishman in the bed next to me with Alzheimer's and connected to a urine catheter from getting out of bed. If I'd have waited for the nurse to answer the alarm call I made, he'd have been out of the hospital and half way home or half way to somewhere!

You can wait for months even years for surgery like hip replacement and general non emergency ops. and for say, pioneering cancer treatments involving new expensive drugs it is a zip code lottery because some some hospital trusts will offer it and some won't depending whether or not they've gone over budget. Add to that the fact that the NHS seems to be top heavy with managers and bureaucrats who are constantly harassing already demoralized staff to meet ever more and more impossible targets and hair brained government initiatives its a wonder the service keeps going but it does and long may it do so because in spite of it's downside some parts of the NHS are second to none. The back-up I get from the PD clinic has been fantastic.The nursing staff and Docs not only really care but they make you feel special I really can't thank them enough for for their support pre and post dialysis. (I have a few issues with my home nurse in that I think she's abandoned me but that's another rant for another day)

I just wish successive governments would stop using our NHS as a political football and for God's sake stop privatizing bits of it!