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Healthcare
I just finished watching Sicko, a documentary on health care, in which Michael Moore shows how pathetic (corrupt, a-moral) our American health care system is. It kind of hurts watching the documentary. Seriously.
I know that some of this has to be propaganda but my God, if even some of it is true (and I feel like most of it likely is) then what the hell are we doing? Becky and I were talking about how the documentary makes us want to move to a different country, but I’m curious as to how the systems actually work in “socialized” countries.
So I’d like to open up to two conversations… the first is anyones take on our american health care systems and what we can do to improve them.
and two… I have a few international readers (including someone from Zimbabwe- which is just awesome) and I want to get your take on your “socialized” health care systems.
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4 Responses to “Healthcare”
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Ok. I’ll bite.
I confess that I’ve never been so open-mouthed with incredulity than when I saw a documentary about American healthcare on a plane once: the topic was heart surge for prisoners on death row. Evidently it would be “cruel and unusual” to deny them this form of healthcare if they needed it, so prisoners destined for the electric chair in California (I think) were being given heart transplants to keep them alive long enough to execute them. Meanwhile poor people in LA were unable to afford to have such treatment and were dying anyway. Coming from the UK, which in common with the rest of Europe has universal health care and no death penalty, the contradictions in that story just blew my mind.
Yes, in my country I go to see the doctor and it doesn’t cost me a penny. If he refers me to the hospital, that doesn’t cost a penny either. If I am scraped up off the road after an accident and taken to the emergency room, no one asks to see an insurance certificate before a treatment plan is determined, because it’s inherent that I am covered. If I suffer an incident in the workplace, my medical treatment will be paid for by the state (even if some lawyer persuades me to launch a separate claim for compensation). If a member of the family has a chronic, wasting condition, yep, they get free treatment for as long as it takes.
For this, we pay a significantly smaller proportion of GDP on healthcare than the US does (I don’t have the figures to hand, I’m afraid). Life expectancy is pretty similar; possibly worse if you’re rich; certainly better if you’re poor (sorry; I don’t have figures here either).
Is this a sustainable model? Yes and no. Because the available treatments are effectively infinite, and the resources emphatically are not, there has to be a form of rationing - not that it is politically expedient to call it that. A national body weighs evidence and decides which treatments offer value for money. And then there are frequent stories in the media of this or that person who has been denied a $60000 course of drug treatment which could have extended their life, or quality of life. And for a great many procedures, there are significant waiting lists. Six months for a hip replacement? In certain circumstances, weeks before chemotherapy? A year for a cateract operation?
The present government has spent a fortune in trying to improve this. And, to be honest, they are succeeding - but because there are still waiting lists, the Health Minister is often not believed. Some people - less than 10% of the population - have private health insurance (often as an employee benefit): its main (almost sole) benefit is to allow them to jump the queue for elective surgery. The majority of the population probably regards this as iniquitous (but many would jump at the chance
): when I had such a job, a significant minority of colleagues actually opted out of the private health insurance option.
I could go on at length
but I have probably already already dwarfed your original post. So I’ll stop.
Andrew- thanks for your thoughts man no worries about post length, I always want to hear more from others than say things myself.
I guess my question would be: Knowing all the issues with socialized medicine as far as waiting periods and such- do you feel like the system is better than the American sort of pay and pray system?
Matt - I’d have to say that almost everyone in Europe would regard the idea that good quality healthcare must be available to all as very basic. They (hey, in fact, we) would see the inequalities in the American system as deeply immoral. Any politician who tried to change the British system to make it more like the American system would … very quickly be out of office. No question.
Many in the UK would say that it seems as if the French do the whole socialized medicine thing much better than we do: I’ve never fully understood how their system works, but they avoid the waiting periods (and thanks to the European Union, anytime I find myself in France, I can use their healthcare system just as if I was French).
Sicko is a great movie. It should be required watching during this election season.