On French Healthcare
Came across this article today:
My whopping $32 emergency room visit in the land of socialized medicine
AmericaBlog covers his recent visit to a French emergency room for emergency retinal surgery. How much do you think the final bill came to? Wrong! $32 for the emergency room visit, $140 for the surgery. $172 total.
But, wait the French are pansies and socialists and have horrible health care with long waits and {insert every other European/nationalized healthcare slur}… but they don’t. The French have probably the best healthcare system in the world. (more here.)
The fact is (from Krugman, linked above), our “amenable mortality” rate (deaths from certain causes before age 75 that are potentially preventable with timely and effective health care) is way higher than places like France and Canada and Sweden and the UK. All places that have nationalized healthcare.
I’m not sure what the big deal is… we’re the only industrialized country in the world that doesn’t give citizens healthcare. And don’t give me that ‘freedom’ crap. Most of us don’t get to choose anything beyond picking a doctor out of a book provided by the HMO or health insurance company your place of employment selects for you… that, and you are free to go bankrupt when disaster strikes, leaving you with piles of unpaid medical bills.
Anyway, read the story linked above. His experience sounded pretty darn good to me. My only recent emergency room experience was for a severely sprained ankle that I spent 4+ hours in the emergency room waiting for them to x-ray and wrap my ankle (while hordes of doctors/nurses stood around in a room talking.) Luckily I only had a $100 co-pay, but if not the x-rays, bandage and visit would have cost me well over $500.
Viva la nationalized healthcare!
