Thanks. Over here, an averagely paid employee will pay about £170 a month tax called National Insurance. This pays for healthcare, state pension and a few other benefits.
The nice thing about it is that you are still fully covered even if you are not working. e.g. below working age, unemployed (or unable to work) or retired and there are no exemptions for pre-existing conditions which I hear about in the US system.
Our system does have its faults, mostly due to bureaucracy, but we wouldn't want to be without it. From what I can tell, the German system is similar to ours but with less bureaucracy and shorter (if any) waiting times. I think the German system is what we would like ours to be.
Steve.
Over here everybody has full entitlement to full health care coverage. I'm unemployed and I have total coverage for any kind of disease or cure. I could remain unemployed until the end of my days, which could be in 60 years time, and I would still be entitled to everything. Being relatively young (under 50) if I got certain forms of cancer I would be given one of those unbelievably expensive cancer treatments. I know it because a very dear friend of mind died last year, at my age, at his 4th cancer, and he was given that kind of treatment (a "cycle" costed something like €300.000 that's three hundreds thousands IIRC).
The point repeated by PE about some people going to the US to get cure is IMO a red herring.
First, one have to see whence they come from.
Second, one has to see if other countries have people coming from abroad to get cure. Cuba, Italy, the UK and I presume Germany and other countries do get people coming from abroad for hospitalization. (Maradona and Chavez did not go to the US, and they didn't have a money problem).
Third, icebergs of excellence do not speak for the average coverage for the average citizen. I could say, by the same logic, that Italy makes the best cars in the world because people come from all over the world to buy cars here. That's true for Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini etc. But these are not the average car you see in the street or at the car dealer.
If we make a
reductio ad absurdum one could argue that if the US had so expensive a system that only rich foreigners could afford it, it would nonetheless be possible to claim, by this reasoning, that it must be the best in the world because many people take a plane to use it. For the curious, more than 80% of Ferrari cars, probably 90% are sold to foreign citizens.
The fact that there are excellent hospitals in the US does not mean that the US
medical system is excellent. It just means that there are some very good and very expensive health care providers in the US and those for whom money is not a problem do find them excellent.
Regarding the "market price" of medical treatments, the US must be, again, a world exception. In Italy like I believe all over Europe and presumably all over the world the price of each medical treatment is established by a Government decree. That doesn't prevent Europe from having many pharmaceutical firms some of them huge like Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline etc. Frankly I don't think that they rely on the US market to fund their research.
Finally, I am not that surprised that in the US a broken arm costs more than more complex, but not "emergency" interventions. That might easily happen if the hospital can refuse non-emergency treatments but cannot refuse to provide emergency treatments and if the hospital will end up with unpaid bills if the Public Money does not come at the rescue. That will naturally push the hospital to raise the price of emergency treatments because those who pay must pay also for those who don't pay. Those who don't pay are - as explained - those who cannot afford to have preventive medicine, and they do "overuse" the emergency care making the cost spiraling up. Mind you I'm not saying I know the US system enough to say this mechanism is in place. I suspect there must be some mechanism of this kind in place, and I ask: is the hospital "covered" by Father State in case of unpaid emergency care bills?