Healthcare – look at France and Netherlands

The Boston Globe has a great article similar to a PBS “Frontline” episode about a year ago. Both show there are many ways to skin a national healthcare cat, with government involvement, but not in the top-down way of Great Britain or Canada.

Here’s Jonathan Cohn’s nut graf, from a month of investigating heathcare coverage in France and the Netherlands:

Not once did I encounter an interview subject who wanted to trade places with an American. And it was easy enough to see why. People in these countries were getting precisely what most Americans say they want: Timely, quality care. Physicians felt free to practice medicine the way they wanted; companies got to concentrate on their lines of business, rather than develop expertise in managing health benefits. But, in contrast with the US, everybody had insurance. The papers weren’t filled with stories of people going bankrupt or skipping medical care because they couldn’t afford to pay their bills. And they did all this while paying substantially less, overall, than we do.

And, other than a modest difference on cancer, these doctors actually treat many diseases and syndromes better than we do here.

That said, here’s nut graf two:

Of course, reforming health insurance in the US isn’t going to turn this country into France or the Netherlands overnight, any more than it would turn the US into Britain and Canada. The truth is that the changes now under consideration in Washington are relatively modest, by international standards.

But, significant chunks of the Obama Administration think anything that involves more direct government intervention in the healthcare sector is radical.