Actually, there was a reporter who spent several years investigating the rest of the industrialized world's health care systems. The simple summary, all the major ones worked better than ours at a much lower cost. All the complaints of the French system, for example, could be covered by increasing taxes to a level where health care would still cost much less than what health care costs here. But the French were not willing to do so because they received good health care. It was a very interesting hour long interview with comments from drs, patients, etc in these countries. His basic conclusion was that any system (gov. insurance/gov. health, gov. insurance/private health, private insurance/government health, private insurance/private health) worked as long as the insurance companies were all government or non-profit with government oversight.
In Germany I believe it was, most of the private non-profit insurance companies were divisions of for profit insurance companies. Everyone was required to have insurance. When asked, the insurance companies said it was a great system since they competed strongly for the clients because if you provided them with affordable good health care, they would purchase their mortgage, life insurance from the same place. The patients were happy. The drs felt underpaid.
The only system that seemed not to work was employer based health insurance with little oversight of for-profit insurance companies.
Ken
