What is Reddit's opinion of
Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care??
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
By popularity on Reddit, this product is:
7 reviews of this product found across Reddit:
That's a much more complicated question than must people want (or that I would ever have time to type). If it's a topic you're genuinely interested in, Ezekiel Emanuel wrote a decent book on the topic. It's still a lot of material to try to cram in, but I struggle to find resources for explaining healthcare policy to people who don't spend their lives studying it.
A good survey of healthcare systems is the 2020 book “Which Country has the World’s Best Healthcare?” by Ezekiel J Emanuel. The book examines the health systems of the US, Canada, a number of European countries, Australia, China, and Taiwan. The author concludes that none is the clear winner over a wide range of criteria. The best systems overall, however, are in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Taiwan. Canada’s system is judged to be pretty good, but not in the top tier. The US and China were judged to be the worst.
FWIW I have attended international medical conferences with panels of doctors who have discussed this exact question. The general consensus among the doctor panelists was that the Netherlands has the best health system in the world.
Has anyone read this new book on healthcare? Seems interesting and the guy worked in the Obama administration. I don’t want to waste my time if it’s all about single payer.
>The cost of functioning healthcare is minimal compared to the cost of not having it. It's not like insurance companies are beacons of friendly customer service.
The cost of healthcare versus not having healthcare is not an argument for who must control that healthcare. I would agree with that statement, by the way. Also, can you tell me what the government agency has won great accolades for its efficiency and customer service? I will give kudos to the Gwinnett Tax Office when I lived there. They did a generally good job of being "customer" friendly, but with government bureaucracy, this is likely going to be an outlier.
> Their decisions are capricious and arbitrary.
Their plans are governed by contracts and Statement of Benefits. If there is a problem with "capricious" decisions that argues for better contracts, which in turn argues for more transparency. Other than as a referee, neither of those require government control. That being said, in nearly 25 years of working the private sector with private insurance, I have never had a capricious decision and that includes two hospital stays among routine care. Even if this were the case, do you not think that Medicare or Medicaid ever make decisions on coverage that customers do not like? Surely, you do not think they just rubber-stamp every claim sent to them, do you?
> system managed by the government; It's not faceless; we have elections every two years to make sure we send people to congress to represent us. That's what government is, and the experiences of the rest of the world tells us it provides better outcomes for less money.
Let's think about this logically. In that government-run, single-payer system, you have no alternative, no choice. That is your insurer. Your insurer, i.e. the government knows that. Right off the bat, basic business tells you that is not conducive to good customer service. That established, yes, you do elect officials. However, that elected official represents millions of people. Unless you are an influential person or unless there is something to be politically gained, the likelihood of them getting involved in routine customer service issues is slim. Remember, with a single government, entity, there will thousands of these issues in every district. The response of Rep. Doe to you is going to below. This is not partisan, this is common sense. Now, let's compare that to a competitive market for any service. You do not like the service you are getting, you have a 100% effective vote on that service - you walk, you change providers. You are no longer subject to that poor quality service. That is going to be far more effective than expecting your rep to address your customer service issues with the government. I would argue this would be true on the state and even county level. I lived in Gwinnett when they went with "socialized garbage." I knew should I ever have an issue with my garbage hauler, I was out of luck. They were not going to change the provider because of me, but if I were free to pick my hauler as I had been before - and I can now that I got out of Gwinnett - I could change my garbage company tomorrow. Boom...competitive allows me to solve my problem in a way that is impossible with government, elections notwithstanding.
> The tragic legacy of corporate america killing people and poisoning the environment due to the drive to put profit first can and has filled several books. The only thing that keeps companies honest is government regulations, as has been shown time and time again. Capitalism is an excellent beast of burden, but needs to the yoked to the wheel of public interest.
This is pure cynicism. Yes, there is bad behavior by corporations but you have elevated the outlier to the norm and that is simply not reality. There is a place for government regulations when the most effective means of regulation truly cannot self-regulate. That effective means? The free market, operating with transparency and competition so that market participants have freedom of choice that forces companies to meet their needs. True, this does not happen in every market and that is why there is a place for government regulation, but it should be limited. I recommend that you read Milton Friedman's brilliant book Capitalism and Freedom which expounds on this idea far better than I ever could.
> The ACA is inarguable better than the prior status quo, with every state that implemented it showing vast improvements in the rates of insured and positive health outcomes.
I would argue that point. I pay far more for healthcare now than I did before Obamacare. There were some good tenets to Obamacare, the biggest being high deductible policies. This gives the consumer skin in the game when they have out-of-pocket money at stake. You make more economic choices when you are spending your money as opposed to someone else's. This helps put downward pressure on costs. The opposite is true if everything were "free." Why would you care how much or how often you consumed healthcare services, even if you did not reasonably need a doctor's visit? Obamacare did a good job by trying to tie payments to outcomes. That makes logical sense. Unfortunately, they did not let this work to lower the overall cost level of American healthcare before they went after getting everyone in the plans. That exploded the total costs. My memory is rusty on the details of the machinations of this but I would point you to Confidence Men by Ron Susskind that discusses this as part of his examination of Obama's first term. As for the Heritage claim, it had some similar tenets but it was not the exact same plan. And, regardless of who it comes from, I would not support any program that mandates on Americans that they purchase a product they may not wish to purchase.
> As the person who kicked off this whole thread by referring to some slightly improved and expanded government services as "a full-blown socialistic welfare state"
Free healthcare and college educations are hardly "slightly improved and expanded government.." These would be a massive expansion of the scope and cost of government and would lead to fundamental - and negative - shifts in our society.
> Removing protection from pre-existing conditions is going to kill people.
As the left never seems to do, you have not addressed the question at hand as to the Constitutionality of the law as written. What if the law is, in fact, not Constitutional? What say you to that situation?
>At what cost? Both in taxes and ceding very control of your life to a faceless government entity
The cost of functioning healthcare is minimal compared to the cost of not having it. It's not like insurance companies are beacons of friendly customer service. Their decisions are capricious and arbitrary. Alternately, we could have a system managed by the government; It's not faceless; we have elections every two years to make sure we send people to congress to represent us. That's what government is, and the experiences of the rest of the world tells us it provides better outcomes for less money.
> do their thing without government restrictions (beyond bare necessity) they can and do do great things.
The tragic legacy of corporate america killing people and poisoning the environment due to the drive to put profit first can and has filled several books. The only thing that keeps companies honest is government regulations, as has been shown time and time again. Capitalism is an excellent beast of burden, but needs to the yoked to the wheel of public interest.
> I don't disagree that they should be concrete about their plan
You misunderstand me. It's not that they are vague about their plan, it's that no such plan exists. Republicans don't want to be forced to admit that either everyone gets care, or it becomes unreachable expensive for a lot of people (notably much of their base). The ACA is inarguable better than the prior status quo, with every state that implemented it showing vast improvements in the rates of insured and positive health outcomes. It was itself modeled on a plan by the Heritage Society specifically to get GOP votes. They responded by unanimously rejecting it.
> Rather than finding a better path forward, much energy is wasted fighting strawmen
As the person who kicked off this whole thread by referring to some slightly improved and expanded government services as "a full-blown socialistic welfare state" I'd be careful about throwing around allegations of strawmanning. Removing protection from pre-existing conditions is going to kill people. If you're uncomfortable with that fact I suggest you reexamine your position. Expanding the safety net and helping ordinary citizens is good for the people, and for the country as a whole. I'm tired of Republicans denying that fact because they'd rather prance around in tricorn hats.
There's a book literally titled: Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care?
Popular alternatives to Which Country Has the World...
The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
