The Danish state.
Glad to see that I get something for my high taxrate.
Glad to see that I get something for my high taxrate.
I think one downside to it is that it's hard to do anything out of the ordinary (ie some new drug or method or whatever) because health care is seen as a standardized gov't service. For customization, you still need privatized medicine.
Or am I wrong on this? I don't have a lot of insight into the health care system, honestly.
Of course, for this to work, there has to be a lot, possibly the majority, of super-payers who pay more into the health care system via their taxes than they receive back.
So, Scandi style health care can in a way be seen as a government-enforced mandatory health insurance, except that unemployed people get it for (almost) free.
Then again, a huge socialized health care system might have better economies of scale (or they might be worse). Also, let's not forget that people can go to medical school for free in Scandinavia, which is bound to have some kind of effect.
Yes... but, this is also true for for-profit non-socialized health care insurance.
The fact that Americans have to think or worry about health insurance -- and that they can and do go bankrupt when they cannot afford to pay for care -- is bad enough. The fact that many Americans then claim that their system is the best in the world, and needs only superficial change, is shocking on several fronts.
I was fortunate enough to have good health insurance several years ago, when my family was living in the US, when I did my PhD coursework. (We only got this good insurance when the university wanted to charge me more in insurance premiums than they paid me for a stipend.) When my wife got sick with something that's very expensive to treat (but was treated and cured, I'm happy to say), we were especially lucky.
Remember, all of you young entrepreneurs out there, that the odds of getting something might be small, but they do exist. You don't want to be without health insurance if that happens. Again, the fact that this is even possible is a uniquely American phenomenon, and a sad one at that.
Coverage? My life partner had CT, MRI, fMRI, little more than a week of hospitalization, and a brain tumor removed within a month by one of the top neurosurgeons (by Yelp-like recommendations) in Poland. Additional cost? None.
Can't imagine being a US citizen, working for a startup and that being an issue, especially if you have a family.
Yeah, it's nice to know that if I ever end up in a hospital I won't need to worry about what that costs, but don't make the mistake of thinking that our public health system means that private health insurance isn't a very good thing to have.