|
Edited on Tue May-22-07 10:19 AM by lefador
... US citizens pay on a per capita average 2x to 3x what most EU citizens pay for health care related expenses. On the ratings of quality of health care provided in the same study, the US ranked 28th. So we pay 2x to get a service that is an order of magnitude worse. But rest assured that socialized medicine is "crappy" as I have been reminded over and over again by some former right wing friends.
I lived in both the EU and the US, and the difference is like night and day. Here, I have to pay for my insurance out of my own pocket, the HMO restricts me to where and who I can see, and I have always to pay the Russian Roulette game of "which prescription drugs are covered." And no matter how much I pay, I also have co-pay and deductibles. The whole concept of deductible is unheard of in Europe. The region I lived in Europe had an ambulatory system which mandated a clinic to exist for every x-thousand residents, which meant I never had to go to an emergency room for a cold or a flu or a consult. Everyone gets issued a smart card with their medical history, so in case of an emergency the first responders can swipe it and asses what the patient is allergic to, previous conditions, etc. The same card is also used to keep track of treatment when going through medical observation/post-op etc. By law they also required a pharmacy to exist for every x-citizens, they are usually co-ops owned by pharmacists themselves not big corporations. And pharmacies are just that pharmacies, not mini-marts like here. Also pharmacies don't have to do binding, which means they never have to do pill counts since they use the packaging from factory, what they do is they swipe your health care card and they look up the prescription that the doctor puts into the database after a consult. The pharmacist is a pharmacist not a middle man/woman between a pharmaceutical corporation and insurance companies, and gets to asses the medication and/or possible interactions and consults, the system knows my earning bracket and adjusts the prices of the medicaments accordingly. Since I was a student, it meant that most of the prescriptions were free. They also keep track of which package/batch I got for my medications, and if there are any sort of recalls or the pharmacists gets a breaking interaction notice they contact me accordingly.
The hospitals are fairly clean, and the staff is not as overworked as in the US. They have fairly strong labor unions over there so doctors forced to have 36hr shifts are a minority not the norm (some surgeries require continuous evaluation). In the region I lived, pregnant women were never seen working past their first trimester. In fact I believe it was illegal for employers to have pregnant women working after a specific pregnancy stage. The health care system keeps track of both the mum and the baby through the pregnancy and birth. And by law the parents had to meet a specific set of doctor appointments to keep track of the health of the baby, if you missed several of these appointments (by neglect) the doctor would report you to social services. Businesses could not fire you for being pregnant, in fact they were required by law to guarantee your job to be there for you when your returned from maternity leave. And maternity leaves were 1 to 2 years at 80% of your salary. So they love new born life over there as much as them republicans do over there, the main difference between those godless European socialists and the god fearing Capitalist GOP is that at least them Euros put their money where their mouth is.
I am not saying that the system over there is perfect, however there exists a baseline over the EU that is light years ahead of what we get over here. They also get the choice of private health care that is parallel to the public system. Taxes are higher, but honestly when you factor in what you have to pay here for insurance, co-pays, premiums, and what not, it comes to be more than what you would have had to pay in taxes anyways. And you can't beat the feeling of walking in-out of a medical institution w/o ever having to see a bill or statement.
|