Scott
@santiago Hi, Santiago. I hope everything is going well with you.
I haven't asked you a question about Uruguay in a while. Here's one I've been wondering about. What things do foreigners who visit or live in Uruguay do which local Uruguayans find annoying?
Santiago
@Scott I personally find quite annoying when foreign people complain about things that are not the same in their countries. Not complaining about something bad happened, ie. you got robbed, that's fine. I mean complaining about food, weather or the health system. Those things are the way they are. I mean, people here complains about things like the health system, but in a more political and long term way. I mean complaining about how much you have to wait for a specialist. We all wait the same amount of time. Things like that.
Scott
@santiago
Yeah, lots of foreigners come here and complain about the traffic, weather, food, etc. However, the one thing they don't complain about is the health care. I think almost anywhere I go in the world will be a step down in terms of health care. It's fairly fast and cheap here.
Thanks for the list. I appreciate it. I'll try to be mindful of those things.
Santiago
@Scott is it free? i mean state funded? Here in Uruguay we are quite above the region average level. I mean south america. We also have free education and free university which has a pretty high level
Scott
@santiago
I don't want to belabor the point, but this particular list puts Taiwan at #2 in the world for health care a couple of years ago:
https://ceoworld.biz/2021/04/27/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2021/
It's certainly possible there's some error in the rankings, but it jibes with my experience that the health care here is top notch.
Canada's health care used to be much, MUCH better back in the 1990s. The quality is there, but the wait times are really long now.
Scott
@santiago
We pay 150-200TWD for the doctor's visit, but almost all of the medicine is free. Some surgical procedures require a fee if it's not deemed entirely necessary. For example, my wife had an endoscopy a long time ago, and we had to pay for the anesthesia (because the procedure can be done without it, it's just uncomfortable). Another example, I had surgery a couple of years ago, but we upgraded my room to a 2-person room (standard is 4), and I had to pay for the blood salvage machine (standard is blood transfusion).
I'm less sure about education here because we don't have kids. Elementary school is free and the gov't has free junior and senior high schools (there may be some fees involved for these latter two for books and materials, but I'm not sure), and there are private schools, too. Almost everyone here goes to university. That's not a joke. Those that don't go to university do so by choice, not because of financial problems. I believe it's subsidized, but I'm not sure how much. It isn't financially burdensome, though.
Santiago
@Scott sounds great!
Scott
@santiago
Actually, I should correct something. Not everyone goes to university. They have trade schools here which are sort of like 5-year high schools. The students get 3 years of high school and then 2 years of training in a trade of some kind. Those schools are brilliant! I wish they
had them in Canada.
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