{"id":659,"date":"2009-03-04T12:57:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-04T16:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=659"},"modified":"2009-03-04T12:57:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-04T16:57:00","slug":"the-globalist-global-health-what-obama-can-learn-from-european-health-care-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=659","title":{"rendered":"The Globalist | Global Health — What Obama Can Learn from European Health Care (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Globalist Global Health — What Obama Can Learn from European Health Care (Part I)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“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\u2019s drive outside Toulouse, France, one day she was stung badly by a wasp, causing a sizable and painful swelling on her hand.<\/p>\n

“She called her doctor, and to my great surprise within 15 minutes he had shown up at her door \u2014 the famous French doctor\u2019s house call. I couldn\u2019t get over it. \u201cHouse calls in the United States went out when Eisenhower was president,\u201d I told her, shaking my head.”<\/p>\n

Part Two of this article is here.<\/a><\/em>
<\/em>
“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 \u2014 la sant\u00e9 d\u2019abord, \u201chealth comes first,\u201d as the French are fond of saying.<\/p>\n

“It is the difference between health care run mostly as a non-profit venture with the goal of keeping people healthy and productive \u2014 or running it as a for-profit commercial enterprise. “<\/p>\n

And this section is well said:<\/p>\n

\n

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). <\/p>\n

This third-way hybrid is based on the principle of \u201cshared responsibility\u201d between workers, employers and the government, all contributing their fair share to guarantee universal coverage.<\/p>\n

Participation for individuals is mandatory, not optional, just as it is mandatory to have a driver\u2019s license to drive a car.<\/p>\n

These healthcare plans are similar to what Massachusetts recently enacted \u2014 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\u2019t have corporate healthcare CEOs making hundreds of millions of dollars. Generally speaking, the profit motive has been wrung out of the system. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Cheers, <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “The Globalist | Global Health — What Obama Can Learn from European Health Care (Part I)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-off","category-socialized-medicine","category-us-world-health-care-policy"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}