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TechnoratiHealthy Examples: Plenty of Countries Get Healthcare Right
"I DON'T WANT America to begin rationing care to their citizens in the way these other countries do."
![[The emergency room waiting area at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn. The hospital's emergency room receives about 60,000 patients a year. (Getty Images / Mario Tama)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/healtcareinside.jpg "healtcareinside.jpg")
That was Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, speaking last month about healthcare reform. But it could have been virtually any other Republican, not to mention any number of sympathetic interest groups, because that's the party line for many who oppose healthcare reform. If President Obama and his supporters get their way, this argument goes, healthcare in America will start to look like healthcare overseas. Yes, maybe everybody will have insurance. But people will have to wait in long lines. And when they are done waiting in line, the care won't be very good.
Typically the people making these arguments are basing their analysis on one of two countries, Canada and England, where such descriptions hold at least some truth. Although the people in both countries receive pretty good healthcare - their citizens do better than Americans in many important respects - they are also subjected to longer waits for specialty care and tighter limits on some advanced treatments.
But no serious politician is talking about recreating either the British or the Canadian system here. The British have truly "socialized medicine," in which the government directly employs most doctors. The Canadians have one of the world's most centralized "single-payer" systems, in which the government insures everybody directly and private insurance has virtually no role. A better understanding for how universal healthcare might work in America would come from other countries - countries whose insurance architecture and medical cultures more closely resemble the framework we'd likely create here.
Last year, I had the opportunity to spend time researching two of these countries: France and the Netherlands. Neither country gets the attention that Canada and England do. That might be because English isn't their language. Or it might be because they don't fit the negative stereotypes of life in countries where government is more directly involved in medical care.
Over the course of a month, I spoke to just about everybody I could find who might know something about these healthcare systems: Elected officials, industry leaders, scholars - plus, of course, doctors and patients. And sure enough, I heard some complaints. Dutch doctors, for example, thought they had too much paperwork. French public health experts thought patients with chronic disease weren't getting the kind of sustained, coordinated medical care that they needed.
But in the course of a few dozen lengthy interviews, not once did I encounter an interview subject who wanted to trade places with an American. And it was easy enough to see why. People in these countries were getting precisely what most Americans say they want: Timely, quality care. Physicians felt free to practice medicine the way they wanted; companies got to concentrate on their lines of business, rather than develop expertise in managing health benefits. But, in contrast with the US, everybody had insurance. The papers weren't filled with stories of people going bankrupt or skipping medical care because they couldn't afford to pay their bills. And they did all this while paying substantially less, overall, than we do.
The Dutch and the French organize their healthcare differently. In the Netherlands, people buy health insurance from competing private carriers; in France, people get basic insurance from nonprofit sickness funds that effectively operate as extensions of the state, then have the option to purchase supplemental insurance on their own. (It's as if everybody is enrolled in Medicare.) But in both countries virtually all people have insurance that covers virtually all legitimate medical services. In both countries, the government is heavily involved in regulating prices and setting national budgets. And, in both countries, people pay for health insurance through a combination of private payments and what are, by American standards, substantial taxes.
You could be forgiven for assuming, as Kyl and his allies suggest, that so much government control leads to Soviet-style rationing, with people waiting in long lines and clawing their way through mind-numbing bureaucracies every time they have a sore throat. But, in general, both the Dutch and French appear to have easy access to basic medical care - easier access, in fact, than is the American norm.
In both the Netherlands and France, most people have long-standing relationships with their primary care doctors. And when they need to see these doctors, they do so without delay or hassle. In a 2008 survey of adults with chronic disease conducted by the Commonwealth Fund - a foundation which financed my own research abroad - 60 percent of Dutch patients and 42 percent of French patients could get same-day appointments. The figure in the US was just 26 percent.
The contrast with after-hours care is even more striking. If you live in either Amsterdam or Paris, and get sick after your family physician has gone home, a phone call will typically get you an immediate medical consultation - or even, if necessary, a house call. And if you need the sort of attention available only at a formal medical facility, you can get that, too - without the long waits typical in US emergency rooms.
