Does anyone really believe that private sector businesses can manage health care better than the government?
In the past several days, President Obama and HHS Secretary Sebelius have been ramping up their efforts to generate a groundswell of support for reform of the American dysfunctional non-health care system. Top Republicans have declared there will be no government health care system. Given that the World Health Organization’s most recent rating of health care provided by nations rates health care services in the good ol’ USA as 37th among the 191 nations and worst among those with the largest economies, while health care provided in France is rated as best, maybe we should look to Western Europe for ways to improve the health care provided in our country.
Supporters of government involvement in health care point to the fact that the US government is already assuring health care for the aged, those with low incomes, veterans and government employees, including members of Congress. The federal and state governments of the US already pay for more than 44% of health care costs in our country. Also, they note that thecost of health care in the US is above 17% of GDP, while it is 11% of the GDP of France. According to an article in The Dallas Morning News of May 18, 2009, the average cost of health care for an individual in the US in 2006 was $6,714, while for the individual in France it was $3,450. While anybody living in France for more than three months is covered by the national health insurance program, it is estimated that approximately 45 million citizens of our country have no health insurance.
The French health care system is not perfect; people of lower middle income complain that they cannot afford supplemental health insurance available to those who can afford it. As a result, many have to pay more for their medical care costs than the rich and the poor, with the latter having their supplemental health insurance paid by the French government. France is struggling to cover rising health care costs within its national budget, but its problem is considerably smaller and more manageable than the health care costs problems facing both the government and private citizens in our country.
Germany has per capita health care costs similar to those of France. The average cost per person in Germany in 2005 was $3,628, which was just over half the cost in the US, and German health care costs were 10.7% of GDP, as compared with over 16% in the US in that year. The World Health Organization rated the German health care system as 25th or 191 national systems, or 12 positions ahead of the US “system”.
Of course, there are reasons to suggest we look to the Far East for a model for health care reform. Japan enjoys the lowest per capita health care costs, which are less than half of those in the US at US$2,908 in 2005, or 8.2% of GDP, which is almost half of 16% of GDP in the US in that year. Japan enjoys the highest life expectancy of any major nation in the world.
While top Republican leaders say government cannot run a health care system a well as private sector businesses, we have decades of evidence that governments in other countries are running their health care systems more effectively than the combined governments and private sector businesses management pattern in our country. American private sector businesses failed badly in recent years in managing the real estate market, banking, hedge fund investments, automobile manufacturing and marketing, high tech corporations, utilities distribution and insurance businesses. Why should we buy the old saw that private industry can manage health care better than governments?
Related websites:
http://republicanleader.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=131326
http://www.allhealthcare.com/news/articles/3480-is-french-health-system-a-model-for-us
http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/republican-senate-leader-obama-essential-healthcare-reform
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthy_life_table2.html
http://www.photius.com/rankings/who_world_health_ranks.html
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