What does a credit card have to do with healthcare priority?
Source: https://www.tatrabanka.sk/en/personal/cards/my-doctor/#MRI
I don't know if it fits here, but getting an earlier appointment because of what bank/CC you use feels... odd.
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Isn't this just ragebait? Scrolling up on the page shows the explanation:
It looks like "My Doctor" is a third party service, and this bank is simply including a subscription to this third party service for the bank's card holders for this specific card. There are likely ways to subscribe to this "My Doctor" service completely unrelated to holding a specific bank's credit card.
Banks are always looking for value add services to entice customers to sign up for their bank card over competitors. I got a Visa card recently that has a card holder benefit of offering free cell phone data in foreign countries. What does cell phone data have to do with Visa? Nothing, but its something the bank is bundling in with being a cardholder.
News to me. Here they all seem equally dull. It's just a place to store my money. Functionally being slightly safer than sticking it under the mattress but that is it. They are all the same.
Depends on a few factors- like how much competition is there where you live. Also some regions (e.g. the EU) regulate several fees around credit and debit cards (at least for those that are offered to consumers) so that they’re less lucrative and offer less margins to allow add ons, specials, cashback,…
Honestly don't even know what half of those things are. I don't even have or want a credit card.
It all boils down to some form of goodies when using the card. Some examples:
The example of this thread - if you have this credit card, you can use service X for free
Or you might get a free travel insurance, if you pay for your vacation/flight/hotel using your card
You might also get some kind of loyalty program with it, like „earn x points/miles per $ spend“ that you can then use to get some of your cash back or maybe get some special discounts on your next purchase
How is this financed? Every time you pay something with your card, a percentage of the total amount will be held back by the bank and payment processors and not everything will be paid to the shop. These fees can get quite substantial, especially if they can get you to pay for almost everything with your credit card by letting you earn points etc. You do not pay these fees directly, but it’s a sure bet that shops will take this into account when setting their prices.
Some regions (e.g. the EU) do regulate these fees (at least for consumers like you and me - the EU doesn’t regulate the fees on e.g. company credit cards) In this case, you’re more likely to be offered just a plain card without any bells and whistles.
Oh I have heard some card providers charge more. Like American express which I often see isn't accepted in quite a few places. Why would I want a card I can't even use because lots of places won't accept the extra fees?
American Express has a history of better protection for its cardholders in transaction disputes.
Amex also has much higher standards for which merchants it will allow to accept its card as payment. Lots of legally questionable service don't accept Amex because Amex won't do business with payment processors that are sketchy or have a history of bad behavior (law bending or breaking) in the payment processing space. Visa and Mastercard are carried by banks directly so if you are a merchant with bad behavior you can nearly always find a sketchy bank to process your sketchy credit card transactions under Visa or Mastercard.
Protections don't work if you can't even use it. It's hardly crack dens either, a lot of pubs, restaurants, independent shops and takeaways I have been to have signs saying they won't accept it.
MyDoctor is a private provider. People who need MRI are sufficiently taken care of by the public system. This is preventive care, like insurance companies offering discounts on health-promoting services like dental hygiene, diet consultation, fitness programs etc. Slovaks have worse things to worry about under Fico.
Sorry, I didn't think of it that way.
I have tried searching for how it works from someone who used it, but I found no such mention on the internet.
I also didn't find specific ToS to this service, unlike for example with insurance "they" provide, which is just a ToS of third party insurance companies.
Lol they ask about your coverage before they get your blood type. Welcome to hell
This is a bank's loyalty program for private preventive care. Public coverage works all over the EU but yes, you do need to present the insurance card so they know how to bill you for any procedure.
Yeah but maybe wait until I'm not bleeding and totally conscious?
Urgent cases are treated differently. They won't let you die, you'll just present the card later (however, paramedics will try to find your identity with this card or another document on your body so they can check the database for your medical history, allergies etc. to avoid high-risk procedures) and there are no medical bankruptcies even among those who lack coverage.
Are you in the usa?
Are you in Slovakia?
Is she the hooker I'm currently with?
The screenshot is from Slovakia and my country is culturally closest to it, about as close as the average pair of neighboring US states. Like most Czechs, I know a few Slovaks and can understand 99.9% of Slovak without tools, so I looked up what My Doctor is using primary sources. (Yes, the two languages are so close there were serious efforts around 1920 to classify Slovak as a Czech dialect)
Oh I'm in the usa we are all dumb as fuck.
In case you haven't noticed, we measure people with something called net worth, and the unit of the measurement is ($) USD.
The ol' wallet biopsy
This is insane, thank you for sharing!
It's creeping in everywhere. It's insurance companies trying to butt in on the customer base from other companies.
I guess VISA needed to find something else to offer as a loyalty bonus since Mastercard already has travel insurance. Next week you can probably get dental insurance through American Express, or car tow insurance through Maestro.
Pension funds and even unions are also collaborating with insurance companies this way. At a first glance it looks great to be able to offer cheaper insurance to their members, but the result is that existing social health systems and such are being undermined by insurance companies.
Who better to bill than someone who has established good credit and who something can likely be scraped from when medical bankruptcy hits? What a refreshing angle.