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I had a health crisis in France

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Re: I had a health crisis in France

#201

Post by sowbug »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #187
cel1ne wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They're not necessarily wrong. They're just different. If the incentives make it easier for you to get preventative and diagnostic care, then you probably will. Presumably this leads to better outcomes overall than taking the risk that intensive care will otherwise be needed later on.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#202

Post by peteretep »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #187
cel1ne wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

    > How do you determine when
    > "just in case" costs too
    > much
Generally you don't in systems like this. The referring physician in association with national guidelines on cost and treatment plans does.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#203

Post by agumonkey »

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…

Let me add a tiny bit of gloom. The healthcare situation is degrading. International context and other factors (big hospitals getting old, trying to reallocate geographical duties, merge/rebalance with other hospitals) are at play. The Healthcare employees are starting to complain a bit too often for it not to be worrying.

About U.S. what saddens me is the natural reflex toward individualism and self responsibility being a better moral value than mutualized health as in France. I wish they could have a more balanced POV on things.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#204

Post by jdietrich »

brianwawok wrote: post #184
jdietrich wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Eu…

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

Does New Hampshire have any cities where 30-40% of the population are Muslim?

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/resentment-growing-christians...

To describe France as homogeneous is utterly, profoundly ignorant.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#205

Post by peteretep »

ekianjo wrote: post #33
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'…

> free education ( university included ) La Fac is one of the worst places to get an education though.

Shame this is being downvoted. Non-UK EU countries have some pretty shitty universities given how rich they are. Of the top 40 in the Shanghai Rankings, two are non-UK EU and five are in the UK. Cost-to-user in the UK isn't free but it's pretty cheap when compared to the American competition.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#206

Post by peteretep »

Majestic121 wrote: post #97
ekianjo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> free education ( university included ) La Fac is one of the worst places to get an education though.

Just look at the Shanghai Ranking, some facs seems to be doing pretty good : http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings-201... While it is true that there are some very bad Facs and cursuses, dissing 'La fac' altogether seems a bit harsh

    > some facs seems to be
    > doing pretty good
3 in the top hundred for a country with France's intellectual and cultural pedigree is a disgrace.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#207

Post by pjc50 »

jdietrich wrote: post #143
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> free education ( university included ) keep in mind that this is not a given in all EU countries. In the UK (still an EU country, though not for long) one has to either get a student loan from the British state, or cover their own tuition fees.

The British student loan system is essentially a graduate tax in disguise. You only repay 9% of your income over £21,000, deducted automatically from your wages in the same way as income tax. The loan is cancelled after 30 years, regardless of how much you have repaid. Young people understand that it's not a "debt" in the conventional sense of the word.

And yet if they'd proposed putting a 9% rate of income tax above £21000 there would have been riots in the Tory party. It's a tax on people born after 1980 who want to have professional jobs, not all graduates. Ironically, this hugely favours immigrants from EU countries with free or cheap education systems.

And I do think some people are put off by the debt-ness of it, but that's very tricky to measure.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#209

Post by agumonkey »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #108
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'…

>> free education ( university included ) keep in mind that this is not a given in all EU countries. In the UK (still an EU country, though not for long) one has to either get a student loan from the British state, or cover their own tuition fees.

How high are the fees ? In France, even in public Universities you still have to pay something, granted it's borderline free, from the top of my head, 400€ per year.

I once chatted with a US girl thinking about going to college, IIRC one year there was almost the price a full fledged private school 5 year cursus. We both went silent for a minute.

Re: I had a health crisis in France

#210

Post by bluejekyll »

In these discussions I think people often overlook one significant factor in delivering services to people in the US; population density. The EU and also France, have a higher population density than the US. The US is 33 per km, whereas France is 100, based on Wikipedia.

This translates to higher costs because maintaining hospitals in low density areas raises the cost of care per capita. This is also a reason that inter-regional train service has never been a good option in the US.

There are regions where it works, but coming up with a one-size fits all solution is hard. The metropolitan regions of the US have always subsidized the rural parts. We people of the cities have always paid a fee on our phone bills that helps reduce the cost of phone service in rural areas, as an example. I actually dislike this, because I think it subsidizes sprawl.

I believe the ACA is a good step (personally I'd like to see Medicare offered as on option alongside all state insurance plans), but it does need fixes. Whatever the solution, it's going to look different from Europe and France in particular.

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