From Boston.com:
MANY advocates of a universal healthcare system in the United States look to Canada for their model. While the Canadian healthcare system has much to recommend it, there's another model that has been too long neglected. That is the healthcare system in France.
Although the French system faces many challenges, the World Health Organization rated it the best in the world in 2001 because of its universal coverage, responsive healthcare providers, patient and provider freedoms, and the health and longevity of the country's population. The United States ranked 37.
The French system is also not inexpensive. At $3,500 per capita it is one of the most costly in Europe, yet that is still far less than the $6,100 per person in the United States.
An understanding of how France came to its healthcare system would be instructive in any renewed debate in the United States.
That's because the French share Americans' distaste for restrictions on patient choice and they insist on autonomous private practitioners rather than a British-style national health service, which the French dismiss as "socialized medicine." Virtually all physicians in France participate in the nation's public health insurance, Sécurité Sociale.
Their freedoms of diagnosis and therapy are protected in ways that would make their managed-care-controlled US counterparts envious. However, the average American physician earns more than five times the average US wage while the average French physician makes only about two times the average earnings of his or her compatriots. But the lower income of French physicians is allayed by two factors. Practice liability is greatly diminished by a tort-averse legal system, and medical schools, although extremely competitive to enter, are tuition-free. Thus, French physicians enter their careers with little if any debt and pay much lower malpractice insurance premiums.
2 comments:
The French President is trying to get some of the money Bush is giving away. Notice baby Bush had to have his Daddy with him to talk to the French President. Laura knows where she stands now. Laura invited the French President and his wife. France's First Lady said she had a headache. Now NBC showed both the French President and his wife at a big party last night so looks like Laura got put in her place. Who would want to deal with the stupid Bush Family and Barbara baking cookies.
I'd love to hear what the French President and PM Brown have to say to each other about George W. Bush, I know it's be a laugh.
And from today's Chicago Trib
U.S. slips to 42nd in life expectancy rankings
By Stephen Ohlemacher | Associated Press
August 12, 2007
WASHINGTON - Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.
A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to data from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics.
"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington....Several factors have contributed to the U.S. lagging other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.
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