I can vividly remember riding in a car with my grandmother and turning to her and saying, "Aren't you happy that you don't live in Russia where you have to wait in line just to buy bread and have something to eat?" Those were the days, weren't they? I remember a time when pretty much everything made me think, "Wow, it's good to be an American and be able to {insert wonderful privilege here}."
Today I was riding home from work and I was listening to the radio. NPR, to be exact. I was a little later than usual coming home from work because I stopped at the grocery to buy some steaks and a salad and some asparagus. Not that my grocery list is important or even interesting, but I digress. Fresh Air with Terry Gross came on during my ride. I usually only catch a few minutes of the beginning, but today I was treated to pretty much half of the program. Today, my friend Terry was speaking to T.R. Reid who wrote a book about other health care systems around the world and how they related to the US. (Link if anyone is interested in hearing about it.)
Mr. Reid had nothing bad to say about the health systems of France (which is ranked number one, by the way), England, Japan, and Switzerland. One interesting point, however, was that Switzerland, once upon a time, tried to model their insurance companies off of the US. See, in every other developed country, health insurance is a non-profit industry. Switzerland, however, thought they'd try it our way. The ended up having 5% of their population that wasn't able to secure health insurance. Their government saw this and said, "Oh, hell no." They said that 5% of their population being unhealthy and unable to see a doctor was unacceptable. They quickly passed a law stating that no one can be denied coverage, and that the health insurance agencies were to be non-profit.
Do you guys happen to know where our uninsured rate is, by any chance? I do. Only because Mr. Reid knew. Our uninsured number is at 16% of our population.
I'm sure that the likes of Varus and Totem and gbaji will call me a bad American for saying this, but I was pretty much ashamed of our country, and completely envious of these other systems. Mr. Reid went on and on about how easy it is to get things done in France. How the doctors don't make a ton of money like they do here. They are "good, middle-class people." How the doctors offices don't have National Geographic in their waiting rooms. They're just white rooms with chairs. There aren't billing departments in the doctors offices in France. They have a card called "Card Vitale" or something, and the doctor just sticks it in this thingy on his computer (that is the technical term) and he can pull up all of his patients records. Everything. And they haven't yet had any problems with people hacking into the system. At the end of the appointment, he pushes a button, and the bill is already sent to the patient's insurance agency.
Know what else he mentioned? In most of these places, there are laws about how quickly the insurance companies have to pay the doctor. Two weeks, or something like that. No months going over the bills and arguing with your insurance company. AMAZING!
In Japan, the average citizen goes to their doctor 15 times a year. In the US, it's about 5 times a year. In Japan, the average hospital stay is 36 nights. The US? 6.
Oh! And do you know what else I learned?!
All of these countries have private insurance that is offered to their citizens.
Simply amazing. And no one goes uncovered. True, people can't opt out of having coverage. But I have no idea why that's a bad thing. We're required to have auto insurance here, so I see no difference.
Anyway, just wanted to share with you. I realize that another health insurance thread wasn't really needed, but I was astounded by some of these points.
I also learned that the term "socialized medicine" was made by a PR firm that the insurance companies hired to stop Truman from instituting a state run health insurance plan in 1947. Huh. Interesting stuff.
Edited, Aug 24th 2009 7:47pm by Belkira