No, thank God. We do have malpractice lawsuits sometimes. In Canada, people can sue but the way they do it is different and much more strict and far less frivilous.
U.S. report: 40 million can't afford health care
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No, thank God. We do have malpractice lawsuits sometimes. In Canada, people can sue but the way they do it is different and much more strict and far less frivilous.
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Yes, you are right. My mother who was in nursing at the local hospital while I was growing up said many times "Doctors bury their mistakes"
These are not the cases I speak of. Just as with false rape reporters, frivilous lawsuit people take away from those who have legitimate claims.
The US is in dire need of tort reform. That alone would make health care more affordable.
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Poor and Rich patients receive the equal treatment in Europe countries including Germany. The treatment costs are equal.
If Rich patients demand to receive the treatment from the Professor only, not all quality doctors and want one room for himself or herself instead of 2 to 3 bed in one room then insure private healthcare insurance.
Yes, the poor people receive the treatment from the Professor only if the Professor want to do it.
We don't have private clinic but all clinic including specialist are for rich and poor patients. My son was delivered to Head Specialist clinic by heliphor from clinic after bike accident. The professor operated him. I didn't demand him because I trust quality doctors but the professor want do it. I am sure you remember my son's bicycle accident in my thread several years ago. His head surgery would cost the same as the house... I am glad that I have unlimited family healthcare insurance to aviod house bankrupt...
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What Obama can learn from European Healthcare
What Obama can learn from European Healthcare
Imagine a place where doctors still do house calls. When I was visiting my friend Meredith, living in the small rural town of Lautrec about an hour's drive outside Toulouse, France, one day she was stung badly by a wasp, causing a sizable and painful swelling on her hand.
She called her doctor, and to my great surprise within 15 minutes he had shown up at her door -- the famous French doctor's house call. I couldn't get over it. "House calls in the United States went out when Eisenhower was president," I told her, shaking my head.
My father-in-law had a similar experience while vacationing in Switzerland. He awoke one morning with what turned out to be a painful urinary tract blockage. The doctor paid a house call with hardly any wait at all and inserted a cleverly designed catheter that had no drainage bag.
Even though he was a foreigner, my father-in-law paid out-of-pocket only $100 for this emergency service. Back at home in Minneapolis when he had to go to the emergency room a couple of years later, he waited nearly nine hours to receive medical attention, even though he had health insurance.
A U.S. expatriate living in Belgium told me that both he and his sister in Minneapolis had a procedure called a catheter ablation of the heart to eliminate an irregular heartbeat. Even though she had full medical coverage provided by her employer, she spent $2,400 out-of-pocket for the procedure which was performed as an outpatient surgery under a mild sedative.
For the same procedure in Belgium, he paid just under $100 and received full royal treatment, including two nights in the hospital for observation and post-op recovery.
The medicine he now needs to take costs him about $4 for a three-week supply. In the United States that same medicine costs his sister $19 -- nearly five times the price in Belgium.
Even the moderately poor and formerly communist countries in East and Central Europe have universal health care. In the Czech Republic, when the government wanted to introduce a co-payment of less than $2 per office visit, it nearly toppled the government because health care is viewed as a basic right and an integral part of the nation's social contract.
What is truly disturbing, given the vast outlays for health care in the United States, are the various health indicators showing the country's poor performance.
Whether one looks at infant mortality, life expectancy, the number of physicians, hospital beds, medical errors or high out-of-pocket expenses, America underperforms to a shocking degree. Consequently, the World Health Organization (WHO) has ranked the United States 72nd of 191 countries for "level of health."
And it ranks 37th for "overall health system performance" -- just behind Costa Rica and Dominica and just ahead of Slovenia and Cuba, countries with a fraction of the economic wealth of the United States.
France and Italy, which have universal health care coverage for all their residents, even recent immigrants, were ranked first and second in the WHO listing. Most other European nations, who also have universal coverage for all, also were ranked near the top.