This is particularly true in the Netherlands, thanks to a nationwide network of urgent care centers the government and medical societies have put in place. Not only do these centers provide easily accessible care for people who use them; they leave hospital emergency rooms free to concentrate on the truly serious cases. Tellingly, a Dutch physician I met complained to me that waiting times in her emergency room had been getting "too long" lately. "Too long," she went on to tell me, meant two or three hours. When I told her about documented cases of people waiting a day, or even days, for treatment in some American emergency rooms, she thought I was joking. (In a 2007 Commonwealth Fund survey, just 9 percent of Dutch patients reported waiting more than two hours for care in an ER, compared to 31 percent of Americans.)
Dutch and French patients do wait longer than Americans for specialty care; around a quarter of respondents to the Commonwealth Fund survey reported waiting more than two months to see a specialist, compared to virtually no Americans. But Dutch and French patients were far less likely to avoid seeing a specialist altogether - or forgoing other sorts of medical care - because they couldn't afford it. And there's precious little evidence that the waits for specialty care led to less effective care.
On the contrary, the data suggests that while American healthcare is particularly good at treating some diseases, it's not as good at treating others. (In some studies, the US did pretty well on cardiovascular care, not so well on diabetes, for example.) Overall, the US actually fares poorly on measures like "potential years of lives lost" - statistics compiled by specialists in an effort to measure how well healthcare systems perform. In a 2003 ranking of 20 advanced countries, the US finished 16th when it came to "mortality amenable to healthcare," another statistic that strives to capture the impact of a health system. The Dutch were 11th and the French were fifth. These statistics are necessarily crude; diet, culture, and many other factors inevitably affect the results. But, taken together, they make it awfully hard to argue that care in these countries is somehow inferior. If anything, the opposite would seem to be true.
Critics of health reform frequently point to cancer as proof that American healthcare really is superior. And, it's true, the US has, overall, the world's highest five-year survival rate for cancer. But that's partly a product of the unparalleled amount of government-funded research in the US - something healthcare reform would not diminish. Besides, it's not as if the gap is as large or meaningful as reform critics frequently suggest. France (like a few other European countries) has survival rates that are generally close and, for some cancers, higher. Much of the remaining difference reflects differences in treatment patterns that have nothing to do with insurance arrangements and everything to do with idiosyncratic medical cultures. This is particularly true of prostate cancer, where a staggeringly high survival rate in the US seems to be largely a product of aggressive US treatment - treatment that physicians in other countries, and increasingly many specialists here, consider unnecessary and sometimes harmful.
None of this is to say that either the Dutch or French systems are perfect. Far from it. In both countries, healthcare costs are rising faster than either the public - or the country's business interests - would like. And each country has undertaken reforms in an effort to address these problems. The French have started to introduce some of the managed care techniques familiar to Americans, like charging patients extra if they see specialists without a referral, while developing more evidence-based treatment guidelines in the hope that it will reduce the use of unnecessary but expensive treatments. The Dutch overhauled their insurance arrangements a few years ago, to introduce more market competition and reward healthcare providers - that is, doctors and hospitals - who get good results.
But cost is the one area in which France and the Netherlands are a lot like Canada and England: They all devote significantly less of their economy to healthcare than we do. The French spend around 11 percent of their gross domestic product on healthcare, the Dutch around 10. In the US, we spend around 16 percent. And, unlike in the US, the burden for paying this is distributed across society - to both individuals and businesses - in an even, predictable way.
Of course, reforming health insurance in the US isn't going to turn this country into France or the Netherlands overnight, any more than it would turn the US into Britain and Canada. The truth is that the changes now under consideration in Washington are relatively modest, by international standards. But insofar as countries abroad give us an idea of what could happen, eventually, if we change our health insurance arrangements, the experience of people in Amsterdam and Paris surely matters as much as - if not more than - those in Montreal and London. In those countries, government intervention has created a health system in which people seem to have the best of all worlds: convenience, quality, and affordability. There's no reason to think the same thing couldn't happen here.
Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor of The New Republic, where he writes a blog called "The Treatment." He is also the author of "Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis - and the People Who Pay the Price (HarperCollins, 2007).
39 Comments so far
Show AllNo doubt to me that every American should have health care. Looking to other countries can be helpful but each country has had to solve the health care problem (in that country) on their own.
Unless we have the kind of reform that Atul Gawande discusses (check out his New Yorker articles and his book, Better) then it doesn't matter WHO pays for health care for all---we could end up with health care for all, but the same problems we already have--it would include all, true, but the problems would be just as big.
I love France, but have had family members live there who have had very bad experiences with the health care system there (in Paris in particular.) Of course, I have family members in the USA who have had very bad experiences with the health care systems here. In France, in one situation, it was true malpractice that could have easily ended up with a dead (young) cousin. This was avoided by astute parents (after being sent home unwisely by a Paris ER) and the child ended up surviving (paramedics working on her before getting her BACK to ER she had just been sent home from) and there would have been no recourse to that situation if it had gone worse. No legal recourse. To me, that's wrong.
In the other relative's situation, it involved a situation that would have been solved easily in any US ER, but was avoided in Paris BECAUSE the doctor made a house call (which, yes, was nice) but the patient didn't get the care needed in an ER (very simply---IV fluids to correct a very out of sync electrolyte balance that ended up being dangerous.)
America can find its own way perhaps, but doctors have to start talking to each other regarding their patients and doctors have to start actually talking with their patients too.
And Congress needs to sit in a room and figure out how all can be covered or either give up their own health care.
"But no serious politician is talking about recreating either the British or the Canadian system here."
Actually, there are several VERY SERIOUS politicians that have been talking about a Universal Single-payer Health CARE system for several years, but the MSM are aiding insurance industry by not letting them be heard. At least _some_ of us take them a lot more seriously than the whores who are in the pockets of the greedy corporations.
Dennis Kucinich is one of them. He's a _LOT _ more serious about working FOR THE PEOPLE than _any_ of the corporate-owned people in Congress. Dennis is his own man. He does not accept _any_ corporate donations, or even donations that might smell like they came from a company account. He doesn't owe allegiance to _anyone_ except the voters of Ohio who elect him, despite the huge sums poured into the campaigns of his opponents.
Bernie Sanders is another one calling for Universal Single-payer. He's another one who doesn't owe anything to the greedy corporations and works hard for the people of Vermont who elect him.
Voters all over the country need to wake up, take a hard look at who they are electing, stop putting corporate whores in Congress, and elect representatives who will actually work for The People.
BTW, the problem with getting timely care in Canada has a lot more to do with there not being enough specialists to adequately serve all patient's needs quickly. In the US, we have a lot of specialists and a shortage of family practitioners. It's the other way around in Canada.
It's good to hear from real Canadians about their health care system. I have heard over and over indirectly that Canadians like their system.
In SiCKO, Michael Moore walked down the street in Cuba with sick 9/11 first responders who couldn't get health care in the US and asked people how to see a doctor. He was told there are street corner clinics, just walk in. So they did, just like any ordinary Cuban.
The US boycott against Cuba has caused enormous economic strain and yet they have twice as many doctors per capita than the US according to WHO, and still send doctors to needy countries. Unlike the US, when hurricanes hit Cuba, they manage to evacuate their people to safety and don't lose lives. Public education is free and available to anyone all the way through college. A 2005 UNESCO report singled out Cuba, Canada, Finland and Korea as he world's highest ranking educational systems. Although a poor country economically based on agriculture and tourism Cuba still spends 10 to 11 % of its GDP on education, by far the highest ratio of any country in the world. Finland, the next closest, spends 6 percent. Cuba's student to teacher ratio in primary schools is 13.5:1 and system wide 15:1 (can you imagine a public classroom in the US with only 13 children?). The literacy rate is effectively 100%. According to Caliteracy.org, in the US adults with a high level of literacy are at 19%, a low level of literacy are at 49.6% and a moderate level of literacy at 31.4%. The low level includes 14% who are unable to read at all. That difference in literacy rates is outstanding.
