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The most startling statement in the article to me was:
Quote:
Workers pay about fifty percent of their paycheck each month into healthcare, retirement and unemployment and more companies are outsourcing jobs to avoid those costs. Quality of care also suffers in France, says Teil, because hospitals and doctors resist government requirements to report their success and failures.
So while I think our system is in need of being fixed, I think that handing the reigns over to a broken government will not fix it long term, and maybe not even short term. We need to look for solutions outside of completely socialized medicine.
The French healthcare system is acknowledged as the best in the world. Being French and having been ill for a long time I have had to use it and it is absolutely wonderful. No waiting lists, the best consultants and easy access to second, third opinion if you don't trust your doctor. France also spends a huge amount on medical research and the latest technologies are used as standard . The standard of care is outstanding and the service is just great. Yes French people do pay a lot more taxes but they get a hell of a lot for it.
I don't know anybody in France who has any complaints about it apart from maybe the fact that there is too much bureaucracy involved ( sadly a very French trait).
My grand parents for example had to use the health services a lot towards the end of their lives and it was absolutely wonderful.
And of course if you are poor or homeless you get exactly the same.
France does not get heatwaves very often and like the rest of Europe did not know how to deal with the crisis. Most people who died were elderly and as air conditioning is not very common in Europe , the most vulnerable group was very affected in old people's homes.
Also most doctors take their holiday in August ( as do most French people) and there was therefore less medical staff available.
It was handled extremely badly by the politicians ( right wing ones by the way) but though it was tragic it had nothing to do with the quality of healthcare and was a terrible fluke.
I am French, have used the healthcare system a lot and not one of my friends , relatives or acquaintances have ever complained about anthing apart from the bureaucracy.
But of course to you having first hand experience of something means nothing . You obviously know a lot more about it than someone who has actual experience of it.
How many years did you live in France again ? How many French Hospitals and Doctors have you been to ?
^ what does France's healthcare system have to do with people dying from a heatwave & where air conditioning is rare?
from the article:
"The bulk of the victims — many of them elderly — died during the height of the heat wave, which brought suffocating temperatures of up to 104 degrees in a country where air conditioning is rare."
^ what does France's healthcare system have to do with people dying from a heatwave & where air conditioning is rare?
from the article:
"The bulk of the victims — many of them elderly — died during the height of the heat wave, which brought suffocating temperatures of up to 104 degrees in a country where air conditioning is rare."
Great post.
It made my skin crawl to hear the poster above talk about what a bad job the government did. If you rely on the government heavily...be prepared to be greatly disappointed....they just cannot cover everything.
For example, when some southern city gets a freak snowstorm should the government have kept an entire fleet of snowplows on hand for use every 5-10 years?
When all those Katrina victims ran out of food and water? Yep, govt. screwed up....
Growing up in a heavy socialized country....do they just suck all of the personal responsibility and initiative out of you? Where were those people's friends and family?
The original article was about a French expert who believes the French healthcare system is going broke and they are looking at the American system as a way of improving the operations of the system. I'm not saying there care isn't good, but people tend to ignore the problems and only promote the positives when trying to push the idea that we should do things the way France does.
As Margaret Thatcher said: "Eventually, Socialists run out of other people's money"
Gosh, I KNEW someone was going to bring the "heatwave deaths" up! Must've been because I read all about it on the righty blogs after it happened as a sort of "cautionary tale" about socialized medicine.
Despite what a previous poster already pointed out regarding the irrelevancy of the French healthcare system with regards to heatwave deaths, let's crunch some numbers:
In 1995, the city of Chicago, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, had a population of about 2,750,000 or so, and 600 people died in a heatwave that year. 1 in 4583 people in Chicago thus died from the heatwave.
France has a population of about 62,000,000. If 14802 people died from the heatwave in France, it means 1 in 4188 people in France died from their heatwave.
That means in Chicago, with glorious "privatized healthcare," had roughly the same death rate for a heatwave anomaly as "dirty commie rat b*stard" France and it's socialized medicine.
So.... what is it, again, that you're trying to prove?
Must've been because I read all about it on the righty blogs after it happened as a sort of "cautionary tale" about socialized medicine.
If you would have read the article, you might have noticed this part:
Quote:
The new estimate comes a day after the French Parliament released a harshly worded report blaming the deaths on a complex health system, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly.
Two INSERM researchers who delivered the report were to continue their analysis of deaths to determine what the actual cause was for the spike in mortality, the Health Ministry said.
I guess the French Parliament listens to Rush and Hannity?
If you would have read the article, you might have noticed this part:
I guess the French Parliament listens to Rush and Hannity?
I think the real question is, would America's private system have handled the situation better? I would imagine there would be less deaths among wealthy Americans/more among poor/lower-middle class, (assuming we were as unaccustomed to heat waves here as they are in France and as air-conditioning free)...
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