Thursday, May 22, 2014

Health Care

UK: 8% of GDP spent
-No family premium
-socialized medicine
-slightly less freedom/choice
-lots of preventative care

Japan: 8% of GDP spent
-$280 per month in cost
-social insurance
-most hospitals/care centers are privatized
-low cost but many hospitals are not profitable because of such low costs

Germany: 10.7% of GDP spent
-$750 per month added to income tax
-Buy into "sickness funds"
-Most pay in but poor receive assistance
-Many doctors feel underpaid

Taiwan: 6.3% of GDP spent
-$650 per year for a family of 4
-system like Medicare but everyone has some type of it
-lowest admin costs in the world
-also doesn't make money for gov.

Switzerland: 11.7% of GDP spent
-$750 per month with subsidies for poor
-everyone must have insurance
-universal coverage for all
-extremely expensive but still behind US

I would personally like to have socialized medicine like that of Britain. I think that this makes the most sense for many reasons. Firstly, preventative care is the first layer. A focus on preventative care simply makes sense. I think this is much more preferable to the more expensive reactionary system that we have. On top of this, there are no premiums because people simply pay taxes to pay for health care. The only setback that I see us the necessitated use of a gatekeeper. Fortunately, this is simply an annoyance, not a problem. Overall, I believe that this is the most productive and most sensible system for health care.