If it’s all the same with you I won’t be trotting around after your goalposts. I’m pretty sure other national schemes variants like the French national health system with its generous combination of state cost reimbursement and mutual not-for-profit, no loopholes, no funny business, low cost supplementary insurance is better than the NHS.
I’m assuming you are not so ignorant of the nature of the European mix of state and not-for-profit supplementry insurance that you think they in any way at all like the US system?
Because the NHS is the most centralized, directly government-run health care system in the free world. The best system in the world is France’s, and that should be the basis for other countries seeking to model their system after what works. Yet when most activists think about UHC, they think about single payer.
…assertion without evidence. And even if it were true, so what? Based on the available evidence it works quite well, doesn’t it?
I just checked the thread: and this is the very first time you’ve bought up France in this whole discussion. Again: more evidence that you are inventing stuff out of thin air. You are so desperate to make the NHS look bad you will throw anything at it. Now your argument seems to be that the NHS isn’t as good as the French system. I don’t understand why you want it to look so bad. Care to explain?
The French system is a mix of state funding and compulsory mutual insurance deducted from your pay packet (a tax in fact). It is in essence a single payer scheme like the NHS. Just a better, more generous one with no insurance company sharks swimming in the pool. The Euro schemes are all variants of universal health systems and have infinitely more in common with each other than they do with the universally despised US system
The Spanish system got fucked up by moving from single-payer to “still the government pays but now it’s regional ones”. Can we go back to single-payer please?
Oh, you’re not interested in those systems where having multiple payers has fucked things up? Sorry, it’s the one I’m most familiar with!
Hardly an assertion, common knowledge. Do you actually not know about any health care systems other than the US and Britain?
Canada, Australia, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom have single-payer health insurance programs. These programs provide universal health care. Single-payer healthcare may be operated in a number of ways. **In some cases doctors may be employed, and hospitals run by, the government as in the United Kingdom. **Alternatively the government may purchase healthcare services from outside organizations. This is the approach taken in Canada.
Now it says, “Some cases”, but fails to list any other nation where doctors are directly employed by the government. This, as far as I know, is unique to Britain.
Why do so many commentators want the US system to look so bad? Then you have your answer.
I did not single out France specifically for praise, but I have mentioned the superiority of multi-payer systems over single payer systems regularly.
But the French model would work too, provided we have a low floor. French citizens have to pay an average of 30% of costs out of pocket as a co-pay. UK health care is free at the point of service, no?
The co-pays seem to make all the difference when it comes to avoiding overwhelming the system.
Right, and the difference between Medicare/Medicaid and the VA is exactly what you are describing - the VA is like NHS, Medicare/Medicaid is like Canada/France (in loose terms).
Which means there could be a compromise in there. Obamacare itself is very flawed, but the basic outline is sound and as has been pointed out, supported by conservatives. It’s some of the specifics that cause problems: the subsidies are too generous and the HHS has too much power to impose mandates that increase the cost of insurance.
Pretty sure that’s the way we do it in Sweden for the most part. A lot was made of S:t Görans Sjukhus in Stockholm being the first privately run emergency hospital in Sweden.
I believe a region’s Landstinget employs doctors, nurses etc in most hospitals.
Sweden has great health care. I also notice that Sweden charges co-pays, so maybe the centralization is less the issue than the fact that lack of co-pays is overburdening the NHS.
Any co-pay at least prevents people from going in when they don’t need the care. And that’s a preferable way than the triage system you have to use when there are no co-pays. France and Sweden do not have significant wait times, do they? Canada and Britain do. The lack of co-pays is evidently the cause of the delays in care.