Yet despite this difference in performance between U.S. and European systems, somehow Europe manages to spend only a fraction of what the United States spends on health care.
According to the WHO, the United States spends 16.5% of its GDP on health care, or about $6,100 per person. This compares to an average of 8.6% in European countries. France does it for far less, spending just $3,500 per person, or 10.7% of its economy.
Says Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the WHO's Global Program on Evidence for Health Policy, "Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you're an American -- rather than a citizen of most other advanced countries." That's a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs for the world's lone superpower.
How do the French, Italians and other European countries do it? How do they manage to provide better health care than most Americans receive for about half the per capita cost? While there are differences from nation to nation, there also are some broad generalities to point to, as well as national specifics.
These give us a pretty good snapshot that should be instructive to the Obama administration as it grapples with the inefficiencies that are continuing to hurt American workers, businesses -- and increasingly will hurt U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.
The first overriding difference between U.S. and European health care systems is one of philosophy. The various European health care systems put people and their health before profits -- la santé d'abord, "health comes first," as the French are fond of saying.
It is the difference between health care run mostly as a non-profit venture with the goal of keeping people healthy and productive -- or running it as a for-profit commercial enterprise. It's no coincidence that, as the United States tries to grapple with soaring health care costs and lack of universal coverage, UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire received a staggering $124.8 million in compensation in 2005. He is just one of many grossly overcompensated kingpins of the U.S. health care industry.
U.S. health care corporations will spout platitudes about wanting to provide good service for their customers, but there's no escaping the bottom line that the CEOs of giant health corporations ultimately are accountable to one small group -- their stockholders.
If nothing else, the U.S. health care system provides a valuable fable illustrating that corporate profits and affordable, quality universal health care are not a viable mix.
The second major difference between U.S. and European health care is in the specific institutions and practices that flow from this philosophy of "health comes first." Contrary to stereotype, not every country in Europe employs government-run, "socialized medicine."
Unlike single-payer Britain or Sweden, other nations like France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium have figured out a third way, a hybrid with private insurance companies, short waiting lists for treatment and individual choice of doctors (most of whom are in private practice). This third-way hybrid is based on the principle of "shared responsibility" between workers, employers and the government, all contributing their fair share to guarantee universal coverage.
Participation for individuals is mandatory, not optional, just as it is mandatory to have a driver's license to drive a car.
These health care plans are similar to what Massachusetts recently enacted -- but with two essential differences.
First, in France and Germany, the private insurance companies are non-profits. Doctors, nurses and health care professionals are paid well, but you don't have corporate health care CEOs making hundreds of millions of dollars. Generally speaking, the profit motive has been wrung out of the system.
The second key difference is in the area of cost controls. In France and Germany, fees for services are negotiated between representatives of the health care professions, the government, patient consumer representatives and the private non-profit insurance companies.
Like in the U.S. system for Medicare, together they establish a national agreement for treatment procedures, fee structures and rate ceilings that prevent health care costs from spiraling out of control. And this is good for businesses because it doesn't expose them to the soaring health care costs that have plagued U.S. businesses and created bitter labor strife between business owners and their employees.
So if the United States' privatized system is at a dead end, which would be better to adopt in the United States, either the single-payer type of Britain, Sweden and Canada -- or the shared responsibility system of France, Belgium, Germany and Japan?
Either would be vastly better for most Americans than what the country currently has.
But in talking to different people in Europe in many countries, including doctors, nurses and consumers, I came to the tentative conclusion that the shared responsibility systems seem to offer a few advantages over single payer, including shorter waiting periods for surgery and other procedures.
Generally speaking, their health care systems had a better reputation among the people who used them, I found. In fact, it is not uncommon for those who live in single-payer countries like Britain to travel to the shared responsibility countries like France or Belgium for treatment.
That way, they avail themselves of certain health care services and surgeries because the lines are shorter and the care just as good if not better (individuals from EU member nations have reciprocity to use each other's medical services).
