Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Universal Health Care

Long day yesterday but did get home to find Diane watching Frontline's program on different varieties of health care around the world. It was very good as the program examined how England, Germany, Japan and Taiwan have tackled universal health care with the rather overt suggestion that the old US of A needs to do something with its inadequate and costly system. From Kevin Drum:

HEALTHCARE FOLLOWUP....So I watched the PBS show "Sick Around the World" and it turned out to be pretty good. Not a ton of wonky detail, just a nice friendly overview of five different countries and the basics of how their healthcare systems work. The Frontline website is here, and you can watch the show online if you missed it on TV.

I liked the ending. This is approximate, but after wondering whether Americans will ever accept any of the healthcare ideas he had just presented, correspondent T.R. Reid closed with this:

These ideas aren't as foreign as they seem. If you're a U.S. veteran, your healthcare is like Britain. If you're a senior citizen on Medicare, you're Taiwan. If you're a worker who gets insurance from your employer, you're Germany.

Quite so. National healthcare really isn't as foreign or as frightening as conservatives make it out to be. "Sick Around the World" does a good job of demystifying it.

And this from Quotes of the Day:

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
- Voltaire

So, any suggestions on how you would like to be amused?

1 comment:

Moses Gunner said...

Did you see the Bunk study stating 2/3 of doctors in America want National Health Care. The doctors who did this study also conducted one in 2002 and found that the majority of doctors did not want national health care, the problem with this is that the 2 question surveys drastically differ in there 2nd question. I found this article, 60% of Physicians Surveyed Oppose Switching to a National Health Care Plan, It's worth a read