taxes for being sick

What a country.

If you're one of the lucky ones to have a job, and you're sick, your employer will require you to get a medical certificate to "prove" it.

It's a pain in the ass and contrary to my instinct, after all in the USA if you're sick you just call your employer and tell them so, they don't get picky about documentation for a couple of days. And go to the doctor in the USA? Pay the co-pay and still get a stack of bills and the "explanation of benefits" (i.e. what your so-called insurance didn't pay).

But whatever. Here, the process of going to the doctor is a little different. In Uruguay you are a member of a private hospital. The really rich people pay the really expensive and ostensibly (well, unquestionably) better quality private hospitals that are not available through social security. Those who have jobs or are self employed with all the proper papers have social security coverage which entitles them to membership in a private hospital. If you ask three people which ones are the "best" you will get three different answers.

Mine is called CASMU. It's either owned by or affiliated with the doctor's union, not sure which. But everything revolves around these frickin' tiny little slips of paper.

So if you're sick you have two options to get your medical certificate - you either call a doctor to your house or you go to a clinic. Of course since neither the doctors making house calls nor the clinics handle money for the co-payments, you go yourself or send someone to a place called Abitab. You present your cedula (ID card) or have your friend take it with them, and they buy an "ordene" - a ticket thats good for the service. (You would send your friend if you don't want to leave the house and want a house call - they exist here - but thats a much more expensive service.)

I could write a whole other posting about Abitab, and probably will. Anyway, you pay the 46 Uruguayan pesos (or 300 for a house call) and show your ID (they verify your coverage online), they print you the order and you go with that to the clinic. You have to know which doctor is at which clinic at what time and on what day, and clinics are not generally staffed by receptionists nor do they usually have telephone numbers listed. You just go and its first-come-first-served.

Visiting a doctor is a trip when the discussion is not in your first language. Think about it - did any of your high school foriegn language classes prepare you to describe WheRE or HoW it hurts? Nope, thought not.

I have been sicker living here than I ever have been at other times in my life. I suspect its a combination of a totally different set of viral/bacterial bugs living in a climate where it never freezes to kill everything! So I have had a few medical certificates written for me.

But this particular time the doctor I visited was a stickler about the law - and the law says, that when you're sick and you've had to leave the house to go visit the doctor and get the medical certificate - that supposedly you have to then go back to Abitab and buy a "timbre profesional" which is a tax stamp that makes your certificate valid. No stamp, no validity - but its not you or your employer who gets fined by the taxman, its the doctor. So she made a big deal about writing "not valid without stamp" on the certificate.

I am generally a law-abiding person but will not state one way or another whether I subsequently purchased a stamp.