This trend seems noteworthy and worth further investigation. Instead of relying on the assumption that universal health care is synonymous with single payer, U.S. proponents of quality, affordable health care should examine the shared responsibility systems of France, Belgium, Germany and elsewhere.
President Barack Obama, to his credit, is doing what he can in difficult times to extend health care coverage to some of the 47 million Americans currently lacking it. Recently he signed legislation, previously vetoed by President Bush, to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which will provide subsidized health care to up to four million mostly low-income children.
And his fiscal stimulus package included $25 billion for subsidizing 65% of health care premium costs for laid-off workers for up to nine months. Yet for many of the unemployed, even that subsidy will not be sufficient to allow them to afford health care coverage, an increasing concern as the ranks of the unemployed rise. And none of these measures do anything to bring down the cost of health care, which slowly is crippling the U.S. economy.
Americans love to be number one and win the gold, whether in Olympic skiing, the World Series, Super Bowl or the Tour de France. But I am still waiting for the day when Americans decide they want to be number one in health care. Wouldn't it be grand to beat the French for a change at something that really matters.
Steven Hill is a program director with the New America Foundation and his book Europe Rising comparing the Europe Way to the American Way will be published by the University of California Press in September 2009.
Steven Hill: What Obama Can Learn from European Healthcare
True, we recieve house doctor calls when we were in the bed with fever, or after severe surgeries... but they won't come if there're little things like flu, etc.
Like what I responsed Reba's post that we (rich and poor people) receive the equal treatment because we pay the healthcare insurance.
What Obama can learn from European Healthcare
Imagine a place where doctors still do house calls. When I was visiting my friend Meredith, living in the small rural town of Lautrec about an hour's drive outside Toulouse, France, one day she was stung badly by a wasp, causing a sizable and painful swelling on her hand.
She called her doctor, and to my great surprise within 15 minutes he had shown up at her door -- the famous French doctor's house call. I couldn't get over it. "House calls in the United States went out when Eisenhower was president," I told her, shaking my head.
My father-in-law had a similar experience while vacationing in Switzerland. He awoke one morning with what turned out to be a painful urinary tract blockage. The doctor paid a house call with hardly any wait at all and inserted a cleverly designed catheter that had no drainage bag.
Even though he was a foreigner, my father-in-law paid out-of-pocket only $100 for this emergency service. Back at home in Minneapolis when he had to go to the emergency room a couple of years later, he waited nearly nine hours to receive medical attention, even though he had health insurance.
A U.S. expatriate living in Belgium told me that both he and his sister in Minneapolis had a procedure called a catheter ablation of the heart to eliminate an irregular heartbeat. Even though she had full medical coverage provided by her employer, she spent $2,400 out-of-pocket for the procedure which was performed as an outpatient surgery under a mild sedative.
For the same procedure in Belgium, he paid just under $100 and received full royal treatment, including two nights in the hospital for observation and post-op recovery.
The medicine he now needs to take costs him about $4 for a three-week supply. In the United States that same medicine costs his sister $19 -- nearly five times the price in Belgium.
Even the moderately poor and formerly communist countries in East and Central Europe have universal health care. In the Czech Republic, when the government wanted to introduce a co-payment of less than $2 per office visit, it nearly toppled the government because health care is viewed as a basic right and an integral part of the nation's social contract.
What is truly disturbing, given the vast outlays for health care in the United States, are the various health indicators showing the country's poor performance.
Whether one looks at infant mortality, life expectancy, the number of physicians, hospital beds, medical errors or high out-of-pocket expenses, America underperforms to a shocking degree. Consequently, the World Health Organization (WHO) has ranked the United States 72nd of 191 countries for "level of health."
And it ranks 37th for "overall health system performance" -- just behind Costa Rica and Dominica and just ahead of Slovenia and Cuba, countries with a fraction of the economic wealth of the United States.
