So, this month I’ve had to have two of my wisdom teeth extracted. Now, it’s on it’s own not a big deal, and it went rather smooth, practically no complications, and a good dose of local anaesthetics and painkillers later, I don’t even notice they’re gone.
What however is a little more a problem, is the price. Dental care isn’t part of the national health service, so you have to pay out of pocket. A wisdom tooth extraction may cost as little as ~700 DKK, but can cost up to more than 5.000 DKK. That’s a whole lotta dough, as they would say in the baker-business.
Dental care, is one of the main reasons, a lot of Danes have, and need, health insurance. The biggest one, by far, being _danmark_(Yes, it is called the same as the country, but it is a private company.) A consumer cooperative with more than 2,6 million members; almost half the population!
Besides dental care, health insurance often helps cover things like the cost of prescription drugs, the cost of glasses, the cost of hearing aids, and so on and so forth.
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It’s literally mandatory to have health insurance, so with exception of people staying in Switzerland illegally 100% have health insurance.
For Swiss citizens it’s literally impossible to quit their health insurance contract unless they first provide proof of having signed another contract.
All of that is also very necessary as there’s no national insurance, health tax or charity that would pay for you otherwise.
It’s not unheard of here to have some kind of health insurance through your job here if you work in a large corporate company and reach a certain grade. But I wouldn’t say it’s common exactly. Most people rely on the NHS and then just fork out the odd expensive dentist cost like yours.
I think insurance is becoming more necessary for speed (if not quality) of treatment, as our NHS is woefully underfunded. Combined with the effects of Covid, an ageing population, high levels of obesity and alcohol/ tobacco use, waiting lists and referral times are getting longer and longer. I believe that people with the money to do so are now more likely to get health insurance, or pay for private treatment.
National health insurance is mandatory, the fee gets automatically deducted from your salary, if you’re an employees or the insurance comes after you, if you’re self employed. You keep the insurance, if you lose your Job. Some rudimentary dental care is included (your wisdom teeth would have been, I guess, if they created problems). You can get additional private insurance which gives you a greater choice of doctors and a superior room at the hospital, basically. But it’s quite expensive and not so necessary, so most people don’t have it. For more fancy dental care it’s probably cheaper to suck up the cost in case of need than to pay regular extra private insurance.
Health insurance is something that your employers give you as a benefit since we have Public HealthCare system, paid mostly with our taxes, that covers almost anything and you have to pay very little out of pocket. This is something that your employers do NOT need to do but they usually do.
This is if you do not go see a doctor without using the National Service. So if you go and use private healthcare then the health insurance provided by your employers kicks in but you have to choose specific healthcare providers.
Dental care is obviously NOT covered by the Public system, so health insurance can help with that but it is not something you can subscribe to privately.
It is mandatory to have one. If you are unemployed,retired,child,student up to 26 years, mother on maternity leave etc then it is paid by state.
Yes mandatory, but dental isnt standard coverd you can get a additional insurance on that tho but would be more expensive then paying most of the time. Wisdom teeth can get extracted in the hospital so you can get them covered by insurance but you the insurance only covers it beyond x amount depending on how much you pay each month on insurance. Usually around 300 euros?
I think many Finns do have some kind of private health insurance, but it’s not the norm. Employees usually have occupational health care, i.e. mandatory private health care paid by employers. Most common type of insurance is probably health insurance for kids no avoid waiting in queues if there’s need for urgent (but not life threatening) care.
I have no health insurance, but I do have occupational health services through work. And we have municipal dental care. I got a wisdom teeth removed in 2019 in municipal care, it cost me 35 eur. Now the waiting times are super long (partly still due to the mess covid cancellations made).
We have the oldest health insurance system of the world. Introduced due to Bismarck’s fear of the social democrats.
Nowadays it is mandatory to have health insurance. The only ones exempt from it are soldiers, who are taken care of by the Bundeswehr and AFAIK prison inmates.
More than 90% are in one of the mandatory health insurances and only a small minority is in a private one. Everyone who is employed and earns under a certain threshold (IIRC 65000€ p.a.) is in one of the mandatory insurances and pays 14.6% of the monthly gross income. The employer also has to pay the same amount to the insurance of the employee.
If you are f.e. self employed or above the threshold you can voluntarily stay in the public health insurance, but then you have to pay both fees out of your pocket.
If you are jobless, the fee is paid by the unemployment office.
All the medications, therapies and aids that public insurances have to pay for are listed in a catalogue made by lawmakers. So insurances have almost no wiggle room to decide if you get a therapy, at least for mandatory stuff. Optional stuff is often denied, f.e. helps to get into a bathtub for the disabled or elderly.