So a country impoverished by almost 50 years of US sanctions is doing far better caring for it's citizens than the richest country in the world. But hey, 5% of US citizens are doing very well, thank you, and if you happen to be a big bank (aside from Lehman Bros) you hit the jackpot. Barack, Timmy and Larry could start a vaudeville show, "We're in the Money!" The rest of us are headed for SOL, bigtime.
I'm not suggesting we move to Canada or Cuba, I'm suggesting we turn this country around. Anyone can start a Main Street Party. Just call your state Secretary of State for a minor party manual and start with your own Congressional district. I'm starting by thinking small, but not staying there.
Chameleon, I would like to see the sources for those numbers you are throwing in the air.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
I have lived in Canada for 35 years and can testify on the excellence of our Health care system. I do not understand why some so called experts disparage it, in this case, rebuffing the fact that it is Single Payer and that the insurance industry has no role to play. That is probably one of the best characteristics of the Canadian system as it makes it not for profit. The system is egalitarian (universal access), flexible (it is portable between provinces) We can choose our doctors and clinics, every one gets the same degree of care which is excellent and there is no money that needs to exchange hands. The best part is the fact that we all know that our health care is considered a right and we will never be broke or have to delay care for economic reasons. That sole fact gives this excellent country such an advantage. The USA should look more carefully and try to change their system to something like ours.
its revolution time in the us of a folks. if we don,t start
protesting in d.c and forcing these bastards to give us
quality health care its no going to happen! i,m not
advocating violence just cd and public demonstrations.
i also think that they would beat the s--t out of us
because we no longer live in a democracy. oh and
what jon kyl knows about anything could be put in a thimble
with PLENTY of room left over!
Johnathan Cohn wrote: "The Canadians have one of the world's most centralized "single-payer" systems, in which the government insures everybody directly and private insurance has virtually no role."
On the contrary, the Canadian health care and insurance systems are highly decentralised from the federal government. The federal Canada Health Act requires the provinces, in order to be eligible for federal transfer funds, to provide insurance for medically necessary care to all legal residents, and stipulates that the system be publicly administered, comprehensive, universal, portable and accessible. How the provinces achieve this varies. A few provinces charge premiums; most do not. All cover far more services than a strict reading of the CHA would require. And most of us (about 75%) carry private supplemental insurance, usually connected with our jobs but available to individuals at reasonable rates, for goods and services not covered, or covered with limits, by our provincial plans: orthotics, meds outside of hospital, dental, private hospital room, travel, acupuncture, supplemental physio, home care, and so on. Private insurers in Canada are doing very well indeed.
I wish commenters from the States would at least try to get it right. Canadian provinces have much more autonomy than do USan states. And if the US adopted a Canadian-style pastiche of systems, it could probably do it better and cheaper.
Unless I win the lotto or otherwise become independently wealthy, I would be nuts to live in the States. I am not nuts. So I live in Soviet Canuckistan. It is fabulous. Trust me.
Then again, I have been on the wait list for knee replacement surgery for six years. That is correct: six years. Every time my number comes up, I have been busy with other issues: herniated disc surgery (twice), then the annoying ankle sprain, plus having my teeth cleaned and all that ....
And at nearly 50, I would like to have knee replacement surgery just once. I am not sure when that will become a critical issue for me, so I stay on the wait list, just in case. But when I get to the head of the line, I go to the back, and if I am seriously gibbled, my gibbleness, not how long I have been on the list or how much I can pay, determines my place in line.
From article: "Dutch and French patients do wait longer than Americans for specialty care; around a quarter of respondents to the Commonwealth Fund survey reported waiting more than two months to see a specialist, compared to virtually no Americans"
Say what???
