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I had a health crisis in France

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Re: I had a health crisis in France

#71

Post by m_mueller »

realusername wrote: post #63
wav-part wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I-don't-want-to-pay-for-others != I will not insure my health. US health system needs competition more than socialism [1]. [1] https://mises.org/blog/lack-epipen-competitors-fdas-fault EDIT: A really good comment from link above. Mark S - https://mises.org/blog/lack-epipen-competitors-fdas-fault#co... The culprit in virtually all health care or drug price gouging outrages is insurance and "free" taxpayer money. Ameri…

Competition is not the issue, it's private healthcare itself. There is not a single country I know of where private healthcare works.

See my sister comment, see Switzerland.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#72

Post by gerty »

I heard an argument some time that European healthcare and health R&D is indirectly subsidised by the US. The mechanism at works is 1) US consumers are ripped off by pharma; 2) pharma's higher profits lead to higher investment in R&D; 3) everyone profits from that and in the European case negotiate lower prices. I've always wondered to what extent this is true.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#73

Post by rapala »

wav-part wrote: post #24
kensai wrote: post #9

Medicine is one of those few fields the "socialized" approach is actually the better one. Of course you would prefer a I-don't-want-to-pay-for-others* stance when you are young and healthy (ie provided you were not born with a genetic condition or something similar), but once you start aging and caring, you start appreciating why Medicine as practiced in Europe makes much more sense in the end. *even Ayn Rand alleged…

I-don't-want-to-pay-for-others != I will not insure my health. US health system needs competition more than socialism [1]. [1] https://mises.org/blog/lack-epipen-competitors-fdas-fault EDIT: A really good comment from link above. Mark S - https://mises.org/blog/lack-epipen-competitors-fdas-fault#co... The culprit in virtually all health care or drug price gouging outrages is insurance and "free" taxpayer money. Ameri…

>I-don't-want-to-pay-for-others != I will not insure my health.

But it is. Insurance works by pooling money from a group of people where only few are going to use it.

>People never ask "So, what does this drug/treatment cost?" but rather "Do you accept my insurance?"

Which makes sense, as survival and physical and mental well-being are humans primary needs.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#74

Post by jdub »

iraklism wrote: post #30

I still giggle a bit every single time one of these EU healthcare stories pops up. It highlights a core difference between one of the two most "advanced" places in the western world. For us Europeans, we don't even think that free healthcare, free education ( university included ) , and free state support when things go wrong is a right. It is a as essential as a core human function as breathing and blinking. We don'…

There's another way to look at it that I don't think the USA will be ready to understand any time soon: Universal health and education are (key parts of) freedom.

You can even put a market spin on it: None of the risks involved in starting a small business in Australia have to do with health care for myself, or for people who might consider joining my small business as employees.

I've never felt as if I'm giving up autonomy or surrendering to the yoke of the state or whatever. Public universal health care gives me freedom. From and for so many things.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#75

Post by Retric »

ekianjo wrote: post #31
antirez wrote: post #21

This is normal on all western Europe states. However France has very high standards in general about health care and is regarded as one of the best systems. I think it's time for US citizens to accept that most of Europe has better life expectancy, lower infant mortality than US, and to be ill is not a financial tragedy. Moreover the treatment that a low-income and high-income citizen receives is very similar, so the…

> Europe has better life expectancy, Diet has a lot more to to about that than medical care.

US has 75% higher infant mortality than France which has a real impact on life expectancy.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#76

Post by vacri »

clouddrover wrote: post #8

The US spends more per capita on health care than other OECD countries, even ones with universal public health care: http://kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/snapshots-health-car... And yet the US has lower life expectancy than those countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

The fundamental problem to solve, though, is getting money back out of medicine. American doctors get paid ridiculous amounts more than doctors in other developed nations. If you want affordable medicine, then medical salaries are going to have to take a hit, so you can afford more staff overall.

