Quote:How did this get in a Milwaukee race riot thread?


NHS has their own problems though.  Having financial difficulties.  Deny patients care.  Starting to suffer from even longer wait times.  etc...  there are pro's and con's with all systems.  Plus they arent great at a lot of specialties.  Their healthcare system is similar to our schooling model.  Everyone pays taxes but if your public school is lousy, you pay for private if you can afford it.  Which is what people in England do.  Something like 10-15% pay for private insurance because the NHS just doesnt pay for a number of specialties.  Not economically feasible.  And a great number of NHS specialists moonlight as private pay physicians in order to make enough money.  Without the private insurance, the NHS would have huge difficulties.  Or they'd just flat out deny a lot of specialty care.

 

There was a really good PBS episode on Frontline called "Sick around the World".  Basically some guy went to 5 or 6 countries around the world, looked at their healthcare system, and determined what we could learn here in America.  England, Germany, Switzerland, Japan.... Taiwain i believe...think he went to Canada.  Anyways I'm not sure anyone here is dorky enough to go, but the guy came to talk at UNF a few years ago at their "international public policy lecture" series thingy do.  Pretty interesting.  Lots of pro's and cons with every model.  Think that frontline episode can be found online still.

 

The one thing I feel like doesnt get enough press when we talk about healthcare is our unhealthy population.  Put our demographic in these other countries' healthcare systems and they'd absolutely collapse.  In Japan for example, it's part of their culture to just stop by their general practitioner for a quick check up on their way to work.  Or on the way to dinner.  Very health conscious.  Eat very healthy.  Very low healthcare costs.  Their model simply wouldnt work for us because we have a completely different patient population.  We could institute the most generous health insurance policies in the world but are JimBob and Ray Ray gonna all of a sudden stop off for their weekly blood pressure check before swinging by McDonalds for lunch?  Not a chance.  Huge difference between health care and health insurance.

I don't know anyone who pays for their own private insurance in the UK, usually it is a perk offered by companies. 

 

You make a good point on japanese diet and ability to go by the GP. I think it is proven that primary care is the most important and this is what holds back people in a private insurance system going to the doctor, They worry about the costs of going to the doctor and don't bother until symptoms get more severe.

 

Saying that Australia isn't too dissimilar to the US in terms of poor diet, however are some of the longest living in the world, so obviously doing something right with healthcare.

 

Don't get me wrong, if I had a bucket load of money i'd probably be very happy with the us model.

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