The omitted context is that at least 50 million Americans have no access to specialty care in the first place!!!
I lived and worked in the Netherlands for 5 years; although I paid very steep taxes to the Dutch govt., I had a fully funded guaranteed pension plan, and did not pay one eurocent on health care bills including medicines. I prefer the Dutch system 100% over the barbaric and parasitical system here in the land of hypocrisy
Apparently he forgot to count the people who are waiting to be able to pay. But this is just incorrect anyway. Who do you know who doesn't have to wait to see a doctor, let alone a specialist? He must be doing his research in a different neighborhood.
Yeah, under my wife's plan (which is considered a gold standard) I have to choose from a list of doctors, none have offices closer than a 30 minute drive (even though I live in a large metro area). I have only limited choice; I routinely have to wait a couple of weeks at least for a routine appointment. Even though the employer covers most of the monthly permium, we have to pay co-pays and a hefty monthly payment. Can we spell PARASITE? My personal anecdote seems to be backed up by other data. This article is not an academic research paper anyway
smitty, the solutions are obvious and easy to accomplish. But if the corporations don't like them, they will not happen. Since the corporations don't care how many Americans die from lack of care, that is what we can expect.
Unless we take matters into our own hands. The Main Street Party would do just that. If we don't we are well on the way to being a third world fascist country. Bush has signed the necessary executive orders and Obama has declined to repudiate them. Everything is in place.
Something very disturbing happened. I saw a classic example of history rewritten. 46 years ago on TV I saw our President being shot. I was 21 at the time. The film was shot by a man named Zapruder who immediately gave it to the networks. For 4 days they played it over and over, along with anything else related to the assassination and funeral. There were no commercials or regular programming until President Kennedy was buried. Then it disappeared. Now I can find no reference to that original tape. The story being told is that it was never shown and actually sequestered until 1975 and when it was released at that time, it had been altered to show a large splash of blood flying forward. I had not even seen that until recently since I didn't read Life magazine. That was not on the film I saw 46 years ago. But there aren't very many people left who actually saw that when they were adults. Or are paying any attention if they did. What I have learned is that most people desperately want to believe we are a free country, and they would find that hard to believe if our President had been assassinated in an act of conspiracy. They prefer their comfort zone to the truth. Unfortunately, as Benjamin Franklin pointed out, they will end with with neither. And they can drag all of us down with them.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
"I WANT America to ration healthcare to their citizens in ways no other country does."
America's decimated and under-employed middle class has been priced out
of the "health care" racket and our government is hell-bent to keep us that way.
Thank you Jonathan Cohn. I would be interested in seeing you do a similar study on the Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swiss, Taiwanese, and Danish healthcare systems.
Poet
Good article. I would love to see a thousand more like this comparing the vastly inaccurate foreign healthcare boogie-man stories propogated by our congressmen and women and the actual truth of how these systems function and operate. It would do a lot of people here a lot of good if others like you would help them to remove their blinders.
Fair article. It would, of course, make sense to conduct a serious study of other health care systems to find out what works and what doesn't - to learn from their experience, as well as to ascertain the best steps to control costs without impeding progress. It is also essential to line up natural allies in the cause of reform.
Many local and state governments, companies, and unions are facing major financial crises because of health care obligations, while hospitals are closing because of unsustainable emergency care they are required to provide yet do not get paid for. Universal Single Payer insurance would completely relieve them of those burdens freeing public bodies to address other public needs while making companies that had been providing the most generous insurance for present and retired employees more competitive with far more stingy companies. The potential combined clout of these entities could, and should, play a pivotal role in combating the misleading propaganda of insurance companies and other forces opposing the public good.
It is critical for the public to become aware that not only will Single Payer provide better health care for all and at lower cost, but there is a way it can be done with no new taxes! At present all 'unearned income' - income from rents, profits, interest, etc. - is 100% exempt from both Social Security and Medicare taxation. Closing this one loophole would, combined with existing Medicare revenue, provide sufficient income to not only fully fund a Single Payer national health care system for all Americans, but perhaps dental and optical care as well! And as a fringe benefit the purported Social Security shortfall would be eliminated as well - especially if the $105,800 cap on taxable Social Security income was eliminated at the same time!
