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Other Nations Provide Health Reform Lessons for
U.S.
As part of the NewsHour's ongoing series of conversations about health care
reform, health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser talks to Washington Post
correspondent T.R. Reid about health care systems around the world. In a new
book and in a 2008 PBS Frontline documentary, Reid reports on health systems in
other industrialized countries that manage to cover nearly all their citizens.
He believes that the U.S. can learn how to achieve better quality, more
affordable health care by following other nations' best examples.
As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we've overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less than we do.
I've traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as "socialist," we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems. To do that, we first have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:
1. It's all socialized medicine out there.
Not so. Some countries, such as Britain, New Zealand and Cuba, do
provide health care in government hospitals, with the government paying
the bills. Others -- for instance, Canada and Taiwan -- rely on
private-sector providers, paid for by government-run insurance. But
many wealthy countries -- including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and
Switzerland -- provide universal coverage using private doctors,
private hospitals and private insurance plans.
2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.
Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation's 200 private health insurance plans -- a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn't like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.
In France and Japan, you don't get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as "in-network" lists of doctors or "pre-authorization" for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment -- and insurance has to pay.
Canadians have their choice of providers. In Austria and Germany, if
a doctor diagnoses a person as "stressed," medical insurance pays for
weekends at a health spa.
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<> and you hail from where, Jhon?