Any Advice On Getting An Mri In Buenos Aires?

[polostar88]

Please check the many recent threads on OSDE, and health insurance for more info. You can have your health insurance payments automatically debited fom a credit or debit card, including foreign ones. Altho it would be at the official rate.
You will need to see a doctor before you'll be able to get your MRI done. It requires a doctors prescription. Hope you feel better soon.

Thanks lacoqueta. Any idea on a ballpark figure for the insurance you mention? Also, can you pay in cash too?

 

[Alicia karr]

Like everywhere, the quote is based on your age and health history. I pay about 3000 pesos a month, but I am over 50. There are no deductibles or copays with regard to medical services, fees, tests, hospitalizations, surgeries, etc. and they have the highest level of doctors that participate. They even make house calls. But you get what you pay for. They are not cheap. But by American standards they are VERY cheap. And very good. Someone has mentioned they pay by cash. I think they accept cash only at their largest offices, for example the one in Belgrano and the one in Palermo on Billinghurst. But do read the other recent threads on this topic to get the big picture!
FYI I've had three hospitalizations and half a dozen surgeries, all medically necessary, since I've been here. So I'm an experienced consumer (unfortunately!)

 

[Ceviche]

But by American standards they are VERY cheap.

by American standards, healthcare is like paradise here. After experiencing health care here in BA, I doubt I will ever travel to another country specifically for healthcare.

Plus medical insurance is REAL/genuine here. No co pays!

 

[ajoknoblauch]

No it's not. It's a state with an exchange, and a blue and very liberal state in the northeast. The problem is the Obamacare law, it makes it illegal for people to buy health insurance at this time.

The insurance company allowed me to buy (private, unsubsidized, top of the line) health insurance, it's the people working at the exchange who are now canceling it because I didn't provide documents to their satisfaction (note: I provided 4 rounds of documents but it's still not enough for them).

If tens of millions of previously uninsured people have managed to get insurance through the Affordable Care Act, your own insurance company must have scammed you with inadequate coverage.

 

[polostar88]

If tens of millions of previously uninsured people have managed to get insurance through the Affordable Care Act, your own insurance company must have scammed you with inadequate coverage.

I got top of the line insurance from one of the best insurance companies in the US, which only offers ACA-approved insurance at the moment (duh) the problem is that the govt. is now canceling it because I didn't buy it within the "enrollment period." That's right it's currently illegal to buy health insurance in the US. The only way you're allowed to get any insurance at all at the moment is if you go through incredibly complicated paperwork, which takes weeks, and which in my case they've rejected for apparently no reason. They've also done this to a lot of other people. This was btw not subsidized or anything like that, it was very expensive, and they still didn't let me buy it.

You seem to be a highly ideological and political person who wants to believe that Obamacare is paradise--as opposed to a big scam that actually just benefits insurance companies and interest-groups inside the US govt.--and have entered this thread to lecture me that I don't realize the great benefits of this law that has prevented me from getting healthcare. Or maybe to defend a political party, and to deny that my experience exists, and is in fact quite frequent. Next I'm sure you tell me I deserve not being allowed to buy insurance or to see a doctor because the "Affordable Care Act" (adorable how you repeat this like a trained puppy) obviously can do no wrong. Thankfully I was going to go to Argentina anyway, to get away from people like you.

And btw, this is not the thread to discuss this, but it's just false that millions of previously uninsured have managed to get anything.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

And btw, this is not the thread to discuss this, but it's just false that millions of previously uninsured have managed to get anything.

Is your stated inability to get insurance a function of being numerically challenged? According to hard data compiled by the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation, more than eight million US residents have signed up successfully: http://tinyurl.com/ofwlr5e

At the same time, that does not include Medicaid expansion, which could easily double the numbers even though some of the worst states decline to participate and cover their least fortunate citizens at no cost to themselves: http://tinyurl.com/lwnp9tv

The Affordable Care Act (which is the law's formal name, by the way) also expanded coverage by allowing children, such as my daughter, to remain on their parents' policies until age 26. Having recently reached that age, my presently unemployed daughter no longer enjoys coverage on my policy, but she has had no difficulty in obtaining a Kaiser policy through Medicaid. Just a couple years ago, she would have uninsured and unable to obtain insurance.