Good points, but I don't buy the no new taxes part.
Here's how I see it:
Total federal tax income for 2008: $2.6T (trillion)
Total federal healthcare expenditures: $600B ($380 medicare, $210 medicaid)
Total US medical expenditures for 2008 (from different sources), $2.4T. Let's assume that this includes the $600B from above.
Also, let's assume that after spreading the cost, removing non us residents and illgal aliens from the plan (riiiiiifght), the cost goes down to $1.2T, which is stretching it.
Adjusting the total federal tax income with that we get $3.8T an increase of about 80%.
So not counting a deficit, government revenue has to increase by 80% to pay for free healthcare. That can only come from taxes. That means you and I and everyone else's tax will go up bt 80%.
No matter what the DUMBOcrats or the RepubliCONS are saying you and I are still gonna pay for it. Big time.
Your math is way off. Single payer would not be "free health care", but it also wouldn't raise taxes by 80%. Go to pnhp.org for the best analysis of the financing for single payer. For about the same total we spend now on health care in this country, everyone could be covered - i.e., it would eliminate inequity in access to health care -- and the coverage would be better, and comprehensive. The money would come primarily by raising the Medicare deduction (or something similar to that)-- so that only people with income would pay, and losing your job would not mean losing your coverage. What people don't understand who scream about "I don't want my taxes to go up!!!! Bwaahaahaa!!" is that with single payer their TOTAL health care expenditures would go DOWN due to savings on profit and overhead. Who cares where the money has to come from?
"For about the same total we spend now on health care in this country, everyone could be covered"
PNHP claims costs would go down by 31%. If you noticed in my calculation i actually halved the total expenditures. From 2.4T to 1.2T. So the numbers a little lower.
I'm not saying single payer is bad I'm just trying to say it's not "free". Someone has to pay for it, and, as you mentioned "only people with income would pay". And given the selfish nature of people, everyone is fine with that as long as it's not them who have to pay for it.
Actually, if you look at tax rates around the world you'll see that in countries with "free" healthcare the tax rate hovers in the mid 40%s. Current US tax rate is about 27%. That's about in the ballpark my 80%.
That is obvious my friend, nothing is free. We could save collectively about a trillion a year (over 16% of GDP goes to health profit system) if we had a more efficient system.
I lived in a country where I paid around 40% and I DID NOT MIND PAYING! Why? because I got excellent healthcare at no extra cost, I got a funded and guaranteed pension program, University education costs only 450 euros a year! So don't tell me about it, I have experienced it first-hand.
What do we in the USA get for your 27%? We get imperialist wars and war crimes, debts, a weak dollar, subsidies for parasitical corporations.
Forget France, the Netherlands, Canada, or England, et al.
Everyone here has seen the movie Sicko. In one segment Michael Moore escorted NYC First Responders to Cuba, where they were healed! They wept for the treatment that they received in Havana that was not available in NYC.
Everyone who views this movie can only envy the health care system of not only France or Italy but our Third World neighbor, Cuba.
Yes, NL, F, CA and GB have good healthcare systems, but the "Sicko" part about Cuban healthcare is just propaganda. Don't believe everything that you see on TV, especially if it come from someone with Moore's "reputation".
Talk to a Cuban, see what he/she says.
Talk to an American with no insurance or has been bankrupted (even with insurance) and see what he/she says. The US system is the most parasitical and barbaric, hands down. Ask the WHO. Take your anti-Cuban lies and propaganda elsewhere
You ever set foot in Cuba? Did you ever talk to a Cuban? From your posts seems like you didn't.
As you well know it is ILLEGAL for an American to travel to Cuba (whre are you from?); FYI my brother is married to a Cuban woman, so yes I have talked to a Cuban about it.
But that is a moot point, anecdotal evidence is meaningless without empirical research; ask the World Health Organization.