France and Italy, which have universal health care coverage for all their residents, even recent immigrants, were ranked first and second in the WHO listing. Most other European nations, who also have universal coverage for all, also were ranked near the top.
Yet despite this difference in performance between U.S. and European systems, somehow Europe manages to spend only a fraction of what the United States spends on health care.
According to the WHO, the United States spends 16.5% of its GDP on health care, or about $6,100 per person. This compares to an average of 8.6% in European countries. France does it for far less, spending just $3,500 per person, or 10.7% of its economy.
Says Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the WHO's Global Program on Evidence for Health Policy, "Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you're an American -- rather than a citizen of most other advanced countries." That's a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs for the world's lone superpower.
How do the French, Italians and other European countries do it? How do they manage to provide better health care than most Americans receive for about half the per capita cost? While there are differences from nation to nation, there also are some broad generalities to point to, as well as national specifics.
These give us a pretty good snapshot that should be instructive to the Obama administration as it grapples with the inefficiencies that are continuing to hurt American workers, businesses -- and increasingly will hurt U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.
The first overriding difference between U.S. and European health care systems is one of philosophy. The various European health care systems put people and their health before profits -- la santé d'abord, "health comes first," as the French are fond of saying.
It is the difference between health care run mostly as a non-profit venture with the goal of keeping people healthy and productive -- or running it as a for-profit commercial enterprise. It's no coincidence that, as the United States tries to grapple with soaring health care costs and lack of universal coverage, UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire received a staggering $124.8 million in compensation in 2005. He is just one of many grossly overcompensated kingpins of the U.S. health care industry.
U.S. health care corporations will spout platitudes about wanting to provide good service for their customers, but there's no escaping the bottom line that the CEOs of giant health corporations ultimately are accountable to one small group -- their stockholders.
If nothing else, the U.S. health care system provides a valuable fable illustrating that corporate profits and affordable, quality universal health care are not a viable mix.
The second major difference between U.S. and European health care is in the specific institutions and practices that flow from this philosophy of "health comes first." Contrary to stereotype, not every country in Europe employs government-run, "socialized medicine."
Unlike single-payer Britain or Sweden, other nations like France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium have figured out a third way, a hybrid with private insurance companies, short waiting lists for treatment and individual choice of doctors (most of whom are in private practice). This third-way hybrid is based on the principle of "shared responsibility" between workers, employers and the government, all contributing their fair share to guarantee universal coverage.
Participation for individuals is mandatory, not optional, just as it is mandatory to have a driver's license to drive a car.
These health care plans are similar to what Massachusetts recently enacted -- but with two essential differences.
First, in France and Germany, the private insurance companies are non-profits. Doctors, nurses and health care professionals are paid well, but you don't have corporate health care CEOs making hundreds of millions of dollars. Generally speaking, the profit motive has been wrung out of the system.
The second key difference is in the area of cost controls. In France and Germany, fees for services are negotiated between representatives of the health care professions, the government, patient consumer representatives and the private non-profit insurance companies.
Like in the U.S. system for Medicare, together they establish a national agreement for treatment procedures, fee structures and rate ceilings that prevent health care costs from spiraling out of control. And this is good for businesses because it doesn't expose them to the soaring health care costs that have plagued U.S. businesses and created bitter labor strife between business owners and their employees.
So if the United States' privatized system is at a dead end, which would be better to adopt in the United States, either the single-payer type of Britain, Sweden and Canada -- or the shared responsibility system of France, Belgium, Germany and Japan?
Either would be vastly better for most Americans than what the country currently has.
But in talking to different people in Europe in many countries, including doctors, nurses and consumers, I came to the tentative conclusion that the shared responsibility systems seem to offer a few advantages over single payer, including shorter waiting periods for surgery and other procedures.
Generally speaking, their health care systems had a better reputation among the people who used them, I found. In fact, it is not uncommon for those who live in single-payer countries like Britain to travel to the shared responsibility countries like France or Belgium for treatment.