An example of how much money is in the system: I was talking to a nurse in the US whose adult son had a series of mental illnesses. She was going to see a specialist neurologist about one of them. "Why not ask him about all of them?", asks I. Turns out that in the US, it's quite common for specialists to specialise into a single syndrome, and will happily reject similar things in their field that aren't their specialty. I was horrified - here are people that take a decade and a half of training, all to become a glorified lookup table. I used to work in a neuro lab myself, and while I could see a motor neuron specialist perhaps referring on a brain problem to someone more suitable, the idea that any of the doctors would only take patients with a single, prediagnosed syndrome... was just alien.

But in the US you can do that, and get ridiculous amounts of money for it.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#77

Post by corin_ »

ekianjo wrote: post #47
ThePhysicist wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France you pay 0 % taxes for the first 9.700 € of income, then 14 % for everything up to 26.791 €, then 30 % for everything up to 71.826 €, then 41 % for everything up to 152.108 € and 45 % for everything beyond that [1]. Hence 23 % effective tax rate sounds reasonable for an average income of around 50.000 €. The tax system in many European countries is similar btw, as is the health system. [1] https://fr.wikiped…

You don't live in urban centers like Paris with 50k revenue.

That's a ridiculous statement, many people do. I personally wouldn't, sure, it's an expensive city to live in (I have lived there), but €50k is I think a little above the median salary there. You could easily survive on half that if you needed to, I know many people who do. Not everyone lives in the privileged world of tech salaries, think through all the jobs people do in Paris and think if they're all being paid 50k or more..

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#78

Post by Gravityloss »

kensai wrote: post #9

Medicine is one of those few fields the "socialized" approach is actually the better one. Of course you would prefer a I-don't-want-to-pay-for-others* stance when you are young and healthy (ie provided you were not born with a genetic condition or something similar), but once you start aging and caring, you start appreciating why Medicine as practiced in Europe makes much more sense in the end. *even Ayn Rand alleged…

Isn't insurance already paying for others, if nothing happens to you?

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#79

Post by cm2187 »

simias wrote: post #56
cm2187 wrote: post #28

The French health system has its own problems. There is little evaluation of physicians so picking a hospital is very much a lottery, unless you know insiders who will tell you where to go and not to go. The system runs a massive financial deficit. It is run in an administrative way which creates odds behaviors. For instance department allowances based on % of occupation of hospital beds, which lead them to keep peop…

>There is little evaluation of physician so picking a hospital is very much a lottery, unless you know insiders who will tell you where to go and not to go. There are always variations, obviously but in general we have pretty good doctors AFAIK. If anything we don't have enough of them. I'm not sure how it relates to the article though, would a more liberal system improve the average quality of hospitals? Are US hosp…

> would a more liberal system improve the average quality of hospitals? Are US hospitals and doctors offer better service that the french ones?

I am not sure it is a liberal vs non liberal. But doctors like any profession need to have a way to be evaluated. It is a fact that there are good, average and bad doctors (like any other profession). I understand that in the US, insurance companies play this role. They are maintaining detailed statistics of acceptable success rates and will apply pressure when they see physicians underperforming.

On careers, I come from a family of doctors, so it's rather a long succession of first hand anecdotes than articles. Careers in public hospitals are very much driven by these things at a more senior level. I'm afraid no tinfoil there.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#80

Post by erl »

collyw wrote: post #49
ekianjo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe has better life expectancy, Diet has a lot more to to about that than medical care.

Thats an interesting point, but it would be interesting to see it compared by regions. Southern Europe generally eats a lot healthier than Northern Europe.

I am not sure that this is true. Many countries in northern Europe such as Iceland, Sweden, and Norway eat quite healthy.

Using body mass index as a (arguably quite bad) proxy for a healthy diet we find [0] that many of the southern countries such as Spain, Greece and Portugal are more overweight than many countries farther north.

[0] http://apps.who.int/bmi/index.jsp

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