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I had a health crisis in France

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Re: I had a health crisis in France

#181

Post by candiodari »

ako wrote: post #159
fiatjaf wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That impression probably comes from the fact that you're not on the payer side of the bills, you're always on the receiver side.

I know i pay for these things through taxes, but i think in the end it's cheaper if we handle this through a tax system. No huge corporations looking to improve their profits at the cost of service to customers. I like to think of western-europe as an all-in or full-service country. Maybe you pay a bit more, but you get way better service, and by not having to decide and buy yourself you're left with more of what's r…

Australia has exceptional demographics that make this possible - for the moment. It won't last, for the same reason it won't in Europe. But, you get to gloat for quite a while as an Australian, it'll last decades longer than in Europe, where unemployment makes the current situation untenable. To put it bluntly: Australia has a participation rate of 65%, dropping slowly (ie. pretty much perfectly stable for the past, frankly, almost the past century). Europe has a participation rate of 55%. Now you might think that's not a big difference, but it's the difference between 1 worker paying for 50% of a non-worker versus 1 worker paying for 80% of a non-worker. That means the life of close to 2 people needs to be financed from one job in the EU, whereas in Australia it's just slightly over 1.

Keep in mind that there is even more leverage, as people who are only employed to take care of the elderly, the young, ... make up a significant part of the workforce and shouldn't be counted as employed for this purpose (a geriatrician, a teacher, a nurse, ... is paid from taxes to take care of non-workers, that means he doesn't contribute to the economy). Therefore the numbers in Australia, are about 1 for 1 (ie. tax rate of just shy of ~50%), in Europe the numbers are really about 1 for 3 (ie. total tax rate of slightly over ~75%)

But even in Australia it's essentially over. Australians should have started to have way more kids about a decade ago to prevent what's now pretty much inevitable. Although once again Australia gets to sit back and watch what happens in other economies before it's forced to take action itself, like in the financial crisis. It should do well. Doesn't change the outcome though : taxes in Australia will have to rise to halve your post-tax income over the next 2-3 decades. In Europe ... let's not go there, taxing at 100% would not allow for enough economic activity to support the pensions and healthcare at the current level of provided care. Dedicating all economic activity in the EU to just that single purpose is ... not enough. Therefore, elderly care and health care will have to scale down, a LOT (and may God help them if Trump follows through on forcing Europe into defense spending). The basic problem is, the lower the working population gets the more massive the advances in productivity (the economic kind) have to be. There is a slight issue with that:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/european-union/productivity

(I've had healthcare in both Europe and Australia though. Let me tell you, Europe is better. Though I guess it does greatly vary based on the exact location)

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#182

Post by vollmond »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #151
oblio wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually also a health issue. In most EU countries you couldn't even stuff yourself with the crap that's allowed to be sold in the US.

Both of these! With the healthcare being paid for by taxes, there is a lot more incentive for governments to push healthy eating. It also means that policies for bike/walking routes pay off more.

Which to some of us is another reason to resist taxpayer-funded healthcare. Government really doesn't need more incentive to overstep its bounds and interfere in our personal lives.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#183

Post by rtpg »

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…

You know what also runs a deficit? Your gym membership. Going to the movies. Eating at restaurants.

Sometimes things cost money. I imagine that keeping the country healthy is a plus.

Not to say that making improvements isn't a bad idea, but a cost-centric view on things almost always ends in bad decision-making. Decisions based on revenue generation, instead of the "real" objective (keeping people healthy).

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#184

Post by brianwawok »

jdietrich wrote: post #149
witty_username wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could downvoter(s) explain?

He's literally asking us to disregard the health outcomes for a particularly vulnerable section of society. That strongly implies that these people aren't worth factoring in to our evaluation of a healthcare system, that their health simply doesn't matter. On a purely statistical level, it makes very little sense. Does he believe that poverty and drug addiction are uniquely American phenomena? Does he believe that th…

I'm pointing out that you are comparing apples to oranges.

France is closer in composition to New Hampshire than the US as a whole.

So comparing health outcomes of the US as a whole to France is wrong.

Compare health outcomes of say New Hampshire or Vermont to France....

This is the same mistake the news and popular politicians use to exploit the groupthink. "Look how bad the US is at X compared to this homogenous European country". Be it prison rate or poverty level or what have you.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#185

Post by switch007 »

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'…

> 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.

Many people in the UK fear for the life expectancy of the NHS. It's featured in the media very often. Ditto welfare benefits.

We pay for dental care and prescriptions. Hospitals and health centre are closing left, right and centre. Benefits are being slashed in cruel ways. Many have private health care through their employers. Kids are leaving University with £40,000+ loans now.

:(

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#186

Post by shados »

vacri wrote: post #76
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 i…

And that hits the point that the US is very different in a lot of ways, and changing one of those things without changing the others is difficult.

Its harder to make health care cheaper because of the salaries, drug cost, hospital costs, etc.

A lot of those things are expensive because of education costs, housing cost, etc. And don't forget the lawyer happy culture that raises costs too.

Then once you fix that, you have to take into account the added cost of the current poor demographic, illegal immigration, etc.

Then when you fix that...etc etc etc.

Its a very complicated net of problems. Its not as simple as "LOL wave a wand and make it free".

It's made worse in that you have to kick down some people a few notches to have similar taxes (upper middle class would get taxed way more) combined with how a lot of people moved to the US because they did better $$ money with low taxes, and you'll have a lot of pissed off people.

Yes, all that needs to happen eventually, but it's very painful to actually do.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#187

Post by nothrabannosir »

cel1ne wrote: post #145
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…

It's not just that the costs of getting healthy are taken care of. Here in austria free, yearly "health checkups" are offered to you by every doctor. Meaning, when you go there because of a cold, he will tell you that you ought to do a checkup every year, which include blood tests, psychological screening for alcoholism and other individualized tests like prostate cancer for men. It's just convenient to use the syste…

It's just convenient to use the system. I even had multiple MRIs and dozens of XRays after minor sport injuries just to be sure.

I'm not sure where to draw the line, though. How do you determine when "just in case" costs too much?

Remember, all Austrians paid for your mris and X-rays. I don't doubt it was worth it this specific case, but aren't the incentives wrong?

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#188

Post by Retric »

candiodari wrote: post #175
Retric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It doesn't. Deaths from <5 year olds are explicitly excluded from life expectancy statistics. You'll find them under infant mortality.

Not usually, if you do that then:

Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ Digging into it you find women have a shorter life expectancy and men had a longer one.

PS: Using birth or at age 70 modern England has longer lifespans.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#189

Post by pyrale »

fiatjaf wrote: post #144
jdub wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

That impression probably comes from the fact that you're not on the payer side of the bills, you're always on the receiver side.

> That impression probably comes from the fact that you're not on the payer side of the bills

Everyone's on the payer side of the bills. We're happy being on this side.

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