My First Month in the USA

Moving to America felt a little like somebody had quietly swapped the rulebook overnight. Everyone speaks English, yet somehow everything still felt unfamiliar.

I had worked heavily within the healthcare industry before moving, so I assumed adapting to the American system would be fairly straightforward. It wasn’t. Suddenly I was trying to retrain my brain around entirely new terminology, systems and ways of accessing care.

• HIPAA instead of GDPR.
• Insurance networks.
• Co-pays.
• Urgent care versus emergency rooms.
• In-network providers.
• Out-of-network providers.
• Deductibles.

Even enrolling with a doctor felt confusing at first.

In the UK, you generally register with your local GP surgery and that’s that. In America, I quickly learned that not every doctor accepts every insurance provider, which means before you even book an appointment, you are often checking websites, calling receptionists and trying to understand what your insurance will and won’t cover.

Then there were the language differences. Small things that shouldn’t matter, but somehow make you feel even more foreign.

At the opticians in the UK, we say “long-sighted.” In America, they say “far-sighted.”

In the UK, you go to A&E. In America, it’s the ER.

You don’t “book in” somewhere, you “check in.”

You don’t ask for a plaster, you ask for a Band-Aid.

Even ordering medication felt different. I remember sitting in appointments nodding confidently while internally translating half the conversation in my head.

Then came the dentist bill. That was the moment I truly realised I was no longer living in Britain.

I took my son for what I thought would be a fairly routine dental appointment. A check-up, a clean and a very small surface-level filling. The total came to $960. I honestly nearly fell off the chair.

As somebody raised with the NHS, where dental costs are heavily subsidised compared to America, the figure genuinely shocked me. I remember doing the conversion into pounds in my head multiple times thinking surely there had been some mistake. There hadn’t.

But despite the culture shock, there were also things I quietly admired.

• The efficiency in some places.
• The cleanliness.
• The speed of referrals.
• The level of customer service.
• The fact you can often access specialists incredibly quickly compared to the UK.

America, in many ways, feels like healthcare as a service. Britain feels like healthcare as a public necessity. Both approaches shape the experience in completely different ways. And perhaps that was the biggest thing I learned during my first month in the USA: Moving country is not just about learning a new place. It is learning an entirely different way society works. Even in the smallest moments.

Especially when somebody asks you: “Do you have insurance?”

As someone who has now lived and worked in both the UK and the United States, these are simply my personal observations navigating two very different healthcare systems as both a parent and a patient.