A recent trip to Europe taught me that…
many Europeans do NOT like their healthcare system. Most were confused as to why the US uses them as examples for good systems, when they feel that their system has all kinds of problems…the main one being that they are expensive and can’t last long term without some big changes.
This was only maybe 15-20 people from Germany, Austria and France, Italy and UK. Mostly PhD students, post docs or MDs, but interesting nonetheless.
most didn’t hate their system though, but thought it needed improvements. Sounded like many germans buy private insurance in addition to paying for some kind of public plan becasue they could get better and quicker service.
This reminds me of NTKG’s post from earlier:
Most Brits are against and don’t like their government health care rationing system.—Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) just now on MSNBC with NO PUSH BACK from Andrea Mitchell.
It seems like there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence from both sides—for every Brit or Canadian or Australian who likes their health system there’s someone else who doesn’t like it. I haven’t seen a real poll (if there possibly could be such a thing).
I would be most interested to hear from people who have lived in both the U.S. and these other countries. Like, I’m sure a Canadian could come up with something to complain about with their system if you asked, but I still hear the Canadians I know living here saying that their system is better than ours.
I’d be happy with something that just sucked less. Nothing’s perfect. Slow service > no service.
According to Gallup:
On availability of quality local healthcare, the median percentage of satisfied respondents among countries with universal health coverage is 79%, 13 percentage points higher than the median percentage among those without universal coverage (66%). For those that have confidence in their national health system, the difference is again 13 points (73% for those with universal coverage, 60% for those without).
It is impossible to create a system in any country that has universal support. But at least many European countries have universal coverage. Yes, many people buy supplemental insurance, but so do many Medicare recipients. At least in those European countries, millions of people are not denied treatment for serious illnesses because they do not have health insurance as is the case in the US.
These are also opinion polls and not raw data on availability of health care or the overall health of a nation, which I would argue are good indicators of a system’s success. I don’t have time to do much in-depth research at the moment, but just for example: Europeans are generally taller (height is a fairly accurate indicator of a population’s health) and have a longer life expectancy than Americans.
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