Category: “Socialized” Medicine

The Globalist | Global Health — What Obama Can Learn from European Health Care (Part I)

The Globalist Global Health — What Obama Can Learn from European Health Care (Part I):

“Imagine a place where doctors still do house calls. When I was visiting my friend Meredith, living in the small rural town of Lautrec about an hour’s drive outside Toulouse, France, one day she was stung badly by a wasp, causing a sizable and painful swelling on her hand.

“She called her doctor, and to my great surprise within 15 minutes he had shown up at her door — the famous French doctor’s house call. I couldn’t get over it. “House calls in the United States went out when Eisenhower was president,” I told her, shaking my head.”

Part Two of this article is here.

“The first overriding difference between U.S. and European healthcare systems is one of philosophy. The various European healthcare systems put people and their health before profits — la santé d’abord, “health comes first,” as the French are fond of saying.

“It is the difference between health care run mostly as a non-profit venture with the goal of keeping people healthy and productive — or running it as a for-profit commercial enterprise. “

And this section is well said:

Unlike single-payer Britain or Sweden, other nations like France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium have figured out a third way, a hybrid with private insurance companies, short waiting lists for treatment and individual choice of doctors (most of whom are in private practice).

This third-way hybrid is based on the principle of “shared responsibility” between workers, employers and the government, all contributing their fair share to guarantee universal coverage.

Participation for individuals is mandatory, not optional, just as it is mandatory to have a driver’s license to drive a car.

These healthcare plans are similar to what Massachusetts recently enacted — but with two essential differences. First, in France and Germany, the private insurance companies are non-profits. Doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals are paid well, but you don’t have corporate healthcare CEOs making hundreds of millions of dollars. Generally speaking, the profit motive has been wrung out of the system.

The second key difference is in the area of cost controls. In France and Germany, fees for services are negotiated between representatives of the healthcare professions, the government, patient consumer representatives and the private non-profit insurance companies.

These are a nice pair of articles to send to people who need a basic primer on what “socialized medicine” really is, rather than what the Right wants you to think it is.

Cheers,

Those filthy commies at the Mayo Clinic…

An Egalitarian Culture [at the Mayo Clinic]

You may have heard that at Mayo, doctors collaborate. But did you know that after their first five years all physicians within a single department are paid the same salary? During those first years, physicians receive “step raises” each year. After that, they top out ,and “he or she is paid just the same as someone who is internationally known and has been there for thirty years,” says Patterson. (“Most could earn substantially more in private fee-for-service practice.” he adds.)

“It doesn’t matter how much revenue you bring in,” Patterson explains, “or how many procedures you do. We’re all salaried staff—paid equally. This is very good for collegiality, and people working together,” he adds. “The culture here at Mayo doesn’t encourage egos. There is not the same cult of personality that you find at other places.”

At Columbia, by contrast, the pecking order is quite clear: even the furniture on the floor where a physician works tells him where he stands. “The floor we were on was perfectly fine,” Patterson recalls. “But if you walked up a few flights to ENT (ear nose and throat) surgery, it was a different world—dark wood paneling, different furniture… These surgeons bring in a much higher return for their time,” he points out, “and they do some things that require remarkable skill and training. At the same time, if a psychiatrist spends two hours with a patient, he may get $200, while all a dermatologist needs to do is get out the liquid nitrogen…”

The dermatologist can make $200 in a matter of minutes, just by zapping the harmless crusty brown patches on the back of a middle-aged patient commonly known as “barnacles of age.”

That celebrity turns on how much money a doctor brings in hardly unique to Columbia. “Traditional medical centers are much more hierarchical,” Patterson notes.

The article goes on to say how the filthy socialists have significantly lower spending and excellent care, they value the patient over the revenue generated per procedure, thinking and taking care of patients is valued more than one’s “revenue stream.”