We are a social welfare state - the question is all over what things that will or will not cover.Originally Posted by alan
We are a social welfare state - the question is all over what things that will or will not cover.
That sandwich may be more expensive, but is cheaper overall due to government subsidies. Yank subsidies and food stamps and see what happens.
Have you heard of "medical tourism"? Unfortunately it is the direction some folks are forced to go. And yes, there is "dental tourism" as well.
My dh was advised by our dentist that he needed 30K worth of dental work. She said we could do it over 2 or 3 years and we could finance it. If he had opted to go for that plan, it would have been smart for him to go to Latin America and get the work done for a couple of thousand bucks.
He opted for the "lousy teeth" plan.
The edible food-like substances the government subsidizes are NOT food.That sandwich may be more expensive, but is cheaper overall due to government subsidies. Yank subsidies and food stamps and see what happens.
Trees don't grow on money
Some of it is - here in MA you could get 2 for 1 with foodstamps at the farmers markets.
Really I think there are various reasons the healthcare market is so messed up (and housing and clothing markets aren't) well beyond whether or not it is subsidized. 3rd party payers always mess things up, one of the basic things that mess up the good functioning of a market IMO. The government is a 3rd party payer? Oh yea, and not immune to this, but sometimes better than say insurance companies (as in it is in many countries, but the U.S. government is indeed unaccountable to the people now so getting good policy out of it now .. well ...). Buying things on credit is another thing that always destroy the good functioning of a market (you can see this one with college tuition etc.). Credit has it's uses (for business etc.), but a consumer market on credit is more often than not problematic.
Last edited by ApatheticNoMore; 2-7-12 at 2:58am.
Trees don't grow on money
yes, greed is part of it. Everyone thinks they are entitled to a heart transplant. a HEART transplant!
That was a Frankenstein oddity just a few years ago.
Agreed. But, so? The U.S. is the biggest and the best and can always develop in the biggest and the best. Every citizen here think he is entitled to The Biggest and The Best health care approach and that's why ginormous multiple palaces of illness exist in every city cost a bunch to maintain. That's why I don't want to see us go further down the path of European healthcare, we cannot afford it. Our path is NOT their path.
How frightening for your daughter and you. One learns a lot about specialized medicines in those situations.
On you other point, I can't debate the real costs of Euro health care to compare with ours, but I do know that their hospital buildings, just the real estate, is modest. I suspect much else is modest as well. Same or similar results come out of their modest buildings although the 1% special cases like your daughter, possibly not. That 1% doe snot make it. I expect there are other simple measures in Euro clinics and hospitals, not necessarily driven by cost, but by culture. And I'll admit that perhaps--just perhaps--the profit motive is part of that culture.
Those are good explanations for why our education system seems to perform so poorly. We spend more with less result than our competition.
As a simple starting point, our expectations are too low.
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