Last night DH was bitten by a red back spider and being Polish and terrified of Australuan fauna he was convinced he was dying. I called healthline which is a free service that puts you in touch with a nurse or dr for advice. We were advised to go to hospital. I sent him in a taxi since we don't have a car and it costs less to catch the occasional taxi. DH doesn't have health insurance because he is terrible at paperwork (not to fear, he pays his Medicare
levy so should a disaster occur he would be in his rights for coverage)
He called me and told me they wanted to charge $120. This is not good. It is DH fault for paying several thousand in Medicare levies for a service he has never applied for. Hmmm, we were formerly residents of Belgium which has a reciprocal healthcare agreement with Australia. The triage nurse looked it up, indeed DH is entitled to free healthcare from Belgium. The beauty of this agreement is its vagueness. It's implied that when you move to a country with such an agreement you should apply for local services in a reasonable amount of time. It does not give clear guidelines on what is reasonable.
Neither did DH have his Belgian healthcare card on him. Never fear, the other plus side with reciprocal healthcare agreements is that there is so much paperwork involved nobody actually wants anything apart from something that looks vaguely official and nothing us formerly lodged. So over the phone I gave them the number of my daughters belgian healthcare card. DH was given a bed and ECG monitoring and after several hours and a tetanus shot was sent on his way home. So there you go, how a foreign national got top quality healthcare for the cost of a $15 cab ride. I'd like to thank the wonderful diplomacy of our foreign service for lining up such marvellous things as reciprocal healthcare agreements. They save us several hundred each year when we travel back to Europe and in our new homeland.
