2523 Health care

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Theodore Sturgeon: "95% of science fiction is crap.
Come to think of it, 95% of *everything* is crap."

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I just watched Frontline's "Sick Around the World", an examination of health care systems in other developed nations. It's in five parts of about 11 minutes each, which can be watched individually. I highly recommend it.

I haven't been following what's been going on with health care reform here, but I do hope whoever's looking at recommendations has examined what's done in other countries, as Taiwan did - rather than allowing profit-making entities like insurance companies, hospitals, and drug companies to have the major input.

(The cynic in me says nah. Americans seem to think they know best without bothering to look at what others do. Arrogance is an American "virtue".)

Without having looked at it carefully myself, it seems to me that most Americans seem to think that the major problem is that too many people are under- or uninsured, so they want to fix availability of insurance. And that's about it.

I'm not sure that's the problem. The major problem in my opinion is that too many entities are in the health care field to make a profit. Maybe I'm betraying my hippie tendencies, but health care doesn't strike me as a place where profit should be the major determinator of decisions.

It also strikes me that people yelling "socialism!" haven't examined other systems either, and have no inclination or desire to do so.

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[Later - I wrote the above before watching the last segment, on Switzerland, wherein they make the same observation I did - that during the last election, everyone talked about health care reform, but nobody mentioned the lessons to be learned from other democracies.]
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