|
Monday, August 10, 2009
Dear Editor:
I have been fortunate in my career to travel and work in different countries, primarily Switzerland, Canada, and Germany. I have just returned from a two-week business trip where I met with business leaders and friends in Switzerland and Germany. Both of these countries have “socialized” medicine.
How it works is that each person is required to pay into a basic insurance pool, where the risk is spread over the entire population of the country, rather than employer isolated, smaller pools. If you do not have enough money to pay the roughly $350/month, the government pays it as part of the social safety net for that country. However, everyone pays and this covers all your basic health needs. Every one of the Swiss, German or Canadians that I spoken with say the program works just fine.
If you have the desire to cosmetic surgery, have a private room, or go to a private hospital, you purchase insurance outside of the governmental program to obtain these special services.
Common drugs are about 40% lower that what we pay here in the USA. You cannot lose your house and your savings if you become sick, the doctors are quite happy with their earnings, and the insurance companies play a lesser role and are under control of the government. This makes sense as the risk is spread over the entire population and the companies supplying the drugs are held responsible to supply at costs based on a huge population of consumers.
The primary difference between them and us is that they insist that the government work in their best interest and do it efficiently. They have faith in their government to run the program in an efficient manner and they have a mindset that the government is part of the solution to manage a limited but necessary human resource. They think that having a “for profit” insurance company or hospital manage healthcare is a huge conflict of interest. They are also puzzled on why the level of care, such as days allowed in the hospital after a surgery and the lack of allowed and supported therapies, is so low, when we are paying so much more.
These people are happy and healthy. They do not worry about their care the way we do. They pay in total about $700 USD for their health insurance between their government health care and supplemental coverage. Their companies also pay part of this. My wife and I will pay over $2000 a month for our Health insurance in 2009-2010 including a $10,000 deductable, and we are just waiting for next age-related health issue to occur that will trigger the insurance company raise the rate or simply deny us coverage.
If we had a government that worked efficiently for the people, then we would not have to rely an insurance company who does not care one iota about me and my well-being. Their legal mandate is to make money for their shareholders or to keep paying those salaries and bonus payments in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I cannot elect the president of an insurance company, but I can elect our government representatives.
Do not be fooled by the right wing media and the insurance company propaganda. There are systems for health care in the world that work well and are much more affordable than ours are. People get the care they need and get it much more efficiently that we do. It comes down to our expectations and holding the government to the same standard of performance, we hold other organizations. If we can have the best military in the world, send a man to the moon and map the human genome, we have the minds and capabilities to develop an efficient universal health care system. We just need the will to make it happen. We can do this. There are great examples in the wide world. We just need to open our eyes and learn.
Sam Moore
cswinney2@triad.rr.com
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(673 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
