My girlfriend and I recently visited Rome. While there, a stray cat attacked her. The injury was bad enough to need a doctor, so we visited a hospital’s emergency unit and waited under an hour for care. The doctor wrote a prescription and gave my girlfriend a shot to ease the pain. We had no idea what to expect in respect to cost: Italy has a universal health-care system, but we were not citizens. In total the doctor visit cost us nothing, and we paid $50 for medicine.