That way, they avail themselves of certain health care services and surgeries because the lines are shorter and the care just as good if not better (individuals from EU member nations have reciprocity to use each other's medical services).
This trend seems noteworthy and worth further investigation. Instead of relying on the assumption that universal health care is synonymous with single payer, U.S. proponents of quality, affordable health care should examine the shared responsibility systems of France, Belgium, Germany and elsewhere.
President Barack Obama, to his credit, is doing what he can in difficult times to extend health care coverage to some of the 47 million Americans currently lacking it. Recently he signed legislation, previously vetoed by President Bush, to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which will provide subsidized health care to up to four million mostly low-income children.
And his fiscal stimulus package included $25 billion for subsidizing 65% of health care premium costs for laid-off workers for up to nine months. Yet for many of the unemployed, even that subsidy will not be sufficient to allow them to afford health care coverage, an increasing concern as the ranks of the unemployed rise. And none of these measures do anything to bring down the cost of health care, which slowly is crippling the U.S. economy.
Americans love to be number one and win the gold, whether in Olympic skiing, the World Series, Super Bowl or the Tour de France. But I am still waiting for the day when Americans decide they want to be number one in health care. Wouldn't it be grand to beat the French for a change at something that really matters.
Steven Hill is a program director with the New America Foundation and his book Europe Rising comparing the Europe Way to the American Way will be published by the University of California Press in September 2009.
Steven Hill: What Obama Can Learn from European Healthcare
True, we recieve house doctor calls when we were in the bed with fever, or after severe surgeries... but they won't come if there're little things like flu, etc.
Like what I responsed Reba's post that we (rich and poor people) receive the equal treatment because we pay the healthcare insurance.
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Professor? Do you mean physician?
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What service do you get if you don't pay the health care insurance?
House calls seem nice to the patient but it seems like a big waste of time for a doctor to drive to each patient's house. He could see many more patients if they come to him instead of him driving all over the place to find his patients.
In the olden rural days it made more sense for the doctor to make house calls but now it's not efficient service for urban and suburban areas.
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No, I mean Professor Dr. xxxxxx of Clinic xxxxx
Chief Physicans and their assistants can do that as well.
I don´t know about USA. Can the patients demand Professor Dr. to do for them when they have private insurance coverage, not Medicard/Medicare?
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what is Professor Dr.?????? There's no such thing in medical field. What you're talking about is the college teacher with ph.d (but no medical training or degree). I suppose you call it Professor Dr. in germany? :scratch:
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I'm sorry, I don't know what a Professor Dr is.
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Jiro and Reba, it seem to me that there´re no professor Doctor of clinic in USA? :scratch:
Professor Dr. of clinic - Google-Suche
http://www.google.com/search?hl=de&...de&q=Prof.+Dr.+med.+von+klinik&btnG=Suche&lr=
Professor Dr. of clinic - Google-Suche
http://www.google.com/search?hl=de&...de&q=Prof.+Dr.+med.+von+klinik&btnG=Suche&lr=
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We don't have the term "Professor Dr." in here
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what about the bums? (the one who barely worked or contributed too little) Do they still receive the equal treatment?
yes. that's what I did. and even the post-surgery of my appendix removal.
For sick old people with mobility problem in here... doctors do come to check on them. I forget the word for that type of medical service... help me out in here
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If you don´t have Professor Dr. then what about Professor?
Professor is top responsiblity of all teams and their assistants.
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Like what I said before that poor and rich patients received the equal treatment, no matter what. Unemployed patients also received the equal treatment, too.
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That does not answer my question at all. You said that unemployed patients receive the equal treatment because they work to pay healthcare insurance before they lost their job. I'm talking about BUMS. HOMELESS PEOPLE. People who did NOTHING. What of them?
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That´s good question. I think Social Welfare are responsible for the cost of homeless people but I´m not sure either I am correct or not. I will ask my hubby for clarify tomorrow (He is sleeping).
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I know homeless people can across to health care in UK (NHS).