What is your response to my post? What about the 50 plus million Americans who have no insurance? What about the thousands of people with insurance that have been bankrupted by the "health" parasites? Why do we have the most expensive system by far and get so much less for it?
As I mentioned before i agree with main points of the article (uninsured people, other getting bankrupt, not good).
what puzzles me is people talking about real life in Cuba after watching Michael Moore movies (kinda like talking about Canada after watching Canadian Bacon). I suggest you have long talk with your sister in law. Ask her about her last experience visiting a doctor in Cuba.
I have done; what amazes me is how well Cuba has done (in relative terms) despite the blockade of the US Empire. So, despite your anti-Cuban sentiment, I applaud the efforts they have made given the most dire circumstances and poverty. Cuba aint utopia obviously, but then again neither is the USA. Are you going baknrupt because of a parasitical insurance industry?
B;ockade? What most USAns don't understand is that the US is the only one boycotting Cuba. Not blockading it. That's a different kind of animal. If you have friends in Canada they can tell you it's not big deal to go to Cuba. Thay have their all inclusive resorts where western tourists from all over the globe visit. Some of them even rent little scooters and vist the closest towns.
Yur sister in law might have told you this, Cuba was doing a lot better while the soviet union was still in existence and was supplying it with all sorts of goods. It's been downhill ever since. And i would not blame the US for that. The kind of social order that rules there is to blame for most the poverty and needs of the people. Same like it was in Eastern Europe until the late 80s.
But we're getting off topic here. My conclusion still stands. Single payer is Ok but expensive for the people who actually work for a living. People have to be told how much it costs. And let's face it, it's gonna happen. The greediest generation (baby boomers) are retiring and they want their free healthcare and us slobs are here again to pay for it.
"Single payer is Ok but expensive for the people who actually work for a living."
You've got to be kidding, right?
"Actually work for a living" sounds like you're trying to make the health care system of most of the world sound like it's only for welfare moms - one of the groups most targetted by corporatist media memes like yours.
Did you actually read this thread? working people are going to cover most of the cost of this. If you think someone else is pls lemme know. I'm curious.
In all countries that have free healthcare it is paid thru taxes by the citizens (tax rate in the mid40%, current US tax rate 27% if you did not read the thread carefully). Taxes are paid by working people, thru payroll deductions. Hence, free healthcare in the US will be paid by working stiffs like you and me.
Like I mentioned above I don't really care, it's gonna be imposed on me anyway. I lived in canada for years and i used the healthcare system there. It wasn't bad at all and I paid for it.
I just don't like to be lied to like I am some kind of idiot that it's not gonna cost me nothing.
Dude, did you read my post above? The only ones lying are the corporate interests and their political puppets. I am afraid you have it backwards and appear either naive or uninformed.
3 questions for you:
1.) Do you agree that 2.4T are spent on healthcare in the US every year? Yes/No
2.) Does the gov tell us where the 2.4T are gonna come from? Yes/No
3.) Where do YOU think the 2.4T are gonna come from?
I probably won't be checking on this thread anyway any more, but use my questions as food for thought. I'm gonna bring this up again the next time CD will have an article about national healthcare. In the mean time also look at this: http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/07/news/economy/national_health_care_never_happen.fortune/index.htm?postv...
You get your facts from CNN? dude I can't help you sorry
Do not forget the UK, Germany, Denmark, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Taiwan; but add Cuba, Costa Rica and soon Venezuela to the list.
The reference to France have first rate health care is correct and it has private health care through non profits through a public/private mix, but no for profit health insurance companies are allowed in the mix. But the same isn't true in the Netherlands, and the health care as a result of the profit making health insurance companies the government there has let into the mix has resulted in 250,000 people losing their health care as I point in my blog, and the Physicians for a National Health Program which I belong to has this in their reference material the organization sent me.
Germany, which I visited a short while back has a public/private mix but with those in the private sector selling basic health insurance to be non profits, to be strictly regulated by the central government, and to cover people who apply regardless of health condition.
