First Health Care Experience

Well, today I had my first experience with the public health care system here in NZ. I needed to have a prescription refilled - nothing major - Here is how it went down:

Walked in the door and gave them my name and address etc. and within about 2 min. I was seen by a Dr. (Never even sat down in the waiting room) I went back to a small office and answered a few brief questions at which time the Dr. handed me a few months worth of free meds and then wrote me a prescription for more. That was it, I was done. Walked next door to the Chemist and within 5 min. I had three more months of meds for less than what I would have paid in the states. (Normally in NZ it would only cost $3, but the medication I take is not on the preferred list so it was full price which was still about half of what I normally pay.) This was CRAZY EASY........I cannot even believe it. It seriously took less than 1/2 hour for the WHOLE process.

People can say whatever they want about the public health care system, but in my opinion I am a HUGE fan so far and cannot even begin to say how awesome this first experience was!

For practical purposes and those interested; a regular Dr. visit runs $65 for a "casual visit" if you are a registered patient it gets knocked down to $30, but since we still haven't established ourselves in a town we paid the full $65 - still not bad.....


Oh, FYI, we are back in Napier for the weekend. We decided to come back a little earlier since I needed to get some things taken care of to finish up the process for college apps. We will head off to our next WWOOF host in Havelock North next week.