Last year in Cyprus (Protaras) my daughter got an ear infection. We took her off to the doctors, expecting to get a prescription and go down the road to the pharmacy get some drops and maybe some tablets.
10 minutes later an ambulance appears, takes us all for a 20 minute ride to some clinic, where we wait for an hour, then she sees a specialist who um's and ah's for 20 minutes before putting some drops in her ear and giving her some tablets. Cost was about £150 for all that lot (oh sorry - that included the mandatory follow up visit to check all was OK).
My story was one of the less outrageous ones from people we spoke to. Basically they are scamming the insurance companies out of a fortune by providing way over the top treatment, but in the end we'll pay when the premiums shoot up.
Compare this to Kefalonia the year before, where I got an ear infection and was sent to the local pharmacist to get antibiotics without a prescription at all, total cost less than a tenner.
Cheers Keith
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