ACA may not be the perfect solution to the shortcomings of US health care, but your anecdotal dislike does not make it a failure. In reality, it's an incomplete but increasingly promising success. I suspect you didn't try very hard or, alternatively in your own words, what you claim is "just false."

 

[polostar88]

Is your stated inability to get insurance a function of being numerically challenged? According to hard data compiled by the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation, more than eight million US residents have signed up successfully: http://tinyurl.com/ofwlr5e

At the same time, that does not include Medicaid expansion, which could easily double the numbers even though some of the worst states decline to participate and cover their least fortunate citizens at no cost to themselves: http://tinyurl.com/lwnp9tv

The Affordable Care Act (which is the law's formal name, by the way) also expanded coverage by allowing children, such as my daughter, to remain on their parents' policies until age 26. Having recently reached that age, my presently unemployed daughter no longer enjoys coverage on my policy, but she has had no difficulty in obtaining a Kaiser policy through Medicaid. Just a couple years ago, she would have uninsured and unable to obtain insurance.

ACA may not be the perfect solution to the shortcomings of US health care, but your anecdotal dislike does not make it a failure. In reality, it's an incomplete but increasingly promising success. I suspect you didn't try very hard or, alternatively in your own words, what you claim is "just false."

Why the hell should you "have to try very hard" to buy health insurance? Why should it take weeks of paperwork and hours of conversations on the phone with half-literate bureaucrats who barely speak the language of the land, and at the end you get denied anyway? In Argentina I'll just be able to buy it next-day as everyone tells me. That was my point.

But you know what, you're right! I should try harder. In fact, you should immediately contact law enforcement and have them seize my passport. You should foil my dastardly plan to leave the USA and make the sacred Obama(care) look bad! After all, I should put in "the hard work" to be allowed to pay confiscatory rates for health care I dont even need. I should get a job in the US and "do my part." I should "man up" and be an "economic patriot." How dare I contemplate leaving or suggesting that the US has become a dysfunctional, broke asylum with an economy based on usury! They should seize my passport at once, you get right on that.

You're here to stomp for your favorite politician, like a good little puppy. Next you will also say that the kind "men and women in uniform" of the TSA are there to keep us safe in airports and those of us who have been harrassed by them just didn't "work very hard" and that we need to "suck it up." There's a good little puppy, here's a pat on the head for you.

 

[polostar88]

To return to the topic of the thread, I'd really appreciate more info. or reassurance from others regarding MRI costs and /or healthcare costs in Argentina, plus the ease of signing up. The reason I ask is that I'm a bit paranoid after my experiences in the US. My mom is the one insisting I get health insurance and if I tell her that it's totally easy and straightforward in Argentina I know she will be a lot more at ease.

Thanks in advance!

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Why the hell should you "have to try very hard" to buy health insurance? Why should it take weeks of paperwork and hours of conversations on the phone with half-literate bureaucrats who barely speak the language of the land, and at the end you get denied anyway? In Argentina I'll just be able to buy it next-day as everyone tells me. That was my point.

But you know what, you're right! I should try harder. In fact, you should immediately contact law enforcement and have them seize my passport. You should foil my dastardly plan to leave the USA and make the sacred Obama(care) look bad! After all, I should put in "the hard work" to be allowed to pay confiscatory rates for health care I dont even need. I should get a job in the US and "do my part." I should "man up" and be an "economic patriot." How dare I contemplate leaving or suggesting that the US has become a dysfunctional, broke asylum with an economy based on usury! They should seize my passport at once, you get right on that.

You're here to stomp for your favorite politician, like a good little puppy. Next you will also say that the kind "men and women in uniform" of the TSA are there to keep us safe in airports and those of us who have been harrassed by them just didn't "work very hard" and that we need to "suck it up." There's a good little puppy, here's a pat on the head for you.

Odd, that eight million other people were able to sign up easily, with thousands more doing so every day, and you could not.

Should you remain in Argentina, your porteño shrink should be able to prescribe the appropriate anxiety medications. I would hope you'll understand the dosage instructions.

 

[Hybrid Ambassador]

Obama care knee ACA can go to oblivion. If I was to be enrolling via ACA, then my insurance had to go over US$1k a month!
Luckily that the S.S. put me under temp disability and also reaching my Old Anciano age limit, then my Kaiser Permanente health
premium went down to US$84 bucks a month!