Hospital

Don't be scared by the title, I was not in the hospital, a Panamanian friend of mine was. And let me tell you if you are seriously ill in Panama go no where but a hospital in Panama city.

We showed up at the emergency room around 3 pm and he was admitted right away. An infection in the foot. They let me fill out all the paperwork (I have to fight to let the doctor talk to my mother.) And this hospital looks like it was from the 70's. Old design, outdated equipment, outdated system. After about 2 hours they called me and told me they were going to hospitalize him. So they let me back into the room (again not family) and told me what was going on. They did pretty much nothing except put an IV in, they didn't clean it or anything. He had to wait until the next morning around 10 for someone to clean it. Dinner had passed and luckily I was there to go get food because otherwise he would have to wait until breakfast. Before it was cleaned and bandaged, he got up to go to the bathroom and it started bleeding. It took 4 hours and asking 3 times for someone to clean it up. They would not regularly check on him, leave the IV hooked up unnecessarily, and just not great care in general.

But you get what you pay for. I am not quite sure how the health care system works here, but from this it seems to be the government pays for coverage. You will never guess how much an emergency room visit and 5 nights in the hospital cost.......$5!!!! That's right folks $5. Think about that the next time you get your insurance or health care bills.