Where is the Health Care Debate around the World?

As I'm writing this article, the Health Care Debate in the United States is at full force. All you have to do is Google the phrase “Health Care Reform”, and this will lead you to around 100 relevant News articles published in the last hour and over 1,000 Articles published in the last 3 days. Give or take.

If only for a moment we could turn back the clock and remove the details that are being discussed in Congress at present. If we could go back to pre-Economic Meltdown & pre-Bailout times, back when there was a clear majority on two important issues regarding Healthcare in America.

1. Roughly 80% of Americans are dissatisfied with the total cost of Healthcare.



2. Over two thirds of Americans agree that there were (at least) major problems with the Healthcare system in the United States.



* Only 1% to 3% stated that there are 'No Problems'.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/4708/healthcare-system.aspx

What I found interesting is that despite all of the negative information we hear about Universal Health Care, the horror stories about waiting lists and whatnot. I couldn’t find one poll or article calling for a complete reform or "Overhaul" of the Health Care System in Australia, France, Japan or any First World Country for that matter.

In reality, Universal Healthcare Systems are widely accepted wherever they are implemented - overwhelmingly so. The thought of removing these systems, by individuals/parties both Left & Right equates to political suicide.

Sure there are problems overseas, none of which erase the issues that we have right here in the United States of America.

On the topic of 'Problems' in the US, I would like to share with you a few informative pieces that I've come across in recent weeks:

In a study conducted by the Harvard Medical School they estimate that 1.5 Million Americans will go Bankrupt this year due to Medical Bills. In addition, they surveyed a random sample of 2,314 people who filed for bankruptcy in early 2007, looked at their court records, and then interviewed more than 1,000 of them. They say that overall, three-quarters of the people with a medically-related bankruptcy had health insurance.

(CNN, June 5, 2009)

Apperantly, even if you have Health Insurance you are not immune from Medical Bankruptcy.

I recently saw an interesting program on PBS - Sick around the World - FRONTLINE, which visits 5 Capitalist Democracies, explains how their Health Care System works and draws the applicable comparisons between all of them. In the interviews that were conducted during this trip, it was evident that in countries operating under a Nationalized Health Care systems you simply cannot go bankrupt.

Beyond the issue of bankruptcy, the interviews seem to be quite fair in the sense that they expose both the Positive & Negative aspects of each system. The solution, as far as what I believe will bring the most positive outcome for the United States, is to take a serious look into all of these different systems and apply what would serve us best - at least in theory. Both in terms of the Economic implications and of course the Quality & Accessibility to Health in our country.

I'll close with a couple of Questions and Answers from the interview with Nigel Hawkes, the health editor for The Times of London and a longtime observer of Britain's National Health Service (NHS) - this is 1 of 5 interviews conducted by T.R. Reid.

We look at these comparative statistics of the United States versus other wealthy countries, including Britain. ... On most health indicators, Britain does better than the U.S.

Yes, it probably does, but other countries do better than Britain. The proper comparison really is with continental European countries like the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain. And on most measures, they tend to do a little better than us.

So the notion, "We're doing better than the U.S.," that's not an important notion to you?

No. The U.S. is always considered to be an outlier in health policy, because you've got this insurance-based and rather uncontrolled system that leads to very high costs and very great inequalities, as perceived from this side of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, I think the American experience has tended to put British people off insurance-based health care, because they say, "Oh, we don't want the American system." But you don't have to have the American system. You can have the French system or the Japanese system, which are not so expensive and which seem to work quite well.

Indeed, nobody thinks that their system is perfect. The question is therefore - Which set of problems do you you prefer?

It's apparent that no one in the Industrialized World wants to copy the American system. In a country that prides itself as being a World Leader, on this specific issue, one can only wonder why.