I just watched a documentary by PBS's Frontline on the different health care systems around the world. I thought the program to be very informative and a little less reductionist than Michael Moore's Sicko. It is reductionist to call all healthcare systems in European industralized countries "socialized medicine" as each one is different with many even having private delivery and insurance options. Let's not play that game.
I think this Frontline program would be a bit more palatable for everyone across the spectrum. Though the reporter is unmistakably critical of the America's system, he includes the pitfalls of the non-American systems too. And I'm sure he chose to omit some things. As critical consumers of media - as I sure everyone is ;) - everything should be taken with a grain of salt.
It's important to recognize that no health care system is perfect and that every system has many facets to it. What's important is to have an open, rational dicussion about it.
You can watch the full program online here.
Frontline also breaks down the four main health care systems here.
Update: I updated my poor grammer and spelling! I thought there was a spell check on this blog.
I liked this program a lot. It seemed pretty balanced on the pluses and minuses of the various successful universal health care systems out there. Clearly you can have the highest level of care for everyone with lower costs than the US, but it looks like to do all that and pay doctors like they expect to be paid in the US that it can't be done as cheaply as other countries are doing it. Nevertheless, it would still be a lot cheaper than we pay now if we adopted one of those other systems and also paid our doctors more.
Great Post. Lots of basic information. This would be hard to get out to the general US public given the strong commercial advocacy for status quo.
Is this the same one that profiled the Taiwanese system that ran on the radio, or are they two different projects?
The Taiwanese system was built by borrowing the best parts from other systems. It's underfunded right now at 1/3 the proportional cost of the US system, but covers everyone with no waits and no referrals whatsoever. Financial analysts say that if the funding were pushed to one-half the US system, it would cover everyone with no debt whatsoever.
God our system sucks and we are so insistent on arguing about the formation of the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
Frontline also did an excellent piece on 401K programs in this country. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement/view/
I didn't see the show, but I'm just honestly surprised that there have been no commenters that popped up to say it couldn't have been accurate because PBS is "liberal" and "socialist."
Didn't get a chance to watch it last night. Sounds pretty interesting though... I think I'll take a gander now that I have some time.
--
Glock21 Op/Ed
Thanks Green... that was an excellent program. Perfect for a web format to look at the facts and figures they're citing and being able to stop and look up the details as one goes along. Great post. Hit the recommend button for a front pager on that one. Very balanced look at the various systems he looked at, though I wish it had been more comprehensive, especially on applicability to the US system, with our unique federalist system and limited central government compared to State powers. He depicted the issue in the US as merely being a will of the voters and acceptability with no mention of how that is mainly true on the State level, not federal which is restricted by both popular consensus and Constitutional limits.
The comparison to the VA system and the SSA programs at the end left out some of the striking differences... especially with the SSA based programs being so heavily dependent on State programs to actually implement and the VA system's exclusivity being one of the few things keeping it functional right now. But it did bring up many interesting perspectives and ideas that could be extremely beneficial, especially in a less broad application in reducing administrative costs, non-profit applications of insurance, etc.
Definitely worth the watch, and probably the best collage of various related healthcare concepts I've seen on the subject to date. Thanks again for posting this.
--
Glock21 Op/Ed
An important differecnce between our system and others is that we require those in medical school to fund their own medical educations. This affects the financial expectations and specialty selections of new physicians in the U.S.
Michael Fuerst