You can access my blog at ahgoldberg.radioleft.com.
Extra point-- the private health insurance industry is rationing health care in this country already and depriving people of needed care to suit their bottom line and at our expense.
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The reference to France have first rate health care is correct and it has private health care through non profits through a public/private mix, but no for profit health insurance companies are allowed in the mix. But the same isn't true in the Netherlands, and the health care as a result of the profit making health insurance companies the government there has let into the mix has resulted in 250,000 people losing their health care as I point in my blog, and the Physicians for a National Health Program which I belong to has this in their reference material the organization sent me.
Germany, which I visited a short while back has a public/private mix but with those in the private sector selling basic health insurance to be non profits, to be strictly regulated by the central government, and to cover people who apply regardless of health condition.
You can access my blog at ahgoldberg.radioleft.com.
AD
Yesterday I was talking about this, with friends.
One was making a motorcycle trip to Argentina, and going through Peru he was hit by a vehicle on a mountain road crushing his leg. He said the care he got was incredible and it didn't cost him a thing.
Another story was when three friends were sailing off Mexico, were caught in a hurricane. On top of that one had a heart attack. The Mexican Navy, came to the rescue with medical assistance and went out of their way to help in every way they could, including guiding them through the reefs. NO CHARGE!
Seem PR firms are hard at work to make it seem other countries are so much worse than ours!
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As much as we bad mouth Cuba they have NOT skimped on EDUCATION. Their work force WILL BE the next Silicone Valley! Trust Me!
Boycott the MSM! It's bad for ya.
NMBill,
I have had similar conversations and learned that the sister of one friend broke her leg while traveling in Canada. She received excellent care and was not charged a cent because, as they explained at the hospital, she was a guest in their country.
Another friend had a young relative who was told by American doctors that her severe headaches were caused by depression or stress. They wanted to prescribe antidepressants but would not order any tests to find out the cause. Shortly after- luckily for her- she went to visit France and her headaches worsened. She sought treatment there, and French doctors immediately conducted tests and found out that she had a brain aneurism! If she had stayed in America, she would have died.
Having recently gone through what most would consider a "health care nightmare", I am struck by the enormity of the stupidity of the conservative thinkers who insist that the current manifestation is adequate.
But this is the perfect explanation of conservative thinking.
"If other countries can't do it, neither can America" or I just love this one; and it goes back to the first year of the Lincoln administration, when the Secretary of the Patent office, wrote (nothing can be more 'glaring' than stupidity that you w-r-i-t-e ) to the President, "everything that can be invented already has been invented"------.
Being an observer of America (while one of their 'prisoners of war') there are very few things that Americans think they CANNOT do----in fact on just about any given subject, Americans either claim to have 'invented it', 'thought of it first', or were 'thinking about thinking of it' but there are so many Americans who believe that there is no logical answer to what most professionals consider a "major catastrophic mess" "the American Health Care system"--- with little or no relief in sight.
The real answer is simple. As with so many other 'human aspects'---most Americans cannot consider a subject that they have not experienced personally---but just wait and see what happens when they get a first hand experience of how inadequate the health care system is when it 'hits them in the face'------then 'they sing a different tune'. When enough Americans want change--they can 'make change'.
America has never been known to learn from the mistakes of others much less their own, but "health care can be very personal". When enough people are impacted adversely in their 'personal health care' because of the present system's short comings; there will be change........
The real question should be---does America have enough time?
Good Luck America, you really need it.
Writing as someone who has Dutch third cousins, their system of health care would shock a douche bag like Senator Kyl if he was having an honest moment and not being a corporate shill.
The greatest threat to US health care is not the right wing extremists, it is the Obama regime and the Democrats in the US Congress and Senate.
As long as the Democrats continue to allow the insurance/pharma/AMA cartel to control the health care "reform" agenda while not considering single-payer, the results will be no reform, or more likely, less health care at higher costs; either outcome will please the right wing.