Learn Something about U.S. Health Care
The U.S. is considered a “fourth-rate” country when it comes to health care.
In the rankings, worldwide, we are in less than thirtieth place.
We pay double per person what European countries like Britain typically pay, but instead of covering everyone like they do, we have over 45 million people in this country who have no health coverage at all.
Our privatized, unsubsidized system means that care is brutally expensive, so the very people who can’t afford coverage also can’t afford care. (In some other countries that don’t cover everyone, they cover the least-wealthy people and let the rich pay out-of-pocket.)
Our system is widely known to be, and criticized for, rewarding people (on both sides) for unhealthy rather than healthy behavior. Less preventative medicine means higher premiums for insurance companies. Doctors and hospitals get paid more when people are sicker, rather than getting bonuses for keeping patients healthy (as they do in several other countries). There’s huge incentive to take kickbacks and prescribe unnecessary drugs, and if you’re poor it makes more sense to let your condition go critical and then go to the emergency room than to try and seek out a doctor.
Arguably, no country has figured out the perfect health care system. But it’s completely asinine for a country like the U.S., which has no excuse for not being in first place or close to it, and which lags so desperately behind, to not be paying attention to how other countries are doing it.
On top of that, if you follow the subject at all, you know that the U.S. system can’t stay the way it is — it’s change or implode, at this point, due to a series of converging factors linked to the global economy, baby boomers, etc.
This PBS Frontline documentary is a really interesting look at how other countries — capitalist, free-market countries — handle health care. I think if you live in the U.S., or plan to, and you don’t know this information from some source, you need to.
I especially found Japan’s system interesting — they have the best health statistics in the world, longest life-span, lowest infant mortality — and they do it by having mandatory insurance for everyone, paid for by the government when people can’t afford it. Their system is actually more capitalist than ours, with 80% of hospitals being privately-owned. I loved the part where the reporter asks a Japanese expert if insurance companies make a profit from insurance the average family, and he gets this blank look in return: “No! They don’t exist to make a profit.“
If only.
I’m all for any improvement really, but above all I want to live in a country whose system I can be proud of, a system that actually promotes health, and never lets someone lose their life savings and go bankrupt due to medical bills.