Nationalize Health Care?

The Grass is Not Necessarily Greener... Consider the French system:

Some of the most thoughtful proponents of national health care look to France as a model of how such a program could work. The French system ranks at or near the top of most cross-country comparisons and is ranked number one by the WHO.

Here are some excerpts from the entire article to help you understand that The Grass is not (!) Always Greener:

1. 99% of French citizens are covered by national health insurance.
2. The French health care system is the world’s third most expensive, costing 11% of GDP, behind only the US (17%) and Switzerland (11.5%).
3. In 2006, the system ran a 10.3 billion deficit. Some government projections suggest the deficit for the health care system alone could top 29 billion in 2010 and 66 billion by 2020.
4. Most services require substantial copayments ranging from 10 to 40% of the cost. As a result, most French consumers pay for about 13% of health care out of pocket --- roughly the same as US consumers.
5. To control the use of prescription drugs, the National Health Authority has begun to delist drugs from it reimbursement formulary. One study found that 90% of French asthma patients are not receiving drugs that might improve their condition.
6. The system has proven unable to address medical emergencies and was blamed in part for the deaths of 15,000 elderly individuals in the summer of 2003 during the European heat wave.
7. Some studies warn that France is in danger of “joining the group of countries [such as] the UK and Canada where the existence of rationing of health care and waiting lists raises serious questions of access to treatments by those who need them.”
8. The French also inherently believe (by a 3:1 margin) that the quality of care they receive is less important than everyone having equal access to that care.
9. To discourage over-utilization, France imposes substantial cost sharing on patients and relies heavily on an unregulated private insurance market to fill the gaps in coverage and allows consumers to pay extra for better or additional care, creating a two-tiered system.
10. This is clearly NOT the commonly portrayed style of national health care.

Excerpted from: July, 2008 – The Health Insurance Underwriter, Pages 32-38