Speaking of taxes, Europeans pay more in taxes - an average of about 20% more - than us, which I think is how they are able to afford to have the government pay for most or all of their health care.
And are you saying that we need to model our health care after these countries? You know that all is not rosy with them. For instance, I read sometime ago in Business Week, I believe, that Britain has a lot of problem with their NHS, and France "appears" to be doing well. Let's look at the French model. On the plus side, France appears to have a lot of success with theirs, but you need to look deeper into it. The nice thing is that their government picks up the tab if you are out of work. And they get to choose their hospital and doctor which we do as well. Now the way that they can do this is they enforce price controls, which we would have do here. They use a national fee schedule. But, their doctors can charge extra, and I believe that although less than half do, they can and do charge extra. I think it is somewhere around $50.00 extra though, so that is not too bad. And French doctors earn far less than our US counterparts, somewhere around one third less. So from what I am reading, we would have to raise taxes to make this happen. Raising taxes is the same as cutting salary except that the government gets the money rather than the company. That will be a hard sell for Americans, especially American's who can afford quality health care. On the negative, we know that France pays more in taxes than we do (and works about 12 hours less a week than we do, which is actually a plus), and those extra taxes help fund their health care, along with private funding. So the employee is contributing as is the company. And about 90% of the population buys some sort of supplementary health care (like AFLAC here in the US) to cover things that are not covered in their basic package. France is also having a similar issue that we are. Rising costs and an aging population are making it a struggle for France to sustain this. This is causing their deficit to worsen faster than past projections have predicted. A question though. Is France's health care universal across the board? For instance, do illegal immigrants get access to health care the same as tax paying citizens? This is a small part of what is creating higher health care costs for us. That along with frivolous law suits that are jacking malpractice premiums ever skyward and the luxurious lifestyles that they are being accustomed to, as well as the rising cost of getting a medical degree in the first place, and also people who cannot afford health care coverage, but can still be seen for a real life emergency anyway. So a lot needs to be done, not just spewing 'government provided health care!!'. I am sure we can find stats on these other so called "models of successful health care", but the fact is, while we do need to do something with our totally dysfunctional health care system, we need to seriously examine the pros and cons of government sponsored health care. If the powers that be can create a viable and sustainable model for this, I am on board, even if it does mean paying a little more in taxes. Finally, I know that we have people from all over the world on this list. I would be interested to hear how their health care is compared to ours. Bruce Larry Lyons wrote: > > You mean making the problem worse than the systems like Britian, France, > Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Canada have? Where the per capita costs > are typically less than half of what it costs here, and where the overall > wellness of the population is higher? > > All those countries have a government sponsored medical system. With some you > pay a copay others cover everything out of general taxes. > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Download the latest ColdFusion 8 utilities including Report Builder, plug-ins for Eclipse and Dreamweaver updates. http;//www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs%5adobecf8%5Fbeta Